Anxious Nation: Australia and the Rise of Asia 1850–1939, written by David Walker, has been described as a "landmark" analysis of the history of Australian perceptions of Asian people and their cultures.

Australians worried that their society would be overrun by the Chinese and contaminated by their supposed vices; exotic diseases, industrial “sweating”, gambling, sexual deviation and opium abuse.

This inevitably leads to an analysis of Australian contributions to the philosophical and scientific theories, particularly Eugenics and Social Darwinism, that underlined concepts of race during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The currency of the Japonisme and Chinoiserie aesthetic movements and the warm welcome given to a Japanese Naval Squadron in 1906 show that at least some Australians were willing to consider the positive aspects of Asian culture.

Al Grassby, a former Minister for Immigration who dismantled the White Australia Policy, described the book as “evocative and compelling prose …which shows how bigotry and myth making shaped the question of race which dominated the public and private discourse.” [4] David Carter in The Journal of Australian Studies believed that Anxious Nation had an important place in Australian historiography.