Immigration and exclusion (c. 1850-1943)
Factors on both sides of the Pacific shaped the early relationship of overseas Chinese in the United States with both America and China. In China, the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864) threw southern China into a massive civil war, leaving an estimated 20,000,000 dead of war, famine, and disease.1 The First and Second Opium Wars (1840-1842, 1856-1860) further devastated the Chinese state. After 1860, the demands of European foreigners for cheap labor forced the Qing government to lift virtually all restrictions on Chinese emigration, opening the way for legalized mass emigration.2
On the other coast in the western United States, the discovery of gold in 1848 in northern California created an explosion of newcomers from around the world seeking their fortunes. Thousands of people came from around the world, including Germany, Chile, Mexico, Ireland, Turkey, and France. For thousands of Chinese from the famine- and war-torn southern provinces of Fujian and Guangdong, the allure of the gold rush was especially strong. Over the next decade California's population swelled dramatically; in 1848 San Francisco was home to 1,000 people, and two years later it boasted over 20,000.3
However, many of the Chinese who came did not intend to stay, and were so known as "sojourners." It was mostly men who emigrated away from their home villages, sending remittances, or money back home, to their families. If they could make enough money, they would return to China to find wives and start families of their own, spending most of their time working overseas and visiting every few years before returning to settle or retire in China.
1http://global.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/580815/Taiping-Rebellion
2Guofu Liu, The Right to Leave and Return and Chinese Migration Law (Leiden, the Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill NV, 2007), 131.
3http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/immigration/goldrush.html
4http://www.history.com/news/8-things-you-may-not-know-about-the-california-gold-rush
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