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Guardians at the gate: quarantine and racialism in two Pacific Rim port cities, 1870–1914

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2008

ALAN MAYNE
ALAN MAYNE*
Affiliation:
Hawke Research Institute, University of South Australia, GPO Box 2471, Adelaide SA 5001, Australia
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Abstract

This article examines the ambivalent relationship that San Francisco and Darwin developed with Asia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. On the one hand they presented themselves as gateways that facilitated trade with Asia. On the other hand they acted as sentinels that protected Europeans from Asian immigration. This quirky behaviour is encapsulated in the quarantine regulations that were applied in both ports to Asian commodities and people. The two case studies suggest a broader paradox in the history of port cities. Their prosperity and vitality rested upon the free flow of goods and people, but those flows generated enormous frictions.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , August 2008 , pp. 255 - 274
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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References

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98 A good example is the Cape Town waterfront. See Bickford-Smith, V. and van Heyningen, E., Sites of History: The Waterfront (Cape Town, 1994)Google Scholar.

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