These are really four books that ended up being one.

The first one was born out of my curiosity about early California: I was puzzled that neither the Spaniards nor the Russians nor later the Mexicans found anything interesting in California, and that the Chinese (on the other side of the ocean) never even ventured there.

The second book (originally titled “How the Chinese made California” on my website) was about the contribution of the Chinese laborers to the development of California after it was conquered by the USA. It seems to me that they more than anyone else deserve the credit. The reason they have been largely ignored is that we don’t know their names. Most of the Chinese who worked humble jobs in the gold mines, in the early towns and in the railroads have been omitted from the official records and sometimes even from the drawings and photographs. Coincidence or not, their waves of immigration into the Bay Area correspond with the booms of the Bay Area: the Gold Rush first and Silicon Valley now. During the “exclusion” period (when Chinese immigration was banned) the Bay Area declined in importance relative to southern California. When Chinese immigration resumed in earnest in the 1980s, the Bay Area regained its position of cultural and economic leadership. Go figure!

The third book was meant to probe California's spiral of wealth creations. There are few places in the world that experienced one "boom" after the other in a short period of time. Most places (whether medieval Venice, industrial-revolution Manchester or car-manufacturing Detroit) were defined by one boom that created their original wealth. California instead has been shaped by one boom after the other between 1849 and 2024: gold, agriculture, oil, real estate, aviation, Hollywood, and the multiple booms of Silicon Valley (semiconductors, Internet, social media, Artificial Intelligence). Each boom created immense fortunes. It has been a land of nonstop "gold rushes".

The fourth book was about the architecture of Los Angeles. Through the work of its architects, one can document the development of the city, a city which is another improbable miracle in a state of improbable miracles: from tiny village to sprawling metropolis in a relatively short time. Each building and house is associated with the story of an individual or a couple, and the story of all those stories is the story of the serial booms of Los Angeles.

I had previously written a thick “A History of Silicon Valley” which includes a cultural history of the Bay Area. I am too lazy to summarize that story in this book, which is already four books in one, so I hope the reader will forgive me if this book doesn’t spend much time on the arts and the society of the Bay Area. As always feedback is welcome. You can reach me via my website: www.scaruffi.com

Piero Scaruffi, California, 2024

America was "discovered" in 1492. For three centuries and a half, California was a huge, unexplored wilderness. Then, in little more than a century and a half, California has become the world's main center of technological innovation, the world's main producer of films, the fifth largest economy in the world, a land of billionaires, and even a focal point of the counterculture. A mysterious force almost effortlessly ignited the Gold Rush of 1849, the real estate boom of Los Angeles at the end of the 19th century, the oil boom of southern California in the early 20th century, Hollywood in the first half of the 20th century, and Silicon Valley at the end of the 20th century. These waves of wealth creation, each one more consequential than the previous one, rank among the most stunning stories of the modern world, especially if one considers that none of them was planned by the government. They did more than just create very rich people out of thin air: they changed the world.

Various ethnic groups can claim to have "built" the USA. The Italians claim to have "discovered" and named America. The Irish, the Poles, the Swedes and of course the British claim to have built this or that part of the country or the economy. Credit must go to all of those immigrant groups, and in many states an even bigger credit goes to the black people imported as slaves from Africa. But rarely is credit given to the Chinese, and to Asians in general. In my opinion, there are two main reasons. Traditionally, the USA was thought as the East Coast and, at best, the Midwest. Histories of the growth of the USA are centered around Boston, New York, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Chicago, and so on. Those cities were indeed "built" mostly by European immigrants. However, in the 21st century the USA has steadily shifted westward and California has become the most populous state and the largest economy (the fifth largest in the world if it declared independence). And so explaining who "built" the East Coast leaves out some of the most important regions of the USA, from Los Angeles to Silicon Valley. If we focus instead on California, it is hard to claim that Europeans alone built it. The contribution of Chinese immigrants to establishing the mining, agricultural and railway operations was fundamental, and without these operations California would not have developed. The second reason why the contribution of Chinese immigrants is neglected is quite simple: few among the Chinese could write in fluent English. We don't know their stories and in most cases don't even know their names. However, a history of California cannot be complete without mentioning the contribution of Chinese immigrants, and that contribution turns out to be more important than anything contributed before their arrival. It was literally the Chinese that turned California into a place to live and work. Before the Chinese arrived, California was at best the "Wild West" and at worst just a useless arid land.

