“No Chinese Should Obey It”

In 1892, the Geary Act dramatically expanded Chinese exclusion by requiring all Chinese immigrants in the United States to register, under threat of deportation. Despite the tremendous attention the act garnered from nineteenth-century exclusionists and the Chinese diaspora, historians have devoted little effort to fully examining the law and the unprecedented resistance it generated. This article unearths the transpacific networks of people and ideas that are revealed by, and mobilized against, the Geary Act. Together with white allies and Chinese across the Pacific, Chinese denizens of the United States formed one of the largest civil disobedience movements of their century. At stake was the future of exclusion and the avenues of belonging for Chinese in America.