The Oriental Question: Consolidating a White Man's Province, 1914-1941

Like her earlier account, this one is also largely immune to issues of theory. As Roy explains, her argument "relies more on empirical evidence than on theories." (11) This is unfortunate since between the publication of her first volume and this one a significant literature on racisms and their histories has appeared in Canada, a literature that has often benefited from being theoretically informed. Consider for example, the work of Constance Backhouse on the history of legal racism in Canada or Roy Mikki's account of the Japanese Canadian redress movement. One advantage of theory is that, when used properly, it leads to asking better questions. Roy largely takes racist categories at face value, treating them much the same way her sources do, and while her sympathies are not with the racists, she occasionally falls into the kinds of binaries that underlay so much anti-Asian racism, a tendency that does a disservice to her strong claim to the empirical. For example, she provides an account of the picketing of "Chinese" potato farmers by "white" growers on the Fraser Street bridge in March 1937. The picketing resulted in an assault on a truck driver, Chung Chuck. Roy is careful to describe Chung's injuries and notes that he also inflicted a minor knife wound on a Vegetable Board inspector. The police laid charges against Chung who also charged the inspector with assault. Both sets of charges were dismissed by the courts. Roy then notes that the Chinese consul condemned the picketers and that the CCF condemned the marketing board that was trying to fix prices and whose actions had led to the confrontation in the first place. She then points out, "The Vancouver Province denied that it was 'a racial issue' but sympathized with the board's efforts to keep the market for Canadians against an 'increasing tide of ruthless Chinese competition'." (141) She seems unaware of the problematic juxtaposition between "Canadian" and "Chinese" here. It is possible that her description reproduces the terms of the Vancouver Province editorial, but if so it is curious that these categorizations warrant no discussion. By contrast, Paul Yee's Saltwater City: An Illustrated History of the Chinese in Vancouver (Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre 1988) presents a rather different account of this incident, one more sensitive to the racist nature of the conflict. We learn, for example, that Chung Chuck was not merely a truck driver, but one of the main growers who had successfully challe