A Research on the Gold Rush as a Mass Migration Process

At the start of hearing about this topic, I knew that I was interested in doing research that pertained to the Gold Rush. Hence, I began by searching the library database for general books on the California Gold Rush, such as The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream. Books like these contained many aspects of life in California during the Gold Rush, including the family situations, race differences, and mining culture. In viewing these different topics, I soon realized that a major part of the Gold Rush was the mass migrations of groups from areas such as France, the Eastern US, China, and Chile.

Finally, I narrowed my topic down to the Chinese, due to the great deal of discrimination they faced in all areas of life in California, as well as how this connected to the Chinese Exclusion Act. My next research after finding a multitude of books that contained information about the Chinese during the Gold rush were multiple Journal Articles.

These articles were useful because they combined a variety of information about the Chinese, such as what Californians thought of them at the time, but went into detail and specifics more than the books did. For example, in one article it discussed how newspaper coverage from the years 1850 to 1852 became more negative of the Chinese, as they arrived in increasingly larger numbers (A Comparative Analysis, 2011). The information found in many of the journal articles focusing on discrimination and anti sentiment of the Chinese were more detailed than many of the information in the books I found.

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In general, I used search terms such as “Chinese Gold Rush” and “Anti-Sentiment Chinese California.” These searches essentially brought up articles that encased all sections of my paper, whether it was about the Chinese as miners, or about their general mass migration to California. The primary database I used was JSTOR, but other sites such as Pro Quest and Academic Search Premiere were helpful as well. The advanced search on the Case Library website gave me the opportunity to focus my research and find scholarly articles that contained specific subject terms, as well as authors to see if previous authors I found also wrote other pieces on this time period. In combining my journal article search along with my books, I still needed further information.

I proceeded to look back on many of the books and look into the sources these used about the Chinese. This allowed me to find specific cases of discrimination on the Chinese, and more valuable research as a whole. To truly narrow my topic down, my sources primarily centered around how the Chinese were viewed within California society during the Gold Rush. I knew I was unable to focus on the entire Chinese community from the Gold Rush to the Exclusion Act, so my topic primarily looks at the Chinese community during the height of the Gold Rush, and what ultimately led to the calling for their extinction. Reading my sources made me realize that a crucial time for the Chinese was their first arrival in California and how they were shaped by others.

My topic can be divided into many different sections, including looking at the Chinese as miners, families, and stereotypical views of their character. This will allow me to formulate one research paper that all boils down to why the Chinese were ultimately ruled to be excluded from the United States. Ultimately, with the revised topic of the Chinese during the peak of the Gold Rush and the anti-sentiment generated against them, I found great examples of what many people thought of them. In one article, it discusses how the mass migration during the Gold Rush made those already there feel threatened by the chances their money in Gold would disappear (The Cultural Clash, 2012).

While this was one view of the Chinese, another influencer towards their extinction was the racially and femininely charged view pointed on them (All that Glitters, 2008). All in all, there are many different views of the Chinese in this time of California, and therefore I will only be focusing on the specific period of the Gold Rush, and not the exclusion