Appendix CASE ONE - Collection Point® | The Total Digital Asset ...

192 Legal History in the Making
to it. 31 If anything they were sharpened by concern flowing from the apparent
industrial progress and growing military power of Japan.
Dealing with Japanese immigration at a legislative level was more difficult
than in the case of the Chinese. Britain had signed a Treaty of Commerce and
Navigation with Japan in 1894 which included provisions on free movement
of subjects of both countries. 32 Although the treaty was not binding on white
self-governing dominions without their accession, the British government was
very concerned not to offend the Japanese whose country, in contrast to China,
was seen as the rising power in the Far East. 33 When several Australian colonies
and New Zealand in 1896 sought to extend their anti-Chinese immigration
legislation to 'other Asians' the legislation was reserved for the consideration
of London because of a possible conflict with imperial treaty obligations to
Japan. 34 The British government was faced with the challenge of how to
balance concern for Japanese sensibilities with the conflicting desires of settlers
in the white dominions. It was Joseph Chamberlain, the Colonial Secretary
in the Conservative government of the marquis of Salisbury who rose to the
challenge. Chamberlain, the very quintessence of the high imperialism of the
turn of the century, was a firm believer in the supremacy and civilizing mission
of the British race and was committed to strengthening both the economic
and military links between Britain and its dominions. 35 At the same time he
recognized the importance to British interests of placating Japan.
The solution to the immigration problem which he seized upon was readily
at hand, recently devised by the legislature of Natal, one of Great Britain's
South African colonies, to stem immigration from India. The white population
of the colony, which had relied on indentured labour from India for many years,
developed increasing antipathy to free Indian immigration, which together with
the previously indentured population had produced virtual parity in the Indian
and white populations by 1891. 36 The legal solution devised by the whites to
cut off further Indian entry was the so-called Natal Act enacted in 1897, which
applied a simple language test to all would-be immigrants. 37 The latter were
required to fill out an application in 'a language of Europe'. It was correctly
supposed that this would be beyond Indian immigrants whose mother tongues
were 'non-European' and most of whom were illiterate in any event. From
31
Ward, op. cit., 97-98,102-103, 110-14; Roy, above n.3, 81-88.
32
L. Herslet, Herslet's Commercial Treaties, xix (1895), 691.
33
See W. Langer, The Diplomacy of Imperialism, 1890-1902 (New York, 1956), 460-61,
472-73, 491, 680-83, 776-77.
34
Huttenback, op. cit., 156-62.
35
C. Brown and R. Cook, Canada, 1896-1921: A Nation Transformed (Toronto, 1974), 30-32.
On Chamberlain's views on race, see W. Mock, 'The Function of "Race" in Imperialist Ideologies: the
Example of Joseph Chamberlain', National and Racialist Movements in Britain and Germany Before
1914, P. Kennedy and A. Nicholls, ed. (1981), 190.
36
On the early history of the migration of indentured East Indians to Natal, see Huttenback, op. cit.,
52-58.
37
Immigration Restriction Act, Stat. Natal, 1897, no.l, s. 3.