This is a work of towering ambition, which led Ms. Ngai to scour archives on five continents and to familiarize herself with several national histories to complement her primary expertise in U.S. history. There is good reason that many professional and popular historians opt for more narrowly drawn accounts of discrete events or individuals. But the payoffs of Ms. Ngai’s comparison are notable, among them the challenge to American exceptionalism as well as the illumination of key differences between her case studies.

... meticulously researched.

Though Ngai’s account is global in scope, she also provides fascinating details about quotidian life in these far-flung diasporic communities. She notes inter-racial and same-sex relationships among the Chinese migrants. She provides names and physical descriptions of individual miners, advocates who resisted discriminatory policies, and mine bosses who cheated and flogged Chinese miners if they didn’t meet the ever increasing labor demands.

Ngai adeptly narrates both seismic shifts in the world economy and the nuanced dynamics of small communities, paying particular attention to the choices made by individual immigrants as they navigated harsh and unfair foreign environments. Every aspect of Ngai’s inquiry is sharply relevant today on many fronts..

Ngai’s thoroughly researched work is essential for anyone studying the Chinese diaspora in the Anglo American world, or gold rushes generally..

Descriptions of the Zongli Yamen, the Qing government’s foreign office, offer an intriguing, rarely seen perspective on the diaspora and China’s response to humiliating global bigotry, which fueled a sense of grievance still evident in the country’s nationalistic rhetoric. Though dense and scholarly, this impressive volume adds a vital chapter in the history of globalization..

... an ambitious, diligent work of archival research that spans three continents.