White Masculinity & the White Australia Policy: A Gender History of Syrian Immigration
by Isabel Trinca
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During the discussions surrounding the implementation of the 1903 Commonwealth Naturalisation Act—one of a series of acts that constituted the White Australia Policy—there arose the possibility of considering Syrian immigrants as an exception to immigration restriction. In July 1903, Thomas Playford, a senator for South Australia and later the Federal Minister of Defence, argued that “these Syrians [are] in every way desirable citizens”.[1] Although Playford professed to agree with the general principle of immigration restriction, he advocated that Syrians should be exempted from the barred group of the “Aboriginal natives of Asia”.[2] This exemption never officially came to pass. Nevertheless, that the Syrians were considered for exemption, in a way that Chinese, Japanese and Indian immigrants were not, implies they were considered to be less of a threat to the concept of White Australia. In this essay, I intend to examine why Syrians in Australia between 1890 and 1930 were in this way differentiated from other “prohibited immigrants”.[3] First, I will examine how conventional historiography cites the more European appearance of Syrians, in addition to their predominant Christianity, as key to this differentiation.[4] Secondly, however, I will argue that this historiographical claim makes the assumption that the White Australia Policy was motivated purely by a prejudice against non-White, non-Christian peoples. It is my intention to deploy the historiographical lens of gender history, as found in the works of Des Jardins, Lee and Weinberg, to examine the way masculinity was constructed in Australia between 1890 and 1930.[5] I will assert that an often unacknowledged motivation for the White Australia policy was that the ‘immigrant’ was seen as a threat to white Australian masculinity: he was perceived as an unattached hyper-sexed male usurping the white man’s claim to the white woman. Finally, I will argue that the Syrians did not fit this image of the masculinised immigrant. This factor contributed additionally to their differentiation from other Asiatics.
Traditional historiography asserts that Syrians were primarily differentiated by appearance and religion. First and foremost, Convy and Monsour claim that the Syrians coming to Australia at this time were almost entirely Christian, a feature they shared with white man.[6] The Syrian community in Australia contained three main denominations: Melkite, Maronite, and Antioch Orthodox.[7] Convy and Monsour discuss how, in the Redfern community in Sydney—an area referred to as Little Syria or Little Lebanon—a church for all three denominations had been established by 1900: in 1895, 1897 and 1898 respectively.[8] This was significant because it constituted a visible declaration of the Christianity of the Syrian immigrant community. Furthermore, in a 1914 memorandum to the Minister, Atlee Hunt, Secretary General of the Department of External Affairs, demonstrated his political awareness of this Syrian Christianity.[9] Hunt claimed that the Syrians in Australia were “practically all Christians being adherent either to the Greek Church or… Roman Catholic”.[10] Available records indeed support Hunt’s assumption of Christianity, for all Syrian immigrants between 1880 and 1947 declared themselves to be Maronite, Melkite or Orthodox Christians, with the exception of only four men who professed to be Druzes.[11] It is necessary to note that historians have doubted the reliability of these statistics. Kemal Karpat argues that many Syrian Muslims concealed their religion so as to avoid discrimination and hostility upon reaching Australia.[12] Karpat asserts that a more realistic estimate is that 15-20% of Syrian immigrants during this period were Muslim.[13] Indeed, Karpat raises the point that Australia was significantly more hostile to Syrian immigrants who were Muslim: the experience of the Muslim Syrian differed immensely from that of the Christian Syrian. [14] Nevertheless, for Hunt, the superficial appearance of Christianity was enough to lend the Syrians an air of acceptability.[15] As the principle administrator of Australian External Affairs at this time, Hunt’s opinion also held immense influential power. It is an opinion that, however statistically correct it may or may not be, bases its perception of Syrians upon an assumption of their Christianity. Convy and Monsour thus argue that critical political figures like Hunt regarded Syrians as less of a threat to White Australia due to considerations of religion.[16]
In addition to religion, Convy, Monsour and Yarwood claim that the physical appearance of Syrians worked in their favour, for they looked similar to many southern Europeans.[17] By looking at the physical descriptions given in police reports, there is indeed an apparent confusion in regards to how to describe Syrians. In the case of Lutoof, for example, he was described as a “coloured man, probably of Syrian parentage”.[18] In the case of another Syrian, George, he was described as “a coloured man, but not a full-blooded foreigner”.[19] In a third case regarding a man named Boulus, however, he was described, not as coloured or Asiatic, but as “dark” and “swarthy” in the manner of most southern Europeans.[20] These police reports recorded these physical descriptions primarily for the purpose of objective identification. They are, in many ways, distanced from the inflammatory racial discourses witnessed in politics and the media of the period. They thus demonstrate the lack of consistency in objective understandings of Syrians as truly non-European in appearance. Even Secretary General Atlee Hunt acknowledged this confusion, claiming in 1914 that Syrians indeed “approximate far more closely to the European types than those of India or parts of Asia further east”.[21] Accordingly, traditional historiography asserts that Syrians posed a reduced threat to White Australia as they were considered to be objectively not so different from white men in appearance.
