Journal of Chinese Australia, Issue 2, October 2006

Book Review

Paul Jones, Chinese-Australian Journeys: Records on Travel, Migration and Settlement, 1860-1975, National Archives of Australia, Canberra, 2005. 286pp. Available online at www.naa.gov.au/publications/research_guides/pdf/Chinese_guide_21.pdf

Michael Williams

Chinese-Australian Journeys is No. 21 in the National Archives of Australia's series of research guides and as such is the long awaited addition to the first in this series, Chinese Immigrants and Chinese-Australians in New South Wales by Julie Stacker and Peri Stewart.[1] Like its NSW-focused companion, this guide has brought together a vast range of material on the broad theme of Chinese-Australia. As such, it includes references from numerous government departments across many years; material created for many purposes and in varying circumstances. The breadth of this material will keep researchers busy for many years to come. Of particular value in this regard is the index which allows specific subjects to be found at a glance across a range of years and across different series.

The guide attempts to list any and all files that have a relation to Chinese-Australians and does this by grouping material according to six categories ranging from policy, settlement and naturalisation, to wartime experiences, the community and finally, New Guinea and the Pacific Islands. The introduction contains a useful note on Chinese names, an understanding of which is essential to beginning any family/individual research. This is followed by the first chapter, 'Overview of Chinese Settlement in Australia', which includes a brief account of Commonwealth legal changes which in turn determined the structure of much of the material listed.

The actual listing of the archival material appears therefore in the six chapters arranged according to broad themes. Chapter 2, 'Policy, Procedures and Precedents', lists records related to policy and practice, including legislative and administrative change. Chapter 3, 'Arrival, Settlement and Travel', is more of a grab bag of records but could be seen as individual files of those coming into or out of Australia. Chapter 4, 'Naturalisation and Alien Registration', includes items related to naturalisation and the registration of 'aliens' during both World Wars I and II and after. Chapter 5, 'Wartime Experiences', includes military service records and documents relating to the evacuation and return of Chinese residents from Papua New Guinea, the Pacific Island territories and other countries. Chapter 6, 'Community', contains records relating to the social, economic and political dimensions of Chinese settlement. The final chapter, Chapter 7, 'Chinese in Papua New Guinea and Pacific Island Territories', deals with the Pacific Island territories that were linked to Australia through international or commercial agreements, especially New Guinea. Finally, a number of useful appendices help explain commonly used terms and provide a chronology of Chinese settlement from the 1890s to 1975. A bibliography presents a range of further readings and references and, as mentioned before, the index allows an alternative means of access to the material.

With such a great range of material, any ordering inevitably takes on an arbitrary nature that is open to various criticisms. Nevertheless this guide, within the limitations of such guides, must be seen as a fair effort. The main criticism that can be leveled against it can be equally leveled at the many similar guides produced by the National Archives of Australia. This is that, in the tradition of those guides, it is at bottom an unimaginative listing of material, built around specific topics that rarely relate to the nature of the material's origins. The guide is dominated by the archivist's passion for lists and obscure connecting references which, while no doubt a commendable tendency in an archivist, is unhelpful in a 'guide' ideally designed to help you find what you want to look for. This is of course the problem at the heart of all archival guides. How do you find what you want in an archive if you don't already know what it is you need to ask for?

Of course, not all who approach archives have the same problem. Many simply wish to find out something about an ancestor or specific person. So, does the guide help someone in this category? Unfortunately, the answer is not as much as it might. The most glaring example of this is what is done, or not done, with the indexes to the Certificates Exempting from Dictation Test or CEDTs. These are the basic starting point for any investigator of Chinese-Australian individuals. Something you would find difficult to discover from this guide. That 'registers' exist is mentioned on page 41, however this is done in such terms that the unfamiliar would have great difficultly concluding that these should be the beginning of their search. A few more details about them are squirreled away in a reference in Table 2 on the next page. While further along in Table 8, which is supposedly a list of all registers and indexes, the CEDT indexes are not mentioned at all! As so often with a 'list' dominated style of guide, if you did not already know about it, you would have little hope of learning about here.

Just a small digression while still on the topic of the CEDTs, they are referred to throughout this guide as Certificates of Exemption from the Dictation Test. This is a common and natural way to refer to them, nevertheless their official title - Certificate Exempting from Dictation Test - while sounding awkward, is how they are referred to in the legislation and by almost all the official correspondence. Given that the similarly named Certificates of Exemption are quite different and need to be distinguished it might have been better had this guide kept to the 'official' terms.[2]

A criticism more specific to this guide concerns the historical overview. Here again the opportunity to provide something of value to those not already expert in the field and wishing to access this material is lost. The overview reads like a poorly condensed version of a much longer piece, which possibly it is. While this guide would not be the place to expect a definitive account of the history of Chinese-Australia, one might expect at least a thorough account with good references. What we get instead is a patchy, confusing account with a seemingly random selection of references of little more than token value.

While obviously an attempt to impose order on what is a large range of material, an arbitrary grouping inevitably involves much cross allocation of files from numerous governmental areas and time periods. This is a problem made much worse by a seeming refusal to mention any one file or series more than once, hence presumably the failure to include the CEDT indexes in a table of indexes! It is doubtful if this attempt at categorisation by topic adds anything to the ease of access to these files. More likely is that keen researchers will just have to ignore them and burrow into the files as best they can. An alphabetical listing would have been no worse and one by time and department considerably better. Accepting the fact that these files originated as departmental files and are best understood and therefore accessed as such would have been of more value.

Listing the files by the above categories, and within them chronologically and by state, the guide highlights a few interesting items within each series. At least the reader is left to assume this is the procedure, as the explanation given could easily be missed (see page 11). In fact, the unwary might be led to assume that the items mentioned are in fact all that the files contain. The state-by-state division is also done in a cursory manner with no hint given that state procedures and systems may have varied, despite this certainly being the case with the Customs Office files that make up the bulk of the pre-WWII material.

In conclusion, this guide is a disappointing effort that leaves the researcher still in the position of having to pick through the files one by one and figuring them out for themselves. In which case one must ask, what value a guide? Perhaps the difficulty is that the National Archives simply do not understand what a guide is for. It certainly is not merely to duplicate their own recordkeeping. Rather a guide needs to make archival material accessible to researchers. That is, to people who seek to use the material for a purpose. A guide therefore needs to address at least some of the issues such researchers have, be they family researchers or whatever. This purpose, this guide, like other NAA guides, fails to do.

Notes

[1] Julie Stacker and Peri Stewart, Chinese Immigrants and Chinese-Australians in NSW, National Archives of Australia, Canberra, 1996, available online at www.naa.gov.au/publications/research_guides/pdf/Chinese_guide_21.pdf.

[2] Certificates Exempting from the Dictation Test were documents which permitted Chinese already resident or domiciled in Australia to return to Australia without being subjected to the Dictation Test after they had travelled overseas. Certificates of Exemption were granted to non-resident Chinese coming to Australia from overseas, usually for a set period of time for purposes such as education or employment.

About the author

Michael Williams has been researching the history of the movements of Chinese people in the 19th and early 20th centuries with particular reference to ongoing links with their villages of origin in south China and the impact this had on people's lives. His doctoral thesis, entitled: 'Destination Qiaoxiang - Pearl River Delta Villages & Pacific Ports, 1849-1949', examined these links around the Pacific with particular reference to the people of Long Du locality in Zhongshan County, south China. Michael is currently living in Taipei working as an independent researcher.

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