Asian American history is the history of ethnic and racial groups in the United States who are of Asian descent. The term "Asian American" was an idea invented in the 1960s to bring together Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino Americans for strategic political purposes. Soon other groups of Asian origin, such as Korean, Indian, and Vietnamese Americans were added.[1] For example, while many Chinese, Japanese, and Filipino immigrants arrived as unskilled workers in significant numbers from 1850 to 1905 and largely settled in Hawaii and California, many Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Hmong Americans arrived in the United States as refugees following the Vietnam War. These separate histories have often been overlooked in conventional frameworks of Asian American history.[2]
Since 1965, shifting immigration patterns have resulted in a higher proportion of highly educated Asian immigrants entering the United States.[3] This image of success is often referred to as the "model minority" myth.[4]
The Chinese arrived in the U.S. in large numbers on the West Coast in the 1850s and 1860s to work in the gold mines and railroads. The Central Pacific railroad hired thousands, but after the line was finished in 1869 they were hounded out of many railroad towns in states such as Wyoming and Nevada. Most wound up in Chinatowns—areas of large cities which the police largely ignored. The Chinese were further alleged to be "coolies" and were said to be not suitable for becoming independent thoughtful voters because of their control by tongs. The same negative reception hit the Asians who migrated to Mexico and Canada.[5][6]
People of Japanese descent began to arrive in large numbers between 1890–1907, many going to Hawaii (an independent country until 1898), and others to the West Coast. Hostility was very high on the West Coast. Hawaii was a multicultural society in which the Japanese experienced about the same level of distrust as other groups. Indeed, they were the largest population group by 1910, and after 1950 took political control of Hawaii. The Japanese on the West Coast of the U.S. (as well as Canada and Latin America) were interned during World War II, but very few on Hawaii at the Honouliuli Internment Camp.
According to Chan (1996), the historiography of Asians in America falls into four periods. The 1870s to the 1920s saw partisan debates over curtailing Chinese and Japanese immigration; "Yellow Peril" diatribes battled strong, missionary-based defenses of the immigrants. Studies written from the 1920s to the 1960s were dominated by social scientists, who focused on issues of assimilation and social organization, as well as the World War II internment camps. Activist revisionism marked the 1960s to the early 1980s. Starting in the early 1980s there was an increased stress on human agency. Only after 1990 has there been much scholarship by professional historians.
Major milestones according to standard reference works[7] and others are:
Histories of specific ethnic/national subgroups:
Point Reyes National Seashore (Point Reyes, Marin County) was where the Spanish ship, the San Agustin, shipwrecked in 1595 with Filipino sailors aboard. The surviving crew eventually traveled by land to Mexico.
A month later, George Menefie, who by 1624 had patented Study Unit 4 Tract L Lot F upon the waterfront and in 1640 patented Study Unit 1 Tract D Lot C on the Back Street, used "Tony, an East Indian" as a headright. (p. 52)
Slaves, Tony, an East Indian and Africans brought out of England (p.238)
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He lasted just three games, but is remembered as the first non-Caucasian player in modern professional basketball, three years before African-Americans were included.
The first Asian American Olympic gold medalist was a Filipina American woman. Her name was Victoria Manalo Draves.
Victoria Manalo Draves, or Vicki as she liked to be called, made history as the first American woman to win two gold medals for diving and as the first, and still only Filipino, to win an Olympic gold medal and she won two of them in springboard and platform diving at the 1948 Olympics in London.
So, with those two things going for her, maybe it figured that she would become the first female diver to win two gold medals at a single Olympics, taking both the platform and springboard events at the London Games in 1948 -- and the first American woman of Asian descent to win an Olympic medal.
And there's Sammy Lee, another teammate from '48 and the first Asian-American to win a gold medal for the United States.
In order to better compete on the global market, American companies are recruiting heavily on college campuses and abroad, primarily in India, China, and South Korea.