Up in Smoke: Chinese Growers and Manufacturers in the Tobacco Industry in Australia 1880–1930

From the 1870s to the late 1920s, Chinese people dominated tobacco growing in Australia. Yet by the 1930s, tobacco growing was hailed as a “Whites only” industry. It is well-established that in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, government legislation not only restricted Chinese people from entering Australia but excluded Chinese-born people living in Australia from working in certain industries. This article investigates the relationship between the demise of Chinese growers and manufacturers in the tobacco industry, the monopolisation of tobacco companies in Australia and the rise of White Australia legislation. It argues that Chinese people played a pioneering role in the cultivation of tobacco in Australia from the 1870s, but by the late 1920s were excluded from the industry.