Sidney L. Gulick: Reflections on the Yellow Peril in the First Half of the Twentieth Century

Abstract

This article aims to research several of the historical processes that laid the foundations for the so-called yellow peril emerging in the first half of the twentieth century in the United States. The rhetoric of the  yellow peril fueled the West’s fear of Asian people and this rejection eventually translated into specific, racist policies in countries like the United States. This anti-Japanese fervor was occasionally promoted by the North American media, such as in the case of William Randolph Hearst’s newspapers. In this context of international and racial tensions, public figures like Sidney Lewis Gulick attempted to support the concord and friendship between Japan and the United States through books, press reports and the founding of associations in favor of international relations. Gulick approached this kind of rapprochement from a critical perspective towards the role of the West in East Asia. As he viewed it, Westerners should start from the premise that the “yellow peril” had a predecessor it derived from, the “white peril”; that is, the threat posed by Western colonialism for a large part of Asia.