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This chapter examines the accusation that the Chinese Six Companies acted as the chief labor broker for China during the late nineteenth century. Before discussing the claim that the Six Companies played a central role in importing Chinese laborers, the chapter considers the success of the Chinese merchants in the new market economy of California during the 1870s and how they were affected by the anti-Chinese movement in the state. It then explores how both the Democrats and the Republicans came up with the charge that the Six Companies had established a slavery government. It also looks at the reasons why the Six Companies was accused of being a labor broker, including false assumptions about nature of the organization, the belief that it had contracts with Chinese laborers, the notion that Chinese labor brokers were agents of the Six Companies, and its supposed agreement with the Pacific Mail Steamship Company.

This chapter examines the Chinese Six Companies’ cooperation with the nascent Qing legation as the latter pursued its objectives in the United States during the period 1878–1890. In order to understand how the Qing government “superseded” the authority and influence of the Six Companies in the United States, it considers the challenges faced by the Chinese during this period, with particular emphasis on Chinese merchants who were victims of the anti-Chinese movement and the crusade against Chinese immigration. It then discusses the Qing legation’s enlistment of the Six Companies to deal with the attacks against Chinese immigrants, along with its role as Chinatown reformer and its campaign for Chinese legal equality. It also looks at the Chinese legation’s lobbying efforts and its policy regarding restrictions on Chinese immigration and concludes by focusing on its calls for protection and indemnity for Chinese who were victims of mob attacks.

This chapter examines the role of the Chinese Six Companies as spokesman for all the Chinese in the United States during the period 1870–1878. As a federation of huiguan, the Six Companies had an obligation, among other services, to defend its members. This chapter considers how the Six Companies responded the unprecedented anti-Chinese challenges of the 1870s, first by discussing its efforts to restrict Chinese immigration from 1876 to 1878. It then explores the Six Companies role as reformer of San Francisco’s Chinatown in the 1870s, as defender of Chinese rights, and its campaign demanding indemnity for the Chinese who were repeatedly subjected to acts of violence, especially in the 1870s and 1880s. It also looks at Six Companies’ advocacy of legal equality, its lobbying efforts, and its call for the establishment of a Qing legation in the United States.

This chapter examines the inroads made by the Chinese Six Companies and the Qing legation in the field of diplomacy in the United States during the period 1890–1906. The Chinese diplomats won acclaim from Americans for being “as skilled in dialectics as the officials of the United States,” and “as keenly aware of their rights and as much disposed to insist upon the same.” This chapter considers the activities of the Qing legation in the 1890s, first by focusing on its advisers, and in particular those from the Six Companies. It then discusses the Chinese legation’s insistence on Chinese treaty rights, along with its lobbying efforts for a variety of issues such as the Chinese Exclusion Act. It also looks at the Qing legation’s attempt to reform Chinatown and concludes by assessing the role of the Six Companies in the Qing government’s immigration treaties with the United States.

This chapter examines the emergence of modern Chinese nationalism in California during the 1860s. It begins with a discussion of Chinese immigration in the 1860s and the factors that influenced Chinese settlement patterns in California, along with the violence against Chinese immigrants. It then considers the appointment of Anson Burlingame as Chinese minister to the United States in 1868 and its significance for Sino-American relations. It also looks at the birth of a national huiguan in California, when the Zhonghua Gongshuo (Chung Wah Kung Saw; meaning the Chinese national public place association) was founded and became the Chinese Six Companies after recruiting the Hehe (Hop Wo) huiguan. The chapter concludes by focusing on the diplomatic activism of the Six Companies and its impact on China’s official approach to foreign relations.

This book is about the Chinese Six Companies in California and their policies and strategies to counter racism, from organizing its own community and developing modern nationalism, to teaching the Qing dynasty how modern nationalism should be pursued through diplomatic means. Focusing on the period before the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the book explores how the Six Companies, also known as the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, resisted the anti-Chinese movement and challenged the discrimination they faced in the United States. It shows how the Six Companies, which began as huiguan (native-place associations), exerted a major influence in generating the nationalist turn of China’s approach to foreign relations in the nineteenth century. The book argues that the Six Companies’ transnational experience is intertwined with the histories of China, Sino-American relations, and Chinese Americans in the nineteenth century. It also examines the culturalism-to-nationalism thesis and emphasizes the significance of the transition from attachment to native place to nationalism in nineteenth-century America.

This concluding chapter summarizes the book’s main points regarding the diplomacy of the Chinese Six Companies and its impact on important developments in nineteenth-century Chinese-American history, modern Chinese history, and the early history of Sino-American relations. Modern Chinese nationalism first emerged in California from the huiguan or native-place associations, and the Six Companies’ modern nationalist diplomacy steered China’s turn toward modern nationalist foreign relations. By showing that the Six Companies, rather than the Chinese government, was the center of modern Chinese diplomacy during its crucial beginnings, the book reconfigures the intellectual landscape of the culturalism-to-nationalism thesis and of China’s entrance into the modern family of nations.

The quarter of old Canton, transplanted and transformed, neither quite oriental nor wholly occidental, San Francisco's Chinatown yields to the ways of the West while continuing to venerate a native civilization as ancient as the Pyramids. Grant Avenue, its main thoroughfare, leads northward from Bush Street through a veritable city-within-a-city—alien in appearance to all the rest of San Francisco—hemmed within boundaries kept by tacit agreement with municipal authorities for almost a century. Chinatown enjoys a measure of civil autonomy unique among San Francisco's foreign sections. Though police protection, public education, and public health are directed by municipal authorities, local affairs are controlled largely by the powerful Chinese Six Companies. Labor relations, family regulation, traditional customs, and commercial activities are the province of this unusual body.