The appearance and religion of Syrian immigrants almost certainly contributed to the decreased perception of Syrians as a threat to White Australia. Nevertheless, the assumption that underlies this historiographical claim is that the White Australia Policy was primarily motivated by two factors: a rejection of the non-White and the non-Christian. Catherine Lee, in her history of American immigration, however, claims that, “race and religion have too often been used as the explanatory variables for understanding immigration exclusion”.[22] Lee and other gender historians suggest the need to understand the “gendered processes of racialization” that often sit behind these discourses.[23] I therefore argue that the White Australia policy was not characterised solely by concerns over appearance and religion. It was motivated also by a fear of the masculine sexuality of these aliens, which threatened to usurp the white man’s claim to the white woman.
In his 1901 speech for the second reading of the Immigration Restriction Bill, Attorney-General Alfred Deakin claimed, “it is nothing less than the national manhood… and the national future that are at stake”.[24] As Attorney General in 1901, Deakin stood as chief law officer of Australia, a position of substantial authority. That Deakin spoke of a “national manhood” in an official parliamentary speech therefore carries great significance. It demonstrates that concern over white Australian masculinity resided explicitly at the heart of the immigration debate. The ‘immigrant’ was, at this time, frequently depicted as a hyper-sexed male seeking to ravish the white woman. James Ronald, Labour member for South Melbourne, described in parliament in September 1901 his fear of the possibility of “some pure-minded, noble woman marr[ying] some degenerate debauchee”—this being the ‘immigrant’—with the inevitable result that the man “drags her down to his level”.[25] Ronald’s objection to immigration thus relies upon his perception of the ‘immigrant’ as being in possession of a “debauch[ed]” and undeniably masculine sexuality. Senator Dawson’s observations in the Darling Downs Gazette in March 1906 further support this perception.[26] In his description of the Syrian community in Melbourne, he talks always of the Syrian immigrant as male: “he opens a white work factory”, and “he shoulders his pack”.[27] Additionally, Dawson declares the “undiluted horror” of the “aggressively savage” half-caste children running rampant in the community, “emulate[ing] the methods of their sires”.[28] This declaration expresses two concerns. First, that the Syrians were sexually profligate. Secondly, that the resulting “half-caste” progeny were the products of interracial relations between a white woman and a coloured man. These statements are, notably, not the reliable conclusions of a careful study. Indeed, Dawson did not even live in Melbourne at the time, being a resident of Queensland. Nevertheless, what Dawson here demonstrates is the tendency of discourses on immigration to consistently refer back to the idea of a highly sexualised foreign masculinity that threatened white man’s dominion over the white woman.[29] Furthermore, that Deakin—a politician of the right-wing Protectionist Party—as well as Ronald and Dawson—both members of the left-wing Labour Party—all allude to this discourse demonstrates its centrality to immigration discussions across the spectrum of Australian politics.
In addition to this parliamentary perspective, the Australian media of the 1880s to the 1920s expressed its complicity in a gendered understanding of the ‘immigrant’. The Bulletin’s 1886 “The Mongolian Octopus” (Figure 1), for example, illustrates the immigrant as a monstrous male octopus.[30] One of the octopus’ arms is marked “immorality” and is wrapped around a white woman, implying her corruption at his hands. Additionally, the tentacles of the octopus appear visibly phallic, adding to the sexual nature of the threat represented by the male immigrant. A second cartoon published in 1902, “Piebald Possibilities—a little Australian Christmas family party of the future” (Figure 2), perpetuates this perspective.[31] The artist depicts the Asiatic immigrants present at this party as predominantly male. The most striking element of the image, however, is that there is also one white woman present at the table, yet she clutches to her breast a coloured child. For the artist, this visual symbol of interracial intercourse has rendered the woman and her child worthy of a place at this monstrous gathering: she has been claimed and corrupted by the male Asiatic immigrants present. These two cartoons appear so extreme and exaggerated in nature that, to the eyes of today’s viewer, they seem a parody of racist views. Nevertheless, the seriousness of these cartoons is assured by the fact that they were both published in the Bulletin, a magazine that had as its slogan from 1886, “Australia for the White Man”.[32] They thus aid historians in locating concern over the sexuality of the unattached male immigrant as central to calls for immigration restriction.
