A White Man's Province

A White Man's Province: British Columbia Politicians and Chinese and Japanese Immigrants, 1858-1914 is a 1989 book by Patricia E. Roy, published by the University of British Columbia Press. It discusses late 19th and early 20th century anti-Asian sentiment within British Columbia. Politicians from British Columbia referred to the place as "a white man's province", and the book includes an analysis of the phrase itself. As of 1992 Roy was planning to create a sequel.

Roy is a history professor at the University of British Columbia, and during a large portion of her academic career she studied Asian Canadian history. The book was a part of a larger historical research project. As part of the book's research, the author analyzed the period's newspapers and archives in British Columbia and Ottawa.

The foreword has an outline of the major points. The first chapter discusses the 1850s initial arrival of the Chinese. The second discusses the ideas propagated in British Columbia around 1871-1894 in regards to the Asians. The third discusses the in-progress Canadian Pacific Railway and the relations between that, the ethnic Chinese, and the Ottawa-based federal government in the period 1871-1885. The fourth chapter discusses anti-Japanese and anti-Chinese laws passed in the period 1886-1896. The fifth chapter discusses anti-Asian laws between 1896 and 1902, including the head tax. The sixth chapter discusses British Columbia's efforts to reduce the number of Asians employed in various sectors. The seventh discusses the period after the Chinese head tax and the Japanese government's restrictions on immigration of its own people to Canada were both instituted, and the consequential reduction of immigration. This chapter covers 1903-1907. The eighth chapter discusses the Anti-Oriental Riots. This is the book's most lengthy chapter. The ninth chapter discusses 1908-1914 anti-Asian exclusionary activity, and it also states the overall attitudes towards China, Japan, and Chinese and Japanese immigration held by White British Columbians of the era.

Mary C. Waters of Harvard University wrote that the author "assumes a high level of familiarity with Canadian and British Columbian history and personalities" and "the reader must labor through a great deal of detail and some repetition to be able to abstract general principles and historical themes and developments."

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