Chinese Australian History by Chidestudy Press

21. Beyond White Australia

Too often Chinese Australian history is viewed as a history parallel to "real" Australian history that only touches this history at points like racism or the gold rushes. In reality people from China have been an integral and significant part of Australian history from its European beginings, and even to some extent before that. Here is an overview of that history that originated in an interview with a TV production company that never saw the light of day. Too good to waste!
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For more on Chinese Australian history check out Chinese Australian History in 88 Objects - https://chinozhistory.org/index.php/suggest-an-object/

1. Introduction to the ChideStudy Press Podcast

Chinese–Australian history is a vital part of the national story—one that has long fascinated, yet often perplexed, many (white) Australians. As Australia’s Chinese communities continue to grow and evolve, this history is attracting increasing attention. That interest spans both academic inquiry and popular curiosity, though, as in most fields, scholarly insights do not always travel easily into the popular sphere. In public understanding, Chinese–Australian history too often remains confined to familiar themes: gold diggers, racism, and market gardeners. Yet the field is far richer, as recent research shows—revealing enduring links to Pearl River Delta villages, business networks in Hong Kong and Shanghai, Chinese–Australian contributions to Federation, and the shaping of Australian identity itself.
Although centred on Chinese–Australian history, this podcast has three distinctive features. First, it highlights a niche but compelling area of study. Second, it uses AI not to create, but to distil and summarise the texts published by ChideStudy Press. And third, it draws upon those very texts—summaries that, we hope, will encourage you to seek out, purchase, and enjoy the originals.
Enjoy!
Please check out our publications at - https://chidestudypresscom.wordpress.com/the-bookstore/
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Michael Williams is a graduate of Hong Kong University. A scholar of Chinese–Australian history. And a founding member of the Chinese-Australian Historical Society. He is the author of Returning Home with Glory — a sweeping historical journey following the people of south China’s Pearl River Delta as they moved across the vast Pacific world…to Sydney, to Hawaii, to San Francisco…and back again.
He is also the author of Australia’s Dictation Test: The Test It Was a Crime to Fail —a dramatic and forensic account of the bureaucratic heart of the White Australia Policy. A system designed to exclude…and a test designed so that failure was guaranteed.
Michael has taught at Beijing Foreign Studies University and Peking University, and once served as an Adjunct Professor at Western Sydney University. His digital project —Chinese Australian History in 88 Objects —was shortlisted for the 2022 Premier’s Digital History Prize. A collection of stories, artefacts, and forgotten histories that reshaped how Australians see their past.
His most recent work traces the extraordinary journey of the Robe Chinese goldfield walkers. Every requisite for a campaign upon the gold-fields is a story of organisation…migration…and the long walk into the gold-rush frontier. Today, Michael is the creator of Scattered Legacy —a national database of the treasures of Chinese Australian history. A project that gathers objects, landscapes, inscriptions, and the fragile traces of nearly two centuries of community life.
Michael Williams is one of the leading voices in Chinese–Australian scholarship —a historian who brings depth, clarity, and humanity to the stories that shaped a nation.  
 

2. Chinamans Well

The first of a great many myths and misconceptions relating to Chinese Australian history. This is one of a mystery beehive shaped and stone capped well is associated with the famous walk from Robe in South Australia as Chinese gold seekers evaded the Victoria Poll tax in the 1850s. This is an episode you can find in Every Requisite for a Campaign upon the Goldfields, a Chidestudy Press book - Click here for a description and contents
See also the recently published: Williams, M., 2025, Constructing the Exotic: The Myth of Chinaman’s Well, Journal of the Historical Society of South Australia, No. 52, 2025, pp.69-79.
Please check out the publications at - https://chidestudypresscom.wordpress.com/the-bookstore/  In this case the related publication is: Every Request for a Campaign Upon the Goldfields. Feel free to ask questions at: chidestudypress@gmail.com 

