The Yellow Peril in Britain

Between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Britain experienced a wave of xenophobia against a single ethnic minority, the Chinese, that would become known as the Yellow Peril. Britain was not alone in experiencing this phenomenon, but compared to the more documented example of the Peril in North America, the British example has been far less documented. Initially reflecting international notions of the Yellow Peril, such as fears over mass immigration from Asia into the West, at its heart the British example reflected local concerns vis-à-vis the recently emerged Chinese communities. The following article will present a discussion on the exclusively Sinocentric British experience of the Yellow Peril and document how despite their minute numbers, the Chinese would bear the brunt of Britain's alien xenophobia during the period. It will examine how their visible and cultural differences signalled them to become scapegoats for a host of social, labour and political issues. It will also mention how these same differences led to a mystique developing around their communities, spawning a uniquely British aspect of the Yellow Peril, that of the popular pulp fiction of the time, most notably the Dr Fu Manchu stories. This article will also argue that despite the uniqueness of the British experience, it nonetheless would not have developed in isolation without the international aspects of the Peril feeding into the local debate. Ultimately, it was the outside stimulus of the First World War and associated post-war settlements that would signal the end of the British Yellow Peril in the early twentieth century.