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In 1900 W. E. B. DuBois prophesied that the colour line would be the key problem of the twentieth-century and he later identified one of its key dynamics: the new religion of whiteness that was sweeping the world. Whereas most historians have confined their studies of race-relations to a national framework, this book studies the transnational circulation of people and ideas, racial knowledge and technologies that under-pinned the construction of self-styled white men's countries from South Africa, to North America and Australasia. Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds show how in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century these countries worked in solidarity to exclude those they defined as not-white, actions that provoked a long international struggle for racial equality. Their findings make clear the centrality of struggles around mobility and sovereignty to modern formulations of both race and human rights.
In 1900 W. E. B. DuBois prophesied that the colour line would be the key problem of the twentieth-century and he later identified one of its key dynamics: the new religion of whiteness that was sweeping the world. Whereas most historians have confined their studies of race-relations to a national framework, this book studies the transnational circulation of people and ideas, racial knowledge and technologies that under-pinned the construction of self-styled white men's countries from South Africa, to North America and Australasia. Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds show how in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century these countries worked in solidarity to exclude those they defined as not-white, actions that provoked a long international struggle for racial equality. Their findings make clear the centrality of struggles around mobility and sovereignty to modern formulations of both race and human rights.
Introduction; Part I. Modern Mobilities: 1. The coming man: Chinese migration to the Goldfields; Part II. Discursive Frameworks: 2. James Bryce's America and the negro problem; 3. Charles Pearson's prophecy: 'The day will come'; 4. Theodore Roosevelt: re-asserting racial vigour; 5. Imperial brotherhood or white: Gandhi in South Africa; Part III. Transnational Solidarities: 6. White Australia points the way; 7. Defending the Pacific slope; 8. White ties across the ocean: the Pacific Tour of the US Fleet; 9. The Union of South Africa: white men reconcile; Part IV. Challenge and Consolidation: 10. International conferences: enmity and amity; 11. Japanese alienation and imperial ambition; 12. Racial equality? Paris Peace Conference, 1919; 13. 'Segregation on a Large Scale': immigration restriction, 1920s; Part V. Towards Universal Human Rights: 14. Rights without distinction.
This book studies the construction of self-styled white men's countries from South Africa, to North America and Australasia.
Marilyn Lake is Professor at the School of Historical and European Studies, La Trobe University, Melbourne. Her publications include Creating a Nation (with Patricia Grimshaw, Ann McGrath and Marian Quartly, 1994), Getting Equal: The History of Feminism in Australia (1999) and, as editor, Women's Rights and Human Rights: International Historical Perspectives (with Patricia Grimshaw and Katie Holmes, 2001). Henry Reynolds is personal chair in History and Aboriginal Studies at the University of Tasmania. His previous publications include The Other Side of the Frontier (1981), Why Weren't We Told? (2000) and The Law of the Land (2003).
'This book by two of Australia's most respected historians is a tour de force. Weaving their narrative through global debates to do with race and human rights in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Lake and Reynolds have crafted a story that brings together - into one shared context - developments in Australia, the United States, China, Japan, Africa, India, and elsewhere. This is an exemplary exercise in transnational history.' Dipesh Chakrabarty, University of Chicago, author of Provincializing Europe 'Astonishing in its range of research, Drawing the Global Colour Line shows convincingly that farflung expressions of white solidarity entered a definitive new stage in the early twentieth century as a result of consultations, conferences and concerted actions among political-economic and intellectual elites in the Anglo-American settler colonial world. Such interactions, captured in all of their telling human detail, expressed hubris but also bespoke panic at the prospect that white supremacy was slipping away. By reinterpreting race, this critically important study reorients our understanding of the whole story of the twentieth century.' David Roediger, Babcock Chair of History at University of Illinois, author of Working Towards Whiteness A work remarkable both for its international breadth and for its sensitivity to local 'particularity, is a model for the new transnational history. Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds expertly and imaginatively reconstruct how leading white intellectuals and politicians in turn of the century Australia, South Africa, the United States, and Great Britain fought demands for racial equality and jointly invented new doctrines of racial superiority to justify the maintenance and, in some cases, the reinvigoration of white privilege in every part of the world that Britain either controlled or in which it had once deposited its settlers. A powerful and sobering history, incisively and elegantly told.' Gary Gerstle, Vanderbilt University "This exceptionally ambitious and important book confirms and gives fresh meaning to W. E. B. DuBois's famous declaration that the problem of the twentieth century was the 'problem of the colour line'. By tracing the efforts by ruling elites in the United States, Australia, and other Anglo settler states in the early twentieth century to forge self-proclaimed 'white men's countries' by means of racial segregation and immigration restrictions, Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds demonstrate that their assertions of 'whiteness' were a transnational phenomenon, responding to the threats that migrant labor, colonial nationalism, and other forces seemed to pose to the established order. Their rich and compellingly written work provides us with a model of how to write history that transcends the nation, and it speaks to issues that remain relevant today.' Dane Kennedy, Elmer Louis Kayser Professor of History and International Affairs, Department of History, George Washington University
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