COOLIE EMIGRATION

I have just mentioned Chinese emigration through Macau. It is worth examining this point and to this end I shall offer a summarised history of the so-called "coolie trade."

The emigration of Chinese men contracted mainly for field labour developed rapidly in Macau over a period of a few years. The government in the colony tolerated this situation and in its search for ways to minimise the abuses made of the system it issued successive and increasingly restrictive regulations and adopted severe measures. Officials were employed to check on how the trade was being conducted and establishments opened to ensure that the police could adhere to the strict commands issued to protect the Chinese emigrants from the malpractices to which they were subjected.

The efforts of the governors, for all that they were enthusiastic, were in vain. Emigration increased and along with it, ill-treatment and crimes against the emigrants. Candidates were tricked into emigrating, heaped into ships, left with almost nothing to eat, no air, no light, no space and then deposited in South America.

Catastrophes accumulated. The repeated, despicable violations and disgraceful abuses drew the attention of Europe to this new coolie trade. Governments which had not only tolerated but had actually encouraged Chinese emigration were later to call a halt to the trade, and public opinion finally exerted its natural and fair influence.

The crimes committed in the emigration trade were not ignored by the Portuguese government. As soon as coolie emigration began in Macau, the government of the colony issued regulations. The severity of the regulations increased in line with the abuses committed by the emigration agents, until finally the Portuguese government recognised that it could not eradicate the malpractices occuring outside Macau or put a stop to the violations which inevitably seem to go hand in hand with this trade. At this point, the Portuguese government decided to end contract emigration from Macau once and for all.

Chinese law prohibits emigration. All the same, emigration had been a constant factor in the empire and while the authorities did not ostensibly allow it they at least tolerated it and even regarded it as a way of solving some of the ills arising from overpopulation.

The Chinese are by nature an expansive race: despite all the repressive emigration laws, the Chinese carry on their providential mission to settle in Asia, America and even, in the not too distant future, Africa.

In 1845, once slavery had been abolished and the lack of manpower in the colonies was being felt, the British government started the coolie trade. A speculator transported the first shipment of contracted Chinese from Amoy to Bourbon Island. A trade which had started in 1845 with one hundred and eighty coolies grew year by year until two thousand and sixty nine coolies were exported in 1851. Callao also started receiving contracted emigrants and during the first half of 1852 fifteen thousand Chinese coolies disembarked in the abovementioned ports.

The official British agents wanted to promote emigration and at the same time minimise obstacles, but the British administration came up against two problems. The first was the difficulty in encouraging women to emigrate, as Chinese women abhorred the idea of emigration. This problem meant that coolie emigration never quite conformed to the views, habits and opinions of the British.

The other obstacle to the smooth and free running of the emigration trade was the absolute need for agents who would go to the mainland to round up emigrants. In order to alleviate these problems, the British government decided that agents would need to obtain a licence for the hefty sum of five thousand riales-of-eight and that they would be subject to fines and imprisonment if they disobeyed the regulations.

Similar measures were adopted in Macau in the hope that they would achieve the same results, but the situation continued unchanged, the measures ineffective.

By then, the criminal means employed by the agents to obtain large numbers of emigrants were being repeated. The fighting on board the coolie ships, the attempted uprisings and fires which were only put down by force, the high number of deaths on board, all made emigration even more repugnant.

The emigration of contracted labour through Macau began a few years after emigration had started in other Chinese ports. The coolies had gone to tropical countries at the prompting of agents interested in transporting manpower to these countries where there was a lack of workers. First, two Frenchmen and then a Macanese business man set the example in 1851. The first shipment of coolies amounted to two hundred and fifty men who left Macau on a Portuguese ship destined for Callao in Peru. Their contracts were for eight years with a monthly wage of four patacas.

The Viscount of Praia Grande, the Governor of Macau at the time, issued a regulation ordering that the government should be notified of the warehouses used to store the coolies and to establish regular health inspections. Later, they realised the agents would have to be controlled in order to ensure that emigration was not done under duress. Another regulation also defined the required conditions for the transportation ships.

When France and Great Britain were mounting an attack on China, they sent troops which gained control of Canton in 1857. Behind these disturbances lay the introduction of measures intended to regulate emigration. According to the regulations issued in Canton, a licence had to be obtained before opening an emigration agency; the rules for each agency had to be clearly written at the entrance to each warehouse; emigration inspectors could visit the warehouses to check whether each emigrant clearly understood the nature of the contract he was signing and to ensure that healthy and hygienic conditions were being provided for the emigrants; contracts could be signed only on two days each week; a list had to be made of the emigrants loaded on to each ship; the emigration agents had to. be registered, and so on.

In 1860, a regulation was issued in Macau creating an Emigration Inspectorate responsible for seeing that orders related to emigration were being observed. A Chinese interpreter was provided as an assistant. The superintendant had to attend the examinations held at the procurator's offices and sign the contracts along with the procurator. The superintendent was also responsible for registering emigrants in a ledger, for giving emigrants a copy of their contract and the necessary clarifications until they signed six days after registration. Once the men had signed their contract, they had to receive the stipulated advances and be transferred to the ships on which they would travel. Men under the age of twenty five could only be contracted with the consent of their parents.

The same regulation also established the terms of the contract. The rules for the warehouses and emigrant ships had to be approved by the government. The Portuguese could not go to China to hire men nor were Portuguese ships allowed to take emigrants to Macau or to any other part of China.

As the emigration trade grew, however, its drawbacks increased. In early 1862, the United States of America issued a law forbidding American citizens or foreigners residing in the country to participate in the coolie trade. Ships discovered contravening this were liable to confiscation and judgement in any court of law.

In 1868, the Governor of Macau produced a new regulation which gave the government more responsibility, created a warehouse for emigrants in the inspectorate and took care of the emigration agents' interests.

At around this time, the British minister to the Chinese government employed tactics which impeded emigration being done through Macau. In response to these intrigues, the Chinese government sent a memo to the vice-roy of Canton opposing emigration through Macau. The vice-roy in turn sent a letter to the governor of the Portuguese colony, pointing out that Mr. Wade had brought to their attention the irregularities in the contracts which were made "without due permission from the Chinese and foreign authorities and with no guarantee that the terms of the contract would be respected" and that this was frowned upon by foreign businessmen. In view of these suