The Burlingame Treaty, also known as the Burlingame–Seward Treaty of 1868, was a landmark treaty between the United States and Qing China, amending the Treaty of Tientsin, to establish formal friendly relations between the two nations, with the United States granting China the status of most favored nation with regards to trade. It was signed in the capital of the United States, Washington, D.C. in 1868 and ratified in Peking in 1869. The most significant result of the treaty was that it effectively lifted any former restrictions in regards to emigration to the United States from China, with large-scale immigration to the United States beginning in earnest by Chinese immigrants.
Anti-Chinese cartoon from The Wasp: Chinese immigrants, depicted as pigs, bursting through a gate labeled "Burlingham Treaty" and ravaging a field of crops representing industries while Uncle Sam and Columbia watch. A tattered scarecrow represents anti-Chinese labor leader Denis Kearney.
Chinese Americans are Americans of Chinese ancestry. Chinese Americans constitute a subgroup of East Asian Americans which also constitute a subgroup of Asian Americans. Many Chinese Americans have ancestors from mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, as well as other regions that are inhabited by large populations of the Chinese diaspora, especially Southeast Asia and some other countries such as Australia, Canada, France, South Africa, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. Chinese Americans include Chinese from the China circle and around the world who became naturalized U.S. citizens as well as their natural-born descendants in the United States.
The Chinese American experience has been documented at the Museum of Chinese in America in Manhattan's Chinatown since 1980.
Chinese American miners in the Colorado School of Mines' Edgar Experimental Mine near Idaho Springs, Colorado, c. 1920
Chinese American Shell Peedlers (1918)
Chinese American fisherman, circa 1875