I will now argue that there was then a third reason for the political differentiation of Syrians from other Asiatic immigrants. This is that the Syrian community, apart from being Christian and European in appearance, did not fit the model of a hyper-masculinised immigrant. This is emphasised in an 1892 article from the Illustrated Sydney News about the Syrian community at Redfern.[33] The article, above all else, emphasises the presence of women in the community. Firstly, it acknowledges the propensity for Syrian immigrants to become Hawkers.[34] It then discusses the “circumstances [wherein] only women of the Syrian race were observed in that peripatetic trade”.[35] Complementary to this, a large line drawing accompanies the article, titled “the Typical Syrian Hawker”.[36] This hawker was apparently a young woman with a child on her hip, offering a demure smile to the reader. This feminine image blatantly opposes Senator Dawson’s imagined male immigrant seeking to ravish the white woman. Furthermore, available figures regarding Hawking licenses granted to Syrians in the Redfern community at this time reveal that many were indeed granted to women. In 1898, in Redfern, 35 of the 93 Syrian licenses granted went to women.[37] In 1899, 40 out of 91 went to women.[38] In 1902, 11 out of 16 went to women.[39] Mulachy Coorey was one such woman. After arriving in Australia, she worked as a hawker for five years between 1926 and 1931.[40] This article therefore reliably informs us of the undeniably large and visible presence of female Syrians in Australia at this time.
Two features of Syrian immigration produced a gender balance that distinguished it from the experiences of other Asiatic groups. First and foremost, upon examining a selection of Applications for Registration and Naturalisation from between 1901 and 1930, it becomes clear that many Syrians did not come as single men: they brought their wives with them. In the case of Tufie George Coorey, for example, in a six-page file, his Application for Registration sits as the cover page.[41] We can observe that Tufie George immigrated to Australia on August 28, 1923 and landed in Sydney. It is written on his Application, however, that Tufie George was married to Lila Coorey, a Syrian woman.[42] In turning to page four of the six, we can indeed locate the Application for Registration of Lila Coorey. She entered Australia on the same day and boat as her husband.[43] Both Lila and Tufie George were born in the village of Kfarsghab in Lebanon.[44] They undertook the journey to Sydney together as man and wife. This trend continues with the case of Joseph Gabriel, a Syrian immigrant, who landed in Adelaide in 1896: Gabriel was also accompanied by his wife and child.[45] Jacob Adymee, another Syrian immigrant, landed in Queensland in 1894 again with his wife and five children.[46] This tendency led to a noticeable gender balance of Syrian immigration. Only 62% of Syrian immigrants in 1901 were male. This percentage is astonishing when compared to those of Chinese and Indian immigration, which were 98.5% and 93.4% male respectively.[47] Contemporary commentators indeed observed this unique gender balance. Jens Lyng’s book, for example, published in 1927 by the University of Melbourne, whilst ostensibly a secondary account of Australia in the 1920s, grants historians a reliable insight into mainstream academic understandings of immigration at this time. Lyng importantly claimed that Syrian immigration incorporated an “exceptionally large proportion of females”: exceptional in that it differed from the proportions found in other immigrant groups.[48] That these females often came in the capacity of wives also meant that contemporaries like Lyng did not see Syrians as a threat to white women in the same way that the unattached male Chinese and Indian immigrants were.[49] This resultantly lessened the threat to white masculinity.