On the other hand, what is rather strange is that America was discovered by Europeans. The Chinese didn't discover America, despite the fact that the fourth expedition of Zheng He (1413-15) returned to China from the east coast of Africa, a pretty long voyage, and that the Spanish and Portuguese ships were smaller than the Chinese vessels, and that the Chinese possessed (long before the Europeans) key technologies, such as the mariner’s compass, multiple masting and the axial rudder. which made oceanic navigation by large ships easier. The voyage east across the Pacific Ocean is more difficult than going west towards China, but it took only 63 years for the Europeans to figure out how to do it. The Chinese had thousands of years to discover the same trick.

The very technological success of China may have kept Chinese sailors from thinking the way Columbus thought. Especially after the remodeling in 1411-15 of the Grand Canal by the "Yongle Emperor", aka Zhu Di, Chinese sailors had little motivation to test and innovate ship technology, as transport shifted from the coast to the canals. The imposing ship-building capacity of China was diverted from the coastal ports to the inland ports. And then after 1500 China became politically hostile altogether to maritime commerce and exploration. That xenophobic mindset cost China the opportunity to compete with the European empires during the time of colonization. By forbidding foreign trade, the Chinese emperors helped Europeans establish their colonial empires in Asia, besides encouraging the rise of piracy and the emigration of Chinese merchants to South China Sea ports.

China didn't develop scientific cartography until the arrival of the Jesuits (China's first accurate world map was made by the Italian priest Matteo Ricci in 1602). For two millennia China produced stylized but extremely schematic representations of the world which were largely useless to sailors (they were meant for philosophers). The belief that China was the center of the world may have dampened any enthusiasm for exploring beyond the national boundaries. Whatever the reason, the Europeans were sending expeditions to all the seas when China was not sending a single one.

Not only did the Chinese not discover America before the Europeans, bur also, after the Europeans discovered a whole new continent, the Chinese government showed no interest in exploring it and colonizing it. European countries (even tiny ones) sent explorers, merchants, scientists and (alas) conquerors: the emperor of China didn't send anyone.

The Chinese "colonizers" of California were instead humble merchants, laborers and fishermen who traveled on non-Chinese ships as passengers carrying with them the know-how necessary to create a viable society: agriculture, mining, transportation and commerce.

Look closely, and the Chinese were crucial for the early finance (ultimately due to the gold mines), transportation (the railroads), agriculture (enabled by irrigation) and urbanization (which was often centered around a Chinatown): the four pillars of California's economic development. Fast forward to the late 20th century, and an underveloped region of California transforms into the most technological region of the world: Silicon Valley. Is it a coincidence that this happens when Chinese immigration resumes and that most new Chinese immigrants settle precisely in the Bay Area? When you notice the coincidence, you start to wonder if the abundant supply of skilled (intellectual) Chinese labor fueled the growth of today's high-tech California just like the abundant supply of unskilled (manual) Chinese labor fueled the growth of yesterday's California.

Many books have paid attention to the black communities of California or to the painful history of the indigenous populations or to the Hispanic communities. This was for a very good reason: to identify, record and stigmatize racial discrimination. Studies on how ethnic groups were penalized by "progress" are important. However, it is also important to analyze ethnic communities in relation to how much they contribute to the development of a region, without assuming that all development is uniquely due to white people's leadership, planning and execution. The Chinese community belongs to the group of ethnic communities that suffered from discrimination and even persecution, but, perhaps more importantly, it contributed significantly to the early development of California, as well as to its recent high-tech boom.

Why focus on the Chinese immigrants? Because two centuries ago skilled Chinese laborers were crucial in building the economy of early California and today skilled Chinese engineers are crucial in building California's digital economy, and probably no other ethnic minority can boast of such a role at both times. The Indians, for example, can claim to have helped today's software industry, but this came after someone had created the hardware industry (the "silicon" of Silicon Valley), which was made possible by an existing infrastructure of railways, farms and trade. The two groups of Chinese immigrants, two centuries apart (one speaking Cantonese, the other, Mandarin), may appear to be totally unrelated, but maybe they are not.

The role of Taiwanese immigrants who returned to Taiwan has also traditionally been neglected, but one could argue that they were as important to the boom of Silicon Valley as DARPA (the military agency that funded much of the early Silicon Valley) and Stanford University (from which the early startups originated).