Coolies Crimps & Captains Recruitment and Transport of Chinese Indentured Laborers 1843-1874 Dorothea A.L. Martin Appalachian State University The Global context: British anti-slavery voices pressed for an end to the slave trade in the 1830s mostly on humanitarian grounds of the evils of human trafficking while at the same time others within the British Empire were acutely aware of the growing need for agricultural and construction labor in the global market as commodities trade increased. Securing the technologies of empire telegraphs and rail roads became as dependent on the availability of reliable labor resources in the middle to late 19 th century as replenishing plantation and guano mine workers. To comply with the new anti-slavery laws, plantation and mine owners turned to the use of indentured or contract workers to fill their needs. What better area than Asia to supply this demand. Both south Asian Indians and East Asian Chinese [and later Japanese] workers became widely dispersed in the Coolie trade in this period. What follows here is a look at the methods used to recruit and transport Chinese workers during this period. Following the Opium War of 1830-40, Britain gained greater access into the hinterlands of southeast China through new treaty ports. This access, however, did not provide them with the ability to conduct direct recruitment of coolies. They had to depend on local networks of private and public Chinese actors to accomplish this task. Control of the movements of a country s population was well recognized in international
law, including issues surrounding short term migration for economic reasons. For the Qing government, however, such laws held little sway. Chinese laws, at least on theory, prohibited the movement of Chinese peoples outside its borders. The Great Qing Penal Code forbade government officials, soldier, and private persons to Clandestinely proceed to sea to trade, or remove to foreign islands for the purpose of inhabiting and cultivating the same. 1 Punishment for such behavior was the same as for communicating with rebels and enemies of the state: beheading. The same was to be done to governors who were complicate in these acts. This harsh language in the law reflected the xenophobic attitudes of the upper class Chinese. Ironically, this attitude was especially true of the ruling Manchu dynasty, themselves foreigners. In spite of the threats of harsh punishments, Chinese, especially those from the southeast regions, had for centuries participated in a large scale merchant and labor diaspora into Southeast Asia. This movement continued during the period under investigation here and often shared characteristics with the mass chain migrations that were going on at the same time from Europe to the Americas. But indentured labor migrants going to work on tropical plantations and build the infrastructure of the New Imperialism of the mid to late 19 th century were in a separate category of labor migrants based on the nature of their recruitment, the terms of their contracts, and their overall treatment, especially in the transport to the location of their work. Indeed, it was eventually the recognition that the conditions of these indentured workers was simply slavery by another name that put an end to the practice and, although Chinese workers continued to migrate to do similar 1 Supplement to the Da qing luli, as quoted in Arnold J. Meagher, The Coolie Trade the Traffic in Chinese Laborers to Latin America 1847-1874, (Xlibris Corporation), 2008, 63.
work, the conditions of their livelihoods were much less onerous and undertaken with greater knowledge and understanding. Coolies The origin of this term is not clear. Some sources say it was a corruption of a Chinese phrase chili that translates as eat bitterness meant to describe the lives of the desperate and destitute within Chinese society. The term, whatever its origin, caught on and was used widely to refer to a variety of Asian laborers - Indian, Chinese, various peoples from SE Asia, etc. What motivated those who signed agreed to indenture themselves for 5-8 years? World History scholars such as David Northrup in his work Indentured Labor in the Age of Imperialism 1834-1922, makes special note of the harsh conditions in Southeast China that served as a push factor for coolies. In 1848, the USA s population ~23 million while China s was ~430 million with a disproportional number of those south of the Yangzi River. Opium Wars and the Taiping Rebellion further dislocated both trade and people causing fresh migration pressure into the regions of southern Fujian and eastern Guangdong Provinces. One writer working on current issues of illegal Chinese immigration to the USA says that of the coolies who came as indentured labor to the Americas in the 19 th century 90% plus percent were from a 2 small areas coastal regions: 1) around the Treaty Ports of Amoy in Fujian and Swatow and Guangzhou [Canton] in Guangdong, 2) the area surrounding Macao. 2 About Americans of Chinese origins, he states that most can trace their roots to an area roughly ½ the size of Delaware. 3 In other words, there were key points from which the movement of workers 2 Sneakheads 3 Ibid.
