Biotic borders : transpacific plant and insect migration and the rise of anti-Asian racism in America, 1890-1950
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Biotic borders : transpacific plant and insect migration and the rise of anti-Asian racism in America, 1890-1950
University of Chicago Press, 2022
- : paper
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  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [277]-289) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
A rich and eye-opening history of the mutual constitution of race and species in modern America.
In the late nineteenth century, increasing traffic of transpacific plants, insects, and peoples raised fears of a "biological yellow peril" when nursery stock and other agricultural products shipped from Japan to meet the growing demand for exotics in the United States. Over the next fifty years, these crossings transformed conceptions of race and migration, played a central role in the establishment of the US empire and its government agencies, and shaped the fields of horticulture, invasion biology, entomology, and plant pathology. In Biotic Borders, Jeannie N. Shinozuka uncovers the emergence of biological nativism that fueled American imperialism and spurred anti-Asian racism that remains with us today.
Shinozuka provides an eye-opening look at biotic exchanges that not only altered the lives of Japanese in America but transformed American society more broadly. She shows how the modern fixation on panic about foreign species created a linguistic and conceptual arsenal for anti-immigration movements that flourished in the early twentieth century. Xenophobia inspired concerns about biodiversity, prompting new categories of "native" and "invasive" species that defined groups as bio-invasions to be regulated-or annihilated. By highlighting these connections, Shinozuka shows us that this story cannot be told about humans alone-the plants and animals that crossed with them were central to Japanese American and Asian American history. The rise of economic entomology and plant pathology in concert with public health and anti-immigration movements demonstrate these entangled histories of xenophobia, racism, and species invasions.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Plant and Insect Immigrants
1 San Jose Scale: Contested Origins at the Turn of the Century
2 Early Yellow Peril vs. Western Menace: Chestnut Blight, Citrus Canker, and PQN 37
3 Liable Insects at the US-Mexico Border
4 Contagious Yellow Peril: Diseased Bodies and the Threat of Little Brown Men
5 Pestilence in Paradise: Invasives in Hawai'i
6 Japanese Beetle Menace: Discovery of the Beetle
7 Infiltrating Perils: A Race against Ownership, Contamination, and Miscegenation
8 Yellow Peril No More? National and Naturalized Enemies during World War II
Conclusion: Toward a Multi(horti)cultural Global Society
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
by "Nielsen BookData"