Yellow Peril!: An Archive of Anti-Asian Fear

by John Kuo Wei Tchen, Dylan Yeats

Overview

From invading hordes to enemy agents, a great fear haunts the West!

The “yellow peril” is one of the oldest and most pervasive racist ideas in Western culture—dating back to the birth of European colonialism during the Enlightenment. Yet while Fu Manchu looks almost quaint today, the prejudices that gave him life persist in modern culture. Yellow Peril! is the first comprehensive repository of anti-Asian images and writing, and it surveys the extent of this iniquitous form of paranoia.

Written by two dedicated scholars and replete with paintings, photographs, and images drawn from pulp novels, posters, comics, theatrical productions, movies, propagandistic and pseudo-scholarly literature, and a varied world of pop culture ephemera, this is both a unique and fascinating archive and a modern analysis of this crucial historical formation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781781681237
Publisher:	Verso Books
Publication date:	02/11/2014
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	1,112,749
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

John Kuo-Wei Tchen is a professor at New York University, the author of New York Before Chinatown, and co-founder of the Museum of Chinese in America. 

Dylan Yeats is a doctoral candidate at New York University.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Yellow Peril Incarnate 1

Part 1 The Imagined West 33

1 Decolonizing Scholarship 37

"Mapping Boundaries of Difference and Shared Spaces, a Visual Essay" (2013) John Kuo Wei Tchen 39

"Mapping: Local Gone Global" (2007) John Kuo Wei Tchen 45

"The Theft of History" (2006) Jack Goody 48

Hemispheres of the Globe (1884) 53

"Where Is 'The West? Where Is The Ease?" (1997) Martin W. Lewis Kären E. Wigen 53

"Positional Superiority of Western Knowledge" (2012) Linda Tuhiwai Smith 60

"Occidentalism and Modernity" (1996) Fernando Coronil 64

2 Westernizing Europe 69

St. George and the Dragon (1876) 72

Eurasia 73

"Eurasia: The Horse and the Wheel" (2009) David W. Anthony 73

Classical Routes 77

"Homers Phoenicians" (1995) Irene J. Winter 78

"Isocrates' 'Europe vs. Asia Rhetoric" (2004) Benjamin Isaac 83

"Greeks and Multiple Barbarians" (2005) Adam Kuper 85

Rise of Western Fundamentalism 88

"Letter to Pope Urban II" (1094/1095) Alexios I Komnenos 89

"That Detestable Race of Satan" (1240) Matthew Paris 90

"The Story of Gog and Magog" (1998) Scott D. Westrem 93

"Placing the Jews in Late Medieval English Literature" (2002) Suzanne Conklin Akbari 95

"Christians on Saracens" (2003) John V. Tolan 103

"Latin Christendom's 'Doctrine of Discovery': Papal Bulls, 1452, 1455, 1493" (2013) John Kuo Wei Tchen 107