Secondly, this gender balance was aided by the fact that, between 1907 and 1929, 259 Syrians were given special dispensations to enter Australia as the relatives of Syrians already living in the country.[50] By looking at a selection of these successful Applications for the Admission of Friends or Relatives to Australia, we find that, rather than being mainly male, many of the admitted relatives were again wives and daughters. Callim Coorey, for example, who had lived in Australia as a farmer for five years, applied in 1929 for the admission of his wife, Sadie, and his two sons, Moses and Haroon.[51] Similarly, Slamen Naklie Coorey, another farmer, applied in 1929 for the admission of his wife, Jamelie, his son, and his three daughters, Mentaha, Cowcap and Wahabi.[52] These dispensations therefore further balanced the gender ratio so that, even as of 1921, Syrian immigration had fallen from 62% to 54.7% male.[53] The percentages for Chinese and Indian immigration in 1921, by comparison, still sat at 93.3% and 94.3% male.[54]
Despite all this, certain historians maintain that Syrian immigration was predominantly male. Najib Saliba, for example, a historian of early twentieth century emigration from Syria, claimed that the emigrants were mainly “young, unmarried men”, and that only “a small majority” of them brought their families upon emigrating.[55] Noticeably, however, Saliba makes little effort to quantify these claims. He notes that “perhaps twelve percent” of the men who emigrated did so with their families.[56] The certainty of this statement is undermined by the word ‘perhaps’, and the fact that no direct citation is provided to support it. I would also point out that Saliba’s article focuses on tracking those changes to public life that resulted in Syria from emigration, such as noticeable changes in industry and economics.[57] Such changes to Syrian public life would undoubtedly have drawn Saliba’s attention more to the absence of Syrian men than women, due to the masculine nature of the public sphere in early twentieth century Syria. In the case of Lila Coorey, for example, her Application for Registration reveals two details about her. Firstly, her occupation in Syria is listed as “domestic duties”: she resided predominantly in the private sphere as a wife.[58] Her departure would not have produced notable changes to public life. Secondly, she was likely illiterate. I claim this because, whereas her husband signed his application in a somewhat shaky hand, Lila was unable even to do this. Instead, a black “X” has been drawn on the signature line, and someone has written fluently above this “X”, “her mark”.[59] This illiteracy undoubtedly further excluded Lila from a public world that functioned through paper work. These two factors therefore render women like Lila Coorey as of limited significance to the changes tracked by Saliba. As Weinberg identifies, Saliba, like so many others, has been caught up in the exploration of the “so-called public sphere dominated by men”, and has thereby remained largely ignorant of those women who “were confined to the domestic realm”.[60] Nevertheless, that these women immigrated to Australia is undeniable. Their presence there in the capacity of wives also meant that the propensity for single male Syrians looking for partners amongst the white population was decreased. This lessened the likelihood of Syrians imposing upon white male sexuality.
In this essay, I have demonstrated that, between 1890 and 1930, it was not simply a fear and repudiation of the non-White and non-Christian that motivated the White Australia Policy. Gender, and the perceived hyper-masculine sexuality of the immigrant ‘other’ played a crucial role. There were, therefore, three central factors that differentiated the Syrian from other Asiatic immigrants. The canonically recognised first and second factors were that Syrians were largely Christian and European in appearance. The third factor, however, was that the typical Syrian immigrant was not, in fact, male. The Syrian community in Australia experienced a gender balance, whereby the number of single male Syrians looking for female partners amongst the external population was decreased. The Syrian immigrant thus posed less of a threat to the white man’s claim over the white woman. It was the culmination of all three of these factors that led politicians like Thomas Playford to consider the Syrian as more desirable than other predominantly male Asiatic groups.
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[1] Thomas Playford, Cth, Parliamentary Debates, House of Representatives, vol. 14, 9 July 1903.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Immigration Restriction Act 1901 (Cth), 1.
[4] Paul Convy and Anne Monsour, “Lebanese Settlement in New South Wales: A Thematic History” (Sydney: Migration Heritage Centre of NSW, 2008), 1; Anne Monsour, “Becoming White: How Early Syrian/Lebanese in Australia Recognised the Value of Whiteness”, in Historicising Whiteness: Transnational Perspectives on the Construction of an Identity, eds. Leigh Boucher, Jane Carey and Katherine Ellinghaus (Melbourne: RMIT Publishing in association with the School of Historical Studies, University of Melbourne, 2007), 126; Alexander Yarwood, Asian Migration to Australia: The Background to Exclusion 1896-1923 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1967), 9.
[5] Julie Des Jardins, “Women’s and Gender History”, in The Oxford History of Historical Writing vol. 5., eds. Axel Schneider and Daniel Woolf (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2011), 136-153; Catherine Lee, “‘Where the Danger Lies’: Race, Gender, and Chinese and Japanese Exclusion in the United States, 1870-1924”, Sociological Forum 25.2 (2010): 248-251; Sydney Weinberg, “The Treatment of Women in Immigration History: A Call for Change”, Journal of American Ethnic History 11.4 (1992): 26-40.
[6] Convy and Monsour, “Lebanese Settlement”, 9.
[7] Ibid., 21.
[8] Ibid., 21.
[9] Atlee Hunt, Memorandum for the Minister, Department of External Affairs, 27 October 1914, A1, 1914/20363, NAA, 6-9.
[10] Ibid., 6.