11. Magistrate Cook's anomalous community

Thomas Cook, Esq. J.P. was one of many immigrants of middling income and status who early in their life threw in their lot with the young Colony of NSW. A good image of Thomas Cook as a magistrate can be built up from the chance survival of the Magistrates Letterbooks of the Dungog Court in which is preserved much of his official outward correspondence, particularity from 1837 throughout the 1840s, dealing with a wide range of issues. Cook makes suggestions regarding the training of new arrivals to minimise accidental death, he badgers the government in Sydney for funds to improve the facilities at Dungog, to pay arrears owed people employed under him, and to secure blankets for the local natives. Cook is prepared to argue with the local landowners over legalities and shows occasional sympathy to those convicts and ex-convicts, who come before him. Cook also made efforts to assist the local people who were rapidly being displaced by the new settlers, making efforts to secure sufficient blankets and also to intervene, even if ineffectually, in at least one case where an overseer was holding Aboriginal women against the wishes of their male kin.
See also: Williams, M., 2022, 'This anomalous community: Dungog Magistrate's Letterbox, 1834-1839', Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, 108(1), p.73.
Please check out the publications at - https://chidestudypresscom.wordpress.com/the-bookstore/  In this case the related publication is: By the Pleasing Countenance of My Superiors. Feel free to ask questions at: chidestudypress@gmail.com

19. Holding up half the Family - Women of the Chinese Diaspora

When people talk about the Chinese diaspora before the mid-20th century, it’s usually described as a story of men heading overseas. But those men stayed closely tied to the women who remained in their villages back in south China—often just as many, if not more, than the men who left. The role these women played has been seriously under-researched. Because of that, the focus in most writing has been on leaving and settling abroad, not on the lives of those who stayed or on the experiences of return.
For the women in the villages, life revolved around remittances. That meant living in a space shaped by both wealth and poverty, dependence and independence, authority and anxiety, loneliness and freedom. If we bring these women properly into the picture—at least as much as our mostly male-centred sources allow—it opens up new ways of understanding the diaspora. We can better see how restrictive white-settler laws were felt back home, and what motivated some men to return to their villages while others never did.
For the published article see: Michael Williams, 2021. Holding Up Half the Family, Journal of Chinese Overseas 17.1, pp.179-195. https://doi.org/10.1163/17932548-12341438
Please check out our publications at - https://chidestudypresscom.wordpress.com/the-bookstore
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For a general overview of Chinese Australian history check out Episode 7: https://chidestudypress.podbean.com/e/7-chinese-australian-history-a-brief-overview/ 

20. The Bogus Quiz that forged a Nation

The Dictation Test is often seen as the defining symbol of the White Australia policy. For more than 50 years after 1901, it was the main tool used to keep so-called “undesirables” out of the country. This podcast looks at the story behind it—the mix of history, politics and ideology that produced a fake test you were never meant to pass. A key moment came at the 1897 Imperial Conference, where the colonial Premiers thrashed out the issue of immigration restriction with Joseph Chamberlain speaking for the British government. Their debate led directly to the compromise that became the Australian Commonwealth’s Dictation Test. The arguments at play were many: imperial politics, local class tensions, questions of principle, and the need to keep up appearances. What emerged was the Dictation Test—uniquely unpassable, hotly contested, and something Australia would live with for the next two generations.
This discussions based on Michael Williams, 2020. Avoid stigmatising them by name. Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, 106(2), p.165. A more detailed history of the Dictation Test can be found in Michael Williams, 2021 Australia’s Dictation Test: The Test it was a Crime to Fail, Brill.
Please check out our publications at - https://chidestudypresscom.wordpress.com/the-bookstore
Feel free to ask questions at: chidestudypress@gmail.com 
For a general overview of Chinese Australian history check out Episode 7: https://chidestudypress.podbean.com/e/7-chinese-australian-history-a-brief-overview/ 

18. Chinese Settlement in New South Wales

The story of Chinese settlement in New South Wales is unique. From the start, Chinese communities worked hard to keep close ties with their home villages in south China. Most of the early arrivals were men, not women, and they often had to deal with open prejudice and harsh anti-Chinese laws. All of this shaped a settlement history that stood apart from other migrant groups.
Those constant connections back to their villages influenced Chinese life in NSW right up until the mid-20th century. For many non-Chinese Australians, though, what’s most familiar is how Chinese settlers were caught up—often unwillingly—in shaping national identity through racism and the White Australia Policy. We often hear about how discrimination in jobs and daily life affected them, but what gets less attention are the deeper cultural reasons behind certain practices: the work routines, the fact that most women stayed behind in China, the use of opium, and the decision many made to eventually return home. These were part of Chinese tradition and history, but in Australia they became excuses for prejudice.
Michael Williams, Chinese settlement in NSW – a thematic history, Heritage Office of NSW, Sydney, 1999.
Please check out our publications at - https://chidestudypresscom.wordpress.com/the-bookstore
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17. Sojourners and Birds of Paradise

