Mark Twain, "The Treaty with China," and the Chinese connection

Journal of Transnational American Studies

Volumn 2, Issue 1, 2010, Pages

  Zehr, Martin ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

Clemens; Samuel (1835 1910); The Treaty with China; Treatment of Chinese immigrants; Treatment of race

Indexed keywords

EID: 84861057335     PISSN: None     EISSN: 19400764     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (18)

1. Mark Twain, letter to Jane Lampton Clemens, August 31, 1853, in Mark Twain's Letters, Volume 1: 1853-1866, ed. Edgar Marquess Branch, Michael B. Frank, and Kenneth M. Sanderson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 10.
2. Albert D. Richardson, Beyond the Mississippi: From the Great River to the Great Ocean (Hartford, CT: American Publishing Co., 1869), 593.
3. Mark Twain, Mark Twain's Autobiography, Vol. 1 (New York: Harper, 1924), 101.
4. Mark Twain, "What Have the Police Been Doing?" Virginia City (NV) Territorial Enterprise, n.d.
5. reprinted in Golden Era, January 21, 1866.
6. The original text has been reprinted in Franklin Walker, ed., The Washoe Giant in San Francisco: Being Heretofore Uncollected Sketches by Mark Twain (San Francisco: George Fields, 1938), 97. It should be noted that, although the Chinese are specifically mentioned in the cited quotation from this piece, this is the only specific mention of the Chinese in this writing, which is a general satirical description of the activities of "our virtuous police force." "What Have the Police Been Doing?" does, however, presage Twain's later sketch, "Disgraceful Persecution of a Boy," in which police collaboration in the stoning of a Chinese boy is the subject of a satire in which treatment of the Chinese is implicitly compared with treatment of African Americans.
7. See, for example, Shelley Fisher Fishkin, "Mark Twain and Race," in A Historical Guide to Mark Twain, ed. Shelley Fisher Fishkin (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 136;
8. and Bernard Taper, introduction to Mark Twain's San Francisco, ed. Bernard Taper (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963), xx.
9. Edgar Marquess Branch, ed., Clemens of the "Call": Mark Twain in San Francisco (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 70. This volume contains a number of short pieces written by Mark Twain during his brief tenure as a police beat reporter for the San Francisco Morning Call in 1864. Included are twelve short pieces regarding the Chinese, none of them particularly sympathetic to Chinese immigrants and, as Branch states in his prefatory remarks, "Their comedy draws upon racial stereotypes and crudities, understandable in the context of that day if not entirely excusable" (69).
10. In a brief interview I was fortunate to have with the late Iris Chang (April 8, 2004), author of The Chinese in America: A Narrative History (New York: Viking, 2003), she indicated her awareness of the Bret Harte-Mark Twain collaboration, Ah Sin, and Twain's generally favorable description of the Chinese immigrants from Roughing It, both mentioned in her book, and also cited her reading of "Disgraceful Persecution of a Boy." She was generally unaware, however, of Twain's other Chinese writings or his involvement in the Yung Wing matter, which, in all fairness, were beyond the scope and intention of her comprehensive and well-researched history. In another recent work with an exclusive focus on the personal and literary relationship between Samuel Clemens and Ulysses Grant, there is not a single mention or reference to the Yung Wing matter, despite the fact that Clemens and Grant were two of the key players in this incident (along with Twain's close friend, the Reverend Joe Twichell), which resulted in the rescission of the Viceroy of China's decision to close the Chinese Educational Mission in Hartford, Connecticut. The Yung Wing matter provides incontrovertible evidence of Twain's empathy toward the Chinese in America and the ex-President's unhesitating willingness to exert his influence at the behest of his friend and future publisher, Samuel Clemens. It is also notable that Twain's action in the Yung Wing matter is contemporaneous with the enactment of the Chinese Exclusion Act, by which Chinese immigration to the United States was virtually ended, not to be permitted again until the Second World War. These examples illustrate the present difficulty of obtaining an adequate account of Twain's strongly held feelings toward the Chinese in his adult years. 7
11. See Martin Zehr, "The Vision of the Other in Mark Twain's 'War Prayer,'" in "New Perspectives on 'The War Prayer': An International Forum," ed. Shelley Fisher Fishkin and Takayuki Tatsumi, special issue, Mark Twain Studies 2 (2006): 87-91.
12. See, for example, Xilao Li, "The Adventures of Mark Twain in China: Translation and Appreciation of More than a Century," Mark Twain Annual 6, no. 1 (2008): 65-76;
13. and Lao She, "Mark Twain: Exposer of the Dollar Empire" (1960), trans. Zhao Yuming and Sui Gang, first published in English by J. R. LeMaster in the U.S.-China Review 19, no. 3 (1995)
14. and reprinted in The Mark Twain Anthology: Great Writers on His Life and Work, ed. Shelley Fisher Fishkin (New York: Library of America, 2010), 283-88.
15. The entire text of Anson Burlingame's speech is reprinted in William Speer, The Oldest and the Newest Empire: China and the United States (Hartford: S. S. Scranton, 1870), 673-78. This work also contains the full text of the treaty's provisions.
16. Dred Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. (19 How.) 393 (1856), 407. Note that, while the appellee's name in this famous case is "Sanford," a clerk's misspelling at the time has been subsequently retained in the official legal citation. Also, the opinion was published in December 1856, a date retained in the official citation, despite the commonly published reference to 1857, the year in which the Court's decision became widely known.
17. Mark Twain, "Anson Burlingame," Buffalo Express, February 25, 1870
18. reprinted in Joseph B. McCullough and Janice McIntire-Strasburg, eds., Mark Twain at the Buffalo Express: Articles and Sketches by America's Favorite Humorist (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1999), 153.