Yellow Peril in Canada: “The Swamps Come Back” as an Anti-Asian Allegory Published in the August 1941 issue of Uncanny Tales, Nadine Booth Brumell’s short story “The Swamps Come Back” features a group of white men seeking to save the world from an alien race. Throughout the story, the alien race never explicitly harms anyone and never talks of a plan to take over the world. It is only the race’s intelligence, reproduction, and being yellow that are implied to be the issue at hand. This paper explores the ways “The Swamps Come Back” is an allegory to the social phenomenon of Yellow Peril and how the fears of the characters in the story mirror the real life fears of white Canadians in 1941.
The construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway brought more than 15000 Chinese men to Canada. When the railway was finished, demand for Chinese labor had vanished, and white Canadians grew skeptical of those that chose to remain in Canada. Caught between the desire for cheap labour to fulfill its capitalistic ambitions and the desire to maintain its racial purity, Canada would struggle with its immigration policy in subsequent years. As Dua states, “Between 1867 and 1920, Canadian policies towards migration from Asia were riddled by the contradictory demands of capitalist expansion and a racialized nationalist project” (448). Due to mounting public pressure, from British Columbia in particular, Canada would enact an official anti-Chinese policy with the passing of the Chinese Immigration of 1885. With the act, Chinese immigrants were now forced to pay a prohibitively expensive head tax in order to enter Canada, effectively stifling immigration. The concept of Yellow Peril, defined as “a danger to Western civilization held to arise from expansion of the power and influence of eastern Asian peoples” had taken root in Canada. Anti-Asian sentiment came to a head with the Vancouver Riot of 1907. According to Sugimoto, people in Vancouver were concerned over the increased economic competition that Japanese in particular brought to the area. Per Sugimoto, “On Saturday evening, September 7, the [Asiatic Exclusion League] put on a parade in Vancouver, followed by a public meeting. This demonstration was part of a general protest movement to convince federal authorities of the seriousness of anti-Japanese sentiment in British Columbia” (163). There were concerns in British Columbia among labour unions over the growing numbers of Asian immigrants and how they would negatively impact white Canadians’ standard of life. Head taxes caused the gender ratio of those arriving to skew male. Men arriving would generally not have the means to bring their wives and children as well. This would become an issue, as Dua points out, that “as the presence of single male Asian residents raised the specter of interracial sexuality, [Canadians] suggested that it would be prudent to include female migrants from Asia within the nation-state” (446). So too then Asian men and women having children in great numbers would become a concern in Canada. Quoting Dua, “Chinese women became dangerous not only because of their perceived immorality, but because they posed a danger to the physical reproduction of a ‘white’ nation” (453). While Canada could quell outside immigration, it was unable to stymy the reproduction rates of those already within the nation from races not conducive to the vision of a white Canada. Mentioned several times in “The Swamps Come Back” is how intelligent the alien race is. …show more content…
Lowry, the leader of the group, says “That creature out there is the intelligent product of some mad sport of evolution, planning to make the world a place for its kind again.” Here we see Lowry mention evolution, the product of the race’s breeding, that is cause for concern. The narrator makes several mentions of the babies the creatures carry around, and the great numbers in which they are reproducing. The climax of Lowry’s fear is shown when he says “If each one of those black spots is holding one of those [babies], there must be hundreds, thousands of them!” (36). Again, the issue is not that the alien race is overt in their desire to take anything from anyone or be violent, it is implied through their prolific reproduction that, according to our white party, the world is in danger. The creatures in the
The construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway brought more than 15000 Chinese men to Canada. When the railway was finished, demand for Chinese labor had vanished, and white Canadians grew skeptical of those that chose to remain in Canada. Caught between the desire for cheap labour to fulfill its capitalistic ambitions and the desire to maintain its racial purity, Canada would struggle with its immigration policy in subsequent years. As Dua states, “Between 1867 and 1920, Canadian policies towards migration from Asia were riddled by the contradictory demands of capitalist expansion and a racialized nationalist project” (448). Due to mounting public pressure, from British Columbia in particular, Canada would enact an official anti-Chinese policy with the passing of the Chinese Immigration of 1885. With the act, Chinese immigrants were now forced to pay a prohibitively expensive head tax in order to enter Canada, effectively stifling immigration. The concept of Yellow Peril, defined as “a danger to Western civilization held to arise from expansion of the power and influence of eastern Asian peoples” had taken root in Canada. Anti-Asian sentiment came to a head with the Vancouver Riot of 1907. According to Sugimoto, people in Vancouver were concerned over the increased economic competition that Japanese in particular brought to the area. Per Sugimoto, “On Saturday evening, September 7, the [Asiatic Exclusion League] put on a parade in Vancouver, followed by a public meeting. This demonstration was part of a general protest movement to convince federal authorities of the seriousness of anti-Japanese sentiment in British Columbia” (163). There were concerns in British Columbia among labour unions over the growing numbers of Asian immigrants and how they would negatively impact white Canadians’ standard of life. Head taxes caused the gender ratio of those arriving to skew male. Men arriving would generally not have the means to bring their wives and children as well. This would become an issue, as Dua points out, that “as the presence of single male Asian residents raised the specter of interracial sexuality, [Canadians] suggested that it would be prudent to include female migrants from Asia within the nation-state” (446). So too then Asian men and women having children in great numbers would become a concern in Canada. Quoting Dua, “Chinese women became dangerous not only because of their perceived immorality, but because they posed a danger to the physical reproduction of a ‘white’ nation” (453). While Canada could quell outside immigration, it was unable to stymy the reproduction rates of those already within the nation from races not conducive to the vision of a white Canada. Mentioned several times in “The Swamps Come Back” is how intelligent the alien race is. …show more content…
Lowry, the leader of the group, says “That creature out there is the intelligent product of some mad sport of evolution, planning to make the world a place for its kind again.” Here we see Lowry mention evolution, the product of the race’s breeding, that is cause for concern. The narrator makes several mentions of the babies the creatures carry around, and the great numbers in which they are reproducing. The climax of Lowry’s fear is shown when he says “If each one of those black spots is holding one of those [babies], there must be hundreds, thousands of them!” (36). Again, the issue is not that the alien race is overt in their desire to take anything from anyone or be violent, it is implied through their prolific reproduction that, according to our white party, the world is in danger. The creatures in the