Two Chinese-Australian artists bring new perspectives to the anti-Chinese goldfield riots of 1861 that paved the way for the White Australia policy
For 10 wretched months between 1860 and 1861, the Burrangong goldfields – near the town of Young, four hours drive south-east of Sydney – were consumed by riots. Chinese miners were attacked by white miners, martial law was proclaimed and new laws passed that paved the road for the White Australia policy decades later.
Historian Karen Schamberger tells the story with brutal precision. “On the day of the largest riot, over 3,000 Australian, European-born and American miners marched from Tipperary Gully through different goldfields. They cut off the queue [pigtails] from Chinese miners, scalped some of them. They burnt the Chinese miners’ tents, brutalised them.” Civility disappeared, an unknown number of people went missing and the riot act was read in July 1861. “That’s how much they lost control of the colony.”
from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2vPCtrJ
via
0 Comments