The small number of Chinese farners who are etched in our memories are but a modest reminder of the Chinese who worked, died or sojourned in Western Australi in the nineteenth century ... It is important to the understanding of the history of Chinese in Western Australian to know where they came from, why they came, and how they lived in the colony.
'Ancestors' is a study of the Chinese in colonial Western Australia (during the final decades of the nineteenth century). It describes the origins of Chinese workers in China, their recruitment via Singapore, their working conditions, and their situation in commercial and criminal law, as well as the general attitudes towards them on the part of the English population. The dependence on formal sources is obvious - chapter two is clearly based on immigration records, chapters six and seven on the civil and criminal legal records, and chapter eight on the record of deaths, for example - but Ryan has done a very good job of producing a readable account from these kinds of impersonal records, and more personal material is used to good effect where available.
Its subject is too specialised for it to have wide appeal, but anyone interested in a unusual perspective on Western Australian colonial history should have a look at 'Ancestors'. It will also be of comparative interest to those studying the Chinese in eastern Australia, or overseas Chinese more generally.
Contents:
Introduction
1. Points of Departure
2. Recruitment
3. Creating a Workforce
4. Raising the Barriers
5. Working Life
6. Recourse to Law
7. Perpetrators and Victims
8. Life and Limb
Conclusion
Appendices
Endnotes
Index
