Is Woman a Slave?

2026/01/01 by Arang Ha
Business, Management and Accounting · Social Sciences · #American History and Culture #Asian American and Pacific Histories #Chinese history and philosophy

paper · doi:10.1525/phr.2026.95.3.251

openalex publication_date 2026/01/01 · openalex created_date 2026/07/25 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/25

Abstract

This article examines how antislavery ideology shaped U.S. immigration policy on the eve of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Rather than retelling the simplistic narrative of the triumph of anti-Chinese nativism, it demonstrates the paradox of antislavery ideology that played a dual role as a liberal promoter of free immigration and a nativist gatekeeper against “unfree” Chinese women. This article rediscovers a forgotten—yet highly consequential—controversy over “Slavery in China,” a diplomatic document that alleged China was a slave society founded upon the exploitation of enslaved women. By reporting China’s “absolute patriarchy,” the document fueled the fear of reviving slavery in post-emancipation America. This controversy revealed a historical contingency that marked a critical juncture on the tortuous road to the Chinese exclusion.

Related

• Chinese Coolie Labor in Cuba in the Nineteenth Century: Free Labor of Neoslavery
• Fertility control, shared nurturing, and dual exploitation: the lives of enslaved mothers in the antebellum United States
• Enslavement as Regime of Western Modernity: Re-reading Gender Studies Epistemology Through Black Feminist Critique
• The “Yellow Peril” and Asian Exclusion in the Americas
• The Politics of the Excluded: The Political Thought of Wong Chin Foo