Conclusion: Racialising Empire

Abstract

Perhaps the most important long-term legacy of the Chinese scheme was the cementing of a two-tier British Empire. This was most clear in the way colonial and imperial governments interacted over race-based legislation after the scheme. Before it, as Chapter 1 showed, Britain banned such laws, but because of the Chinese controversy, things changed. It was hoped that successive CO regimes would clarify the matter. As late as March 1906, the Indian Opinion was declaring that

we coloured people have much to be thankful for to the Celestial labourers, who have … become the lever by which the late reac-tionary Government was turned out of power. Chinese labour may yet prove to be the salvation of the British Indians in South Africa, if it be the means of arousing the conscience of Britain to a sense of its enormous responsibility in regard to the treatment of the coloured races.¹