flowed. As harsh as local conditions were, the centrality of these areas to the indentured labor market was no accident. The American missionary and diplomat in China, Samuel Wells Williams, wrote in his history of China that Guangdong and Fujian provinces, while infested with pirates but in his estimation the people were more educated, skilled mechanically and enterprising than those of other regions of China. 4 He estimated that between 1850 and 1875 around 300,000 coolies were carried away from that region. He carefully made the distinction between free workers who went to California and Australia and the coolies who went as contract laborers to Peru, Cuba, Panama, Brazil, etc. Many Chinese signed on in hopes of finding other opportunities once their contracts were completed; many had no idea how far away their destinations actually were. Some were in fact decoyed by the unscrupulous crimps about the nature of the contracts; others were simply shanghaied as it were to use a phrase most commonly used to described sailors going TO China under unscrupulous recruitment terms on merchant ships. Most never lived long enough to return home [no good numbers on this]. Some died in transit [see below], others worked too hard, treated badly, fed too poorly. Depending on when they signed their contract and where they were sent, the nature of their indenture varied. At the start of the trade, contracts tended to be longer and grew shorter when recruitment became harder over tome. They could be physically punished by lashing, leg irons, and having meals withheld. Some of the first indentures were sent to Peru s guano mines were likely the worst place anyone was sent. 4 Samuel Wells Williams, The Middle Kingdom, Vol. 1 (Revised edition), (New York: Charles Schribner s Sons, 1907), 129.
Coolies had no consular protections since, as noted above, the Qing government outlawed unauthorized overseas travel and did not have any diplomatic relations with foreign countries until the end of the period. A Qing official was sent to Cuba in 1860 at the behest of some foreigners wishing to end the trade and correspondence to Cuban officials did make some improvements to conditions for local Chinese indentured workers. Indeed, agreements signed between the Qing and the British in the same year resulted in a proclamation that Chinese who signed work agreements with foreigners were still entitled to protection of the Chinese government and retain their Chinese subjects under proper surveillance. Those who departed without such protection, were not so entitled. 5 In the early years, however, some coolies worked the system, signing contracts getting an advance payment from the crimp but them escaping from the holding pens or baracoons or even jumping ships once at sea. There are reports that crimps and coolies even worked together to their mutual benefit. Crimps The origin of the term is not clear either but it seems to have been first used in the slave trade and also in 18 th Century British Navy and Merchant Marine shipping to designate a sub-contractor who secures slaves, seamen or, in this case, coolies for contracted or indentured labor. In the new climate of the recently opened China market, a large European merchant was given a license to import coolies and then sale their contracts to the highest bidder. For example Zuluetas & Co. of London in 1846 worked in the port of Amoy and chartered a Spanish ship, the Oquendo to transport 206 Chinese coolies to Havana - a voyage of 131 days. 5 Adam M. McKeown, Melancholy Order Asian Migration and the Globalization of Borders, (Columbia University Press: New York) 2008, 82.
Merchant companies employed crimps to secure the needed number of coolies. These agents were most often Euro-Asians who could speak the local dialect as well as a European language and also served as the translator. These agents sometimes served as intermediaries with the Chinese governments officials in defiance of the laws mentioned above and were paid a set amount per coolie. The money was often fronted by the contractors. Some crimps were also runners or sub-agents or more powerful crimps who did the actual recruitment. These runners were usually the most despicable link in this chain of human misery. They often used underhanded methods to get workers to sign: drugs, alcohol, gambling, abduction, decoying, etc. Since they were paid per signed contract, they had few scruples about how the secured those marks from mostly illiterate lower class men. Crimps were advanced money for recruiting purposes then paid an additional amount when they delivered the coolies either to ships or to baracoons [holding facilities where the coolies were locked up and secured until leaving port]. Some Crimps who had their own sub-crimps to help in the recruiting process were diligent enough to use river steamers to comb the waterfronts for prospective coolies. The British Vice Consul in Guangzhou, Mr. Mayhus dubbed this activity crimp boating. British, Portuguese, the United States, and French trading and shipping companies handled most of the contracting. For example British companies such as Muir and Russell employed native crimps to recruit workers and at times used the notorious truck system that paid in goods rather than money to secure contract. This system sometimes continued after workers arrived in Peru where opium use was encouraged and supplied as part of truck wages.