[11] Anne Monsour, “Religion Matters: The experience of Syrian/Lebanese Christians in Australia from the 1880s to 1947”, Humanities Research Journal 12.1 (2005): 99.
[12] Kemal Karpat, “The Ottoman emigration to America 1860-1914”, International Journal of Middle East Studies 17.2 (1985): 182-3.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Ibid., 183-4.
[15] Hunt, Memorandum, 6-9.
[16] Convy and Monsour, “Lebanese Settlement”, 9-11.
[17] Ibid., 1-9; Yarwood, Asian Migration, 9-10.
[18] Under Secretary, Chief Secretary’s Office, Brisbane, to Secretary, Department of External Affairs, 9/6279, 10 June 1909, A1/1, 09/13029, NAA (ACT).
[19] Ibid.
[20] Under Secretary, Chief Secretary’s Office, Brisbane, to Secretary, Department of External Affairs, 14/15989, 20 October 1914, A1/1, 21/11220, NAA (ACT).
[21] Hunt, Memorandum, 6.
[22] Lee, “Where the Danger Lies”, 248.
[23] Ibid, 251; Weinberg, “The Treatment of Women”, 38.
[24] Alfred Deakin, “Second Reading Speech: Immigration Restriction Bill”, Cth, Parliamentary Debates, House of Representatives, 12 September 1901, 4804.
[25] James Ronald, “Immigration Restriction Bill”, Cth, Parliamentary Debates, House of Representatives, 6 September 1901, 4665.
[26] Senator Andrew Dawson, quoted from “Federal Affairs”, Darling Downs Gazette, 27 March 1906, 8.
[27] Ibid.
[28] Ibid.
[29] D.J. Murphy, “Dawson, Andrew (1863-1910)”, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, last modified 2015, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/dawson-andrew-5921.
[30] Philip May, “The Mongolian Octopus—his grip on Australia”, Bulletin, 21 August 1886.
[31] Livingston Hopkins, “Piebald Possibilities—a little Australian Christmas family party of the future”, Bulletin, 13 December 1902.
[32] NSW Migration Heritage Centre, “1910 The Bulletin Magazine”, The Migration Heritage Centre, last modified 2010, http://www.migrationheritage.nsw.gov.au/exhibition/objectsthroughtime/1910-the-bulletin-magazine/.
[33] “Syrians in the South: A Colony at Redfern”, Illustrated Sydney News, 19 November 1892, 4.
[34] Ibid.
[35] Ibid.
[36] Ibid.
[37] “Hawkers’ Licenses. The Syrian and Indian Applicants”, The Sydney Morning Herald, 5 January 1898, 7.
[38] “Alien Races and Hawker Licenses”, The Sydney Morning Herald, 4 January 1899, 4.
[39] “Licensing Courts. Redfern”, The Sydney Morning Herald, 3 January 1902, 3.
[40] Mulachy Coorey, Application for Naturalisation, 6 May 1931, A1, 32/170, NAA.
[41] Tufie George Coorey, Application for Registration, 28 August 1923, D4878, 1923/4073876, NAA.
[42] Ibid.
[43] Lila Coorey, Application for Registration, 28 August 1923, D4878, 1923/4073875, NAA.
[44] Ibid.
[45] Joseph Gabriel, Application for Naturalisation, 6 March 1921, A1, 1921/12661, NAA.
[46] Jacob Adymee, Application for Naturalisation, 14 January 1903, Col/73(a), 1955/1903, QSA.
[47] Yarwood, Asian Migration, 163.
[48] Lyng, Non-Britishers, 185.
[49] Ibid., 180-85.
[50] Abe Ata, Arab Lebanese Religious Affiliates and their Attitudinal Discrepancies in Australia (Melbourne: CIRC Reprints, 1987), 33-4; Yarwood, Asian Migration, 146-9.
[51] Calllim Coorey, Application for Admission of Relatives or Friends to Australia, 23 November 1929, A261, 1929/210, NAA.
[52] Slamen Naklie Coorey, Application for Admission of Relatives or Friends to Australia, 24 December 1929, A261, 1929/213, NAA.
[53] Yarwood, Asian Migration, 163.
[54] Ibid.
[55] Najib Saliba, “Emigration from Syria”, Arab Studies Quarterly 3.1 (1981): 66.
[56] Ibid.
[57] Ibid., 56-7.
[58] Lila Coorey, Application for Registration.
[59] Lila Coorey, Application for Registration; Tufie George Coorey, Application for Registration.
[60] Weinberg, “The Treatment of Women”, 26.