Volltext - ub-dok: der Dokumentenserver der UB Trier - Universität ...

Asians were subject to discrimination but their labour was still needed, and they did
come as workers in fairly large numbers, though the government limited them mostly to males
on the principle that without their women they would not stay permanently. Chinese
immigrants joined the labour-hungry gold rush of the 1850s, and some stayed on afterwards,
founding trading houses, restaurants, laundries, market gardens, working on railway
construction, and establishing families. Japanese immigrants followed them in, working first
as entertainers and prostitutes, pearl divers, and finally as traders once their government
recognised their right to be outside of Japan (Broinowski, 1992, 2). The reality of Asia’s
proximity was simply not to be ignored, but neither was it so very important in the larger
scheme of things where the British Empire and its expansion and successes were considered
proof of Anglo-Saxon superiority according to the principles of Social Darwinism (White, 69).
The 19 th century saw Australia in two ways. On the one hand, it was an ideal proving
ground for those Social Darwinist principles—a virgin continent with new opportunities for a
strong Anglo-Saxon race to come in, develop the land, and improve themselves, all, of course,
at the expense of the ‘weaker races’. On the other hand, there was the nagging doubt that it
was the cold northern climate which kept the Anglo-Saxon race strong, and that it was only the
continued immigration into Australia from Britain which kept the Australians vigorous and
successful. The native-born Aussis tended to lose this racial hardiness (White, 70). For some,
this was all the more argument that Australia’s best future lay within the arms of its British
mother. The axioms of Social Darwinism certainly indicated, on the evidence of the empire’s
impressive military successes, that Britain was best prepared to provide government and
administration to the conquered lands (White, 72), and provided what seemed to be self-
evident proof of the concepts of the superiority of the white race over the coloured, and of the
New World’s human progress over the Old World’s depravity and tyranny (Ouyang Yu, 1995,
Bulletin, 131). They also seemed to dispel the haunting suspicion that ‘Asian skills and
capacities might do a better job of settling Australia and creating a productive continent’
(Walker, 37).
- 27 -