The Treaty of Tordesillas (1494) 109

Cantino Planisphere (1502) 114

"The Westernization of Europe" (1995) Gerard Delanty 115

Part 2 Manifest Destinies 121

3 Geo-Racial Mapping 127

"Five Categories of Homo Sapiens" (1758) Carl Linnaeus 129

"Five Races of Mankind" (1795) Johann Friedrich Blumenbach 130

"The Development of Color" (1844) Robert Chambers 132

"Types of Mankind" (1854) Samuel George Morton 135

Phrenological Journal (1870) 138

"Descendants of the Great Apes" (1876) Ernst Haeckel 138

"The Jolly Giant's Artist Agrees with Darwin" (1874) 138

"Existing Facts of Human Ascent" (1926) Henry Fairfield Osborn 142

"Hither and Farther Asia," (1837) G. W. F. Hegel 143

"Race and the Asiatic Mode of Production" (1989) Brendan O'Leary 148

"John Stuart Mill's Asian Parable," (2001) Robert Kurfirst 153

"Gobineau on 'China as Menace"' (1999) Gregory Blue 156

"World Cephalic Index" (1897) William Z. Ripley 160

"Color Map of the World" (1903) 160

"Civilization Stands Up to the Horde, a Visual Essay" (2013) Dylan Yeats 163

"He Vomits the Yellow to Swallow the White" (1904) 167

"The Pressure of Asia" (1904) H. J. Mackinder 168

"With Faces like the Snouts of Dogs" (1904) Theodore Roosevelt 172

"The Yellow Peril" (1904) Jack London 176

4 Anglo America's "Great Game" 179

"Justice" and "The Indian Revolt" (1857) 182

"The Year 1899" (1893) William Ward Crane 185

"The Psychology of Colonialism" (1988) Ashis Nandy 189

"Perilous Frontiers" (1994) Gary Okihiro 195

"The March of the Flag" (1898) Albert Jeremiah Beveridge 200

"It Ought to Be a Happy New Year" (1899) Victor Gillam 203

"Trying On Her New Necklace" (1907) Luther Bradley 204

The Yellow Danger (1898) 205

Unknown (1939) 206

"Spectres of the Great Game" (1998) James L. Hevia 206

"Modernity's (Yellow) Perils" (2006) Urmila Seshagiri 211

The Rising Tide of Color (1921) 216

Amazing Stories (1927) 218

Part 3 Indispensable Enemies 221

5 The Enemy Within 227

"The Promise and the Peril, a Visual Essay" (2013) Dylan Yates 229

"A Statue for Our Harbor" (1881) George Frederick Keller 231

"A Chinese View of the Statue of Liberty" (1885) Saum Song Bo 232

"The Chinese Exclusion Case" (1889) 233

"A Peaceful Invasion, a Visual Essay" (2013) Dylan Yates 234

"National Abjection" (2002) Karen Shimakawa 236

"Racial Triangulation Theory" (1999) Claire Jean Kim 241

The Turban Tide (1908) 242

"Save Our State from Oriental Aggression" (1918) 246

The Mongol in Our Midst (1924) 247

"A Future America" (1916) Randolph Bourne 248

"The Shape of Fear" (1926) W. E. B. Du Bois 251

"The Marching Chinese" (1929) 254

"Waiting for the Signal from Home…" (1942) Theodor Seuss Geisel 254

"The Nature of the Mexican American Criminal" (1942) Edward Duran Ayres 256

"Goddamn Brown Monkeys" (1946) Carlos Bulosan 258

12 Chinamen and a Woman (1950) 260

"AutoWorld" (1984) Helen Zia 261

"Is Japan Really Out to Get Us?" (1992) Robert B. Reich 263

"Chinese Professors" (2013) Dylan Yeats 267

"Monster, Terrorist, Fag" (2002) Jasbir Puar Amii Rai 272

6 The Coming War 277

"Tomorrow" (1939) 280

"Is This Tomorrow?" (1947) 282

"Patterns of a Race War" (1986) John W. Dower 283

Remember Pearl Harbor (1942) 287

"The Age of the World Target" (1998) Rey Chow 289

"Orientalist Totalitarianism" (1988) William Pietz 293

"Why the Yellow Peril Has Turned Red!" (1951) Dan Gilbert 298

Red Chinas Fighting Hordes (1952) 301

"Orientalism and Brainwashing in The Manchurian Candidate" (2006) Matthew Jacobson Gasper Gonzales 303

GIDRA 307

"Reimaging Vietnam" (2000) H. Bruce Franklin 313

"Post-Vietnam Syndrome" (2008) Myra Mendible 317

"On Our Knees" (2004) Jesse Springer 322

"Islam and the West: A Clash of Civilizations?" (1999) John Esposito 323

"Militancy Considerations: Violence and Adherence to the Torah, Bible, and Koran" (2010) 328

"Orientalisms Old and New in Battlestar Galactica" (2012) Eve Bennett 330

Epilogue: Uncle Sam and the Headless Chinaman 337

Acknowledgments 367

Notes 371

Editorial Reviews

02/10/2014
In this illuminating book, Tchen and Yeats address the political and cultural legacy of yellow perilism, that set of beliefs and practices stemming from a long tradition of othering, identity formation, and binary divisions of "the West" and "the East." Tchen and Yeats act as curators, drawing together an impressive and engaging array of "fragments"—images, critical essays, scholarship, and historical documents—which, taken as a whole, present a clear, if multifaceted, trajectory of yellow perilism to show how it is "hardwired into the formulation of Western Civilization itself." The book can feel dense but, separated into three parts, it is effectively organized and the editors provide a contextual introduction for each "archival" entry. What emerges is a compelling case that cultural and political change is needed, and that change is possible only through "historical recognition," which, Tchen and Yeats say, leads to "reckoning and action." The book will appeal most to academics, but the recognition and understanding that the book provides is "vital to navigating a less divisive, less war-torn future." (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

Smart, funny, comprehensive, and theoretically astute.”
—Nell Irvin Painter, author of The History of White People

“A kaleidoscopic study rich in historical depth, topical breadth, and critical rigor.”
—John Dower, author of Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II

“An insightful new anthology.”
—Steven Heller, Atlantic

“A comprehensive archive of the underbelly of anxiety and hatred. As the US economy suffers from acute indigestion, ‘China,’ like ‘Japan’ before it, will provide a dishonest salve. Close attention to the history of the ‘yellow peril’ will protect the good-minded from falling deep into the well of is virulence.”
—Vijay Prashad, author of The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South

“This brilliant, well-documented book provides much-needed historical perspectives on oriental-phobia, and other racist and racial ways of thinking.”
—Jack G. Shaheen, author of Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People

“An exhaustive but not exhausting set of readings.”
—Sander L. Gilman, author of Smart Jews and Fat: A Cultural History of Obesity

“In this illuminating book, Tchen and Yeats address the political and cultural legacy of yellow perilism, that set of beliefs and practices stemming from a long tradition of othering, identity formation, and binary divisions of ‘the West’ and ‘the East’ … What emerges is a compelling case that cultural and political change is needed, and that change is possible only through ‘historical recognition,’ which, Tchen and Yeats say, leads to ‘reckoning and action.’”
—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher