Inclusive Imperialism: Chinese Americans and American Imperial Ideology during the Cold War

Perkovich, James J

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/128392 Copy

Description

Title

Inclusive Imperialism: Chinese Americans and American Imperial Ideology during the Cold War

Author(s)

Perkovich, James J

Issue Date

2025-05-16

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Espiritu, Augusto F

Department of Study

History

Discipline

History

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Degree Level

Thesis

Date of Ingest

2025-05-19T11:14:22-05:00

Keyword(s)

• Chinese Americans
• American empire
• Assimilation

Language

eng

Abstract

This thesis argues that the discourse of Chinese American assimilation came out of, and reinforced, American imperial hegemony during the Cold War. The American empire’s policies from the 1940s through the 1960s of expanding its dominance in Asia, containing communist China, and supporting the Republic of China in Taiwan recast Chinese Americans as assimilable to American society and empire. Varying historical actors articulated Chinese American assimilability on racist, gendered, and heterosexist assumptions that ideologically reproduced the ideas of cultural conservatism, racial liberalism, American exceptionalism, and communist containment that organized social relations under American imperialism. I use sources from the national debate surrounding the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act, the writings of sociologist Rose Hum Lee, and the activity of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association to unveil ways of representing assimilation, the meaning of assimilation, and the imperial context it derived from.

Type of Resource

text

Copyright and License Information

James J Perkovich

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