From Tong War to Organized Crime: Revising the Historical Perception of Violence in Chinatown

• NCJ Number: 168986
• Journal: Justice Quarterly Volume: 14 Issue: 1 Dated: (March 1997) Pages: 25-52
• Author(s): J S McIllwain
• Date Published: 1997
• Length: 28 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Historical Overview
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: Paper presented in different forms at the 1995 meetings of the Academy of Criminal Justice Science and the American Society of Criminology, held in Boston.

Annotation

An analysis of New York City press accounts and official documents from 1894 to 1908 challenges many assumptions about Chinese organized crime in the United States.

Abstract

Contrary to conventional wisdom, this analysis provides strong evidence that Chinese organized crime is neither "emerging" nor "nontraditional" and that it predates, in structure and sophistication, organizations of other ethnic origins later recognized as "modern" organized crime by academics, the media, and the government. A qualitative, document-based case study of the first "tong war" between the Hip Sing Tong and the On Leong Tong (1899-1907) shows that both organizations were heavily involved in a multi-ethnic social system of organized crime that extended across the United States and to China itself. The turn-of-the-century tongs were involved with police and political corruption, labor racketeering, price fixing, prostitution, gambling, immigrant smuggling, slavery, drug trafficking, and violent crimes. They are still associated with these activities. 89 references and appended chart that shows attributes of organized crime actors based on definitions by national commissions, scholars, and the law