Assignment: Document Analysis – Chinese Exclusion

In 1946, R. G. Collingwood wrote the following in his magnum opus The Idea of History, All history is the history of thought. But how does the historian discern the thoughts which he is trying to discover? There is only one way in which it can be done: by rethinking them in his own mind. The historian of philosophy, Plato, is trying to know what Plato thought when he expressed himself in certain words. The only way in which he can do this is by thinking about it for himself. This, in fact, is what we mean when we speak of ‘understanding’ the words. So, the historian of politics or warfare, presented with an account of certain actions done by Julius Caesar, tries to understand these actions, that is, to discover what thoughts in Caesar’s mind determined him to do them. This implies envisaging for himself the situation in which Caesar stood and thinking for himself what Caesar thought about the situation and the possible ways of dealing with it. The history of thought, and therefore all history, is the re-enactment of past thought in the historian’s own mind.

This re-enactment is only accomplished, in the case of Plato and Caesar respectively, so far as the historian brings to bear on the problem all the powers of his own mind and all his knowledge of philosophy and politics. It is not a passive surrender to the spell of another’s mind; it is a labour of active and therefore critical thinking. The historian not only re-enacts past thought, but he also re-enacts it in the context of his own knowledge and therefore, in re-enacting it, criticizes it, forms his own judgment of its value, corrects whatever errors he can discern in it. This criticism of the thought whose history he traces is not something secondary to tracing the history of it. It is an indispensable condition of historical knowledge itself. Nothing could be a completer error concerning the history of thought than to suppose that the historian as such merely ascertains what so-and-so thought, leaving it to someone else to decide whether it was true. All thinking is critical thinking; the thought which re-enacts past thoughts, therefore, criticizes them in re-enacting them.

In this exercise, you will practice the process outlined by Collingwood and analyze

and

after reading them carefully, read them again (slower and more methodically this time), and think about the following questions:

• What are these documents (e.g. diary, public speech, poem, etc.)?
• Why were they created? What was their purpose?
• Who created these documents? What can we tell about the perspective and biases of the author(s)? What do the documents tell us about the author(s) opinion of the views of other people? Do the documents suggest that the author(s) point of view was widely shared, or was it controversial and confined to a few people?
• When and where were these documents created? How do they reflect the time and place they were written or created? What do they say about the events underway at the time?
• Who is the intended audience? Were there multiple audiences? How might the audience have shaped what the author(s) says? How might the audience(s) have reacted to the documents?
• Think carefully about the choice of words and the tone of the documents. How do the words reflect the author(s), the time, the place, and the audience? If the documents make an argument, what argument do they make, and what strategy do the authors use?
• Historical significance: Overall, how do these documents contribute to your understanding of the historical period in which they were created? What other information might help you better understand the significance of these documents?

Some of these questions apply better to some documents than others. Choose the questions (it could be several) that you think can best be used to analyze and reveal the meanings of the documents and write a 500-word analysis of the documents in question. Use double-spaced paragraphs with topic sentences and transitions to guide readers through your analysis. Include a proper introduction with a compelling thesis and a thoughtful conclusion. Be sure to write and organize your paper according to the standards of English grammar and style.

As you begin thinking about your analysis paper, I suggest beginning by identifying and interpreting/analyzing authorship and when the documents were created; get the basic contextual information down first before you proceed. When you begin writing, monitor your tonestay detached, objective, and historical. Remain in third person. This is not meant to be a personal reaction essay, nor should you focus on making comparisons/contrasts to the present day. Also, this is not meant to be a summary of the documents. Nor is it meant to be a personal reaction essay. I am not interested in whether you agree with the documents messages. Instead, I want to see you have read and thought about the documents and can apply the questions that historians use when confronting artifacts from the past. Be a detective; consider these documents a clue. Read between the lines. Try to say something meaningful about the documents significance by connecting them to larger themes from the lectures and the course materials. Finally, remember you are not to conduct outside research for this assignment. I am looking forward to your personal analysis and your authorial voice. Hence, the only sources you should quote, or paraphrase are the documents under review. For contextual information, again, you are to use only the lectures and other course materials.

James D. Phelan, “Why the Chinese Should Be Excluded” (1901)

Chinese Immigrants Confront Anti-Chinese Prejudice (1885, 1903)