The Book Prize Index

The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes, Chinese Migration, and Global Politics

Mae Ngai

Winner of the 2022 Bancroft Prize Shortlisted for the 2022 Cundill History Prize Finalist for the 2022 Los Angeles Times Book Prize How Chinese migration to the world’s goldfields upended global power and economics and forged modern conceptions of race. In roughly five decades, between 1848 and 1899, more gold was removed from the earth than had been mined in the 3,000 preceding years, bringing untold wealth to individuals and nations. But friction between Chinese and white settlers on the goldfields of California, Australia, and South Africa catalyzed a global battle over “the Chinese Question”: would the United States and the British Empire outlaw Chinese immigration? This distinguished history of the Chinese diaspora and global capitalism chronicles how a feverish alchemy of race and money brought Chinese people to the West and reshaped the nineteenth-century world.

HistoryWorld History · medium confidenceWorld History81 signalsLlm Classifier: World History -> World HistoryKeyword Classifier: American History -> American HistoryKeyword Classifier: Business & Economics -> Business & EconomicsAsia & the PacificAfrica & the African DiasporaMigration & Diaspora

Award History

2 wins · 3 total

AwardYearResultCategory / Notes
Bancroft PrizeMajor2022WinnerOfficial source
Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History2021WinnerOfficial source
Cundill History PrizeMajor2022FinalistSecondary source
View all award history (3)
Experimental book profileGenerated by GPT-5.4 nano · may contain inaccuracies

This is an unverified interpretation of the catalog description, offered as an opt-in discovery experiment—not as bibliographic fact.

  1. 01 Central figures

    None extracted with sufficient confidence.

  2. 02 Central places

    None extracted with sufficient confidence.

    These suggestions did not meet the normal display threshold and are more likely to be wrong.

    • California55%
    • Australia40%
    • South Africa45%

  3. 03 Suggested argument

    No argument inferred with sufficient confidence.

    This suggestion did not meet the normal display threshold and is more likely to be wrong.

    Chinese migration to world goldfields upended global power and economics by forging modern conceptions of race, sparking a global political battle over whether the United States and the British Empire should outlaw Chinese immigration.

    Model confidence 52%

  4. 04 Reading orientation

    42 / 100 academic

    Trade / academic crossover

    An estimate of intended readership and scholarly apparatus—not quality or importance.

Confidence percentages are the model's own estimates. Profile confidence: 61%.