Asian Immigration and our Maritime History Lecture Featuring Robert Barde March 19, 2011

The San Diego Chinese Historical Museum is pleased to present Asian Immigration and our Maritime History, a lecture by Robert Barde.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, thousands of young men (and few young women) left Asia and crossed the world’s largest ocean to provide for their families. Robert Barde will discuss this arduous trans-Pacific journey and the harsh treatment these sojourners received during immigration processing in San Francisco between the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882 and the opening of the Angel Island Immigration Station in 1910. The talk also will describe how Chinese Americans took advantage of extraordinary conditions during World War I to establish the China Mail Steamship Company and provide for continued American passenger ship service connecting their ancestral homeland and adopted home.

Robert Barde is the Deputy Director of the Institute of Business and Economic Research at
the University of California, Berkeley. His book, Immigration at the Golden Gate: Passenger
Ships, Exclusion and Angel Island, was published in March 2008. An earlier version of the chapter on “The Life and Death of China Mail” won the Kortum Endowment Award in 2004 for
Pacific Maritime History.

The lecture will be held in the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Extension building at 328 J Street on Saturday, March 19th from 1:00 to 3:00 PM. Refreshments will be served at the reception held in the Chinese garden at 404 Third Avenue. Admission is $2 and free for members and children under 12.
The San Diego Chinese Historical Museum is located at 404 Third Avenue in downtown San Diego. For more information, please visit our website at www.sdchm.org.

Official Website: http://www.sdchm.org