DOONER, Pierton W.

(1844-?1907)

   US writer whose Last Days of the Republic (1880) was the first US Yellow Peril novel, and demonstrates the terribly common dynamic by which a guilty party, or nation, feels compelled to transfer its guilt to the victim or victim-nation: in 1880, the year of the book's publication, the USA had been using Chinese coolies for some time as forced labour, and in terms of this dynamic it was high time to accuse them of being a menace. In the novel, the coolies nefariously gain civil rights from cowardly Whites, and use their ill gotten power to gain control of the Pacific coastal states, from which point the collapse of Washington is only a matter of time.

   JC