In some cases, ships captains replaced the merchant houses and worked through native brokers who then hired runners or crimps to recruit coolie workers mostly in the coastal regions of south and southeast China but also among Chinese communities in other parts of Southeast Asia. These crimps like the others received a commission for each signed contract and person they presented to the broker. After complaints from those who actually bought the contracts at the other end of the trade, by the 1850s indentured workers were supposedly interviewed by the ship s captain to confirm that they had voluntarily signed and comprehended the terms of the contract. Often, however, runners were known to have gotten the coolie drunk and then have a stand-in do the interview with the captain. Although some were thus tricked into being indentured migrants, other Chinese signed contracts in hopes of escaping the mid- 19 th century hardships in China, giving any money they may have collected upon signing to their families and hoping to send more funds back to them over time. Captains The British Government s rules [1807 & 1824] making slaving a crime of piracy effected shipping in many other countries beyond Great Britain. The loss of the slave labor work force became a reality within British Colonial processions in the West Indies, attention turned to Asia. By 1838, interest in Chinese labor was growing and after the Opium War and the new Treaty Ports opened in 1842 and a new British presence installed in Hong Kong, the coolie trade picked up. Captains were hired by the licensed merchants mentioned earlier and were either supplied with a vessel by the company or put in charge of chartering one in an Asian port. This was the era of the great sailing ships and many of them were used in the coolie trade.
The first direct shipment of coolies in 1845 was a French ship and captain but the trade increased by 1846-47 when the London based firm of Zuluetas & Co. working out of Amoy charted the Spanish ship the Oquendo as mentioned above. Captains and crews were often experienced as slavers and retained much of the same attitudes when dealing with indentured labor as their cargos. Ships hatches were barred and locked, barricades were erected between parts of the ships where coolies were kept separate from the captain and crew quarters. In some period of the trade, captains had the duty of conducting an interview with the coolie to determine if they voluntarily signed their contracts [esp. after 1855 Chinese Passenger Act] and to see if they were fit for filling the contract. Local Agents answered for the coolies so few captains heard any objections in such interviews. Most captains depended on crimp translators who reported what captains wasted to hear. As mentioned above, some crimps even had stand-in coolies for the interviews with the captains, the actual indentured worker replacing him after the interview was completed. Riots and mutinies on board were in the captain s hands and most dealt with those harshly. An example of this was the American vessel Waverly, that left Swatow for Callao, Peru in 1855 with 450 coolies on board. But soon the ship had to put into port in Manila because the captain had become sick and died. Port Authorities in Manila, not knowing the nature of his illness or death, quarantined the ship and moved it away from the main port area. Coolies revolted when they were told they were not allowed to go ashore and the acting first mate ordered the coolies below deck and locked the hatches. Twelve to fourteen hours later nearly 300 coolies were dead. In another example, the US vessel the Leonidas under Captain Wood, dealt harshly when a coolie riots broke out
below and spread to the upper deck. They attacked the Cpt. and his wife who was also on board. Wood killed their attacker overall, 189 others were killed. Clearly, not all who made the trip survived the passage and many arrived ill and weakened, unable to begin work immediately. Ships that carried them became know as floating hells. While British regulations required 12 square feet per man, these rules could not be enforced in Hong Kong resulting in 8 or less square feet per person. The voyage across the Pacific was long and difficult. Rations were few and medical care mostly non-existent. This human cargo experienced high rates of mortality. Two ships that left Macao for Callao in 1850 started with 750 coolies; by the time they landed there were only 304 still living, a loss of nearly 60%. These harsh conditions did meet with resistance. More than once Chinese mutinied against cruel captains. Only the loss of profit to Peruvian capitalists from reduced numbers of foreign workers resulted in improved conditions for the voyages by the mid-1850s. Conclusion Additional notes and bib.