Bounty from the Sea

Abstract

Chinese immigrants, like many other fortune seekers from around the world, arrived in California in search of economic opportunities. Enterprising Chinese fishers and merchants soon built the first commercial, trans-Pacific fisheries in the American West by expertly honing time-honored skills and technology, leveraging diverse partnerships, and tapping into international trade networks. Rather than isolated communities living on the economic and cultural fringes of American society, nineteenth-century Chinese immigrants were successful entrepreneurs who helped build the foundations of the West Coast commercial fishing economy. Catch tallies, tax documents, census records, immigration files, and other documents, along with archaeological investigations, contextualize the massive scale of harvest and demonstrate the ingenious ways Chinese fishers built their global fishery.