Most research into migration and diaspora tends to focus on one group or country at a time — often treating them in isolation. This is especially true for studies of Chinese and Italian migration to places like the U.S. and Australia. Here we discuss what we can learn by putting those stories side by side. The focus is on how people from China and Italy moved to the U.S. and Australia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and how many of them kept close ties to the places they left behind. By comparing things like family networks, remittances, migration chains, agents, loans, donations, publishing, trade, border laws, return visits — even the practice of sending bones back home for burial — we can explore the ways migrants stayed connected to their homelands. We also look at how the villages back home were affected, the role of those who stayed behind, and how the experiences of later generations started to diverge. Finally, this comparison sheds light on how the two white settler nations — the U.S. and Australia — treated migrants differently, especially along lines of race or perceived whiteness. We argue that these differences not only shaped migration at the time, but also still affect how historians write about these two diasporas today. Comparing them directly, we suggest, helps us understand both better.
Williams, M., 2020. Sojourners & Birds of Passage: Chinese and Italian Migrants in Australia and the United States in Comparative Perspective, 1871-1914. Journal of the European Association for Studies on Australia, 11(2), pp.2-16.
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16. Stopping them using our boats

Controlling entry to an island continent proved more complex than the Immigration Restriction Act, 1901 framers imagined. Chinese people had been coming to Australia in numbers since the 1850s and by 1901 had substantial community, family, and economic links with their Pearl River Delta villages, around the colonies and with Hong Kong and Shanghai. Resistance was fought out on the boats themselves; musters were held, documents examined, searches made and dictation tests administered. Secrecy, fraud, informers, and harassment reduced but did not eliminate communities while also causing governments much embarrassment before this first attempt at halting boat people was abandoned. Throughout the period after 1901 evolved a system that was not simply one of restriction but also of interaction between the Chinese-Australian community and its Pearl River Delta, Hong Kong and Shanghai based connections. The result, after more than 50 years, was a fall in Chinese community numbers but never an elimination of that community or its links with China before a gradual rise, after much cost in economic links, political embarrassment, and personal hardship. 
For the published article see: Michael Williams, 2020. Stopping them Using Our Boats. Australian Economic History Review, 61(1), pp.64–79. https://doi.org/10.1111/aehr.12207
Please check out our publications at - https://chidestudypresscom.wordpress.com/the-bookstore
Feel free to ask questions at: chidestudypress@gmail.com 
For a general overview of Chinese Australian history check out Episode 7: https://chidestudypress.podbean.com/e/7-chinese-australian-history-a-brief-overview/ 

15. Observations of a China Consul

Dundas Crawford was sent to the Australian colonies at a time when the Colony of Queensland was concerned as thousands of Chinese goldseekers were arriving at Cooktown and walking inland to the Palmer River goldfields. This was in 1877 and the report of his observations of Chinese activity in Queensland, NSW and Victoria was duly sent to the Foreign Office. The report makes fascinating reading. It is not only a rare example of a wide-ranging investigation with many interesting comments but even rarer, it is written in a, for the times, objective and sensible manner. Despite this the Crawford report remains an underutilised resource. Historians have done what they all too often do with interesting material, plunder it for a quote or statistic relevant to their specific task and then leave the remains to languish in a footnote. It was in a footnote I found the Crawford report many years ago and intrigued I tracked it down in the copy of the voluminous British Foreign Office files kept in the National Library of Australia. 
For the published article see: Michael Williams, ‘Observations of a China Consul’, Locality, Vol. 11, no.2, 2000, pp. 24-31.
For the report of Crawford itself see: Great Britain, Foreign Office Confidential Prints: No.3742, Notes by Mr. Crawford on Chinese Immigration in the Australian Colonies, J. Dundas Crawford, 1 September 1877. 
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