ABSTRACT
During the period from 1902 to 1911, the Chinese Imperial Reform Army established military academies in Chinese communities across the United States. In 1905, a company of Chinese soldiers, students of the Western Military Academy, marched on American soil for the first time in history before crowds that had gathered to view the Pasadena Tournament of Roses in Los Angeles. The image of marching soldiers contrasts strikingly with the stereotypical images of Chinese immigrants as laborers or small shopkeepers that appeared in print during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. However, the dynamics of racial prejudice and legislative discrimination in the United States, coupled with social and political upheavals in China, led to complex social formations in the Chinese immigrant communities in the United States. One institutional outgrowth of this era, the Chinese western military academies, attracted the interest of diverse groups and personalities, including embattled Chinese immigrant communities with few educational options, Chinese groups working for reform and insurgence in China, white American soldiers of fortune, state and city government bodies in the United States, American business interests desiring trade in China, Sun Yat-sen, the founder of the Chinese republic of 1911, and even the President of the United States.
