One of the challenges facing researchers of nineteenth-century Chinese-Australian history is the dearth of sources reflecting the Chinese perspective. Part of the difficulty in gaining a better understanding of the Chinese protests against the various taxes imposed on them during the mid to late 1850s has been locating the petitions from the Chinese and their supporters. The accompanying article also published in this issue of Provenance puts the petitions that have been located into the context of evolving anti-Chinese legislation. The present article seeks to encourage further research into this topic by identifying where the petitions can be found at Public Record Office Victoria (PROV) as well as in published sources such as the Votes and Proceedings of the Legislative Assembly (Victoria), newspapers and books. Towards this end, it also considers some of the benefits and limitations of these sources. No one source contains all of the petitions from all of the various phases of the Chinese protest campaign. To consult only one source can create the risk of interpreting an incomplete picture. Further research might uncover more petitions. For researchers interested in locating other petitions held by PROV, this article will provide some useful ideas on how to approach this search.

Votes and Proceedings of the Legislative Assembly

If you are trying to access petitions from the early phases of the protests against the £10 immigration poll tax and the proposed Chinese residence tax in 1857, the Votes and Proceedings of the Legislative Assembly are worth consulting. However, they are not comprehensive in relation to these particular phases and prove to be inadequate in relation to later phases (1859). There are two main reasons for this. First, not all papers tabled at the Legislative Assembly were printed. This is the case with petitions that were tabled in late 1859 from Chinese in Castlemaine, Bendigo and Melbourne¹ and it is also relevant to the petition against the immigration poll tax from Chinese in Victoria tabled in 1856. Second, not all petitions were addressed to the Legislative Assembly and so they could not be tabled in this forum.

Petitions in the Votes and Proceedings of the Legislative Assembly are accessible on microfilm at the State Library of Victoria. This source also contains the 1857 petitions against the Chinese influx.² When read together these petitions become a dialogue: you can see the accusations that were made against the Chinese as well as how the Chinese chose to defend themselves. It is also possible to get an understanding of the level of support for the petitions from this source. All but one of the petitions against the Chinese taxes identifies the number of signatures that were attached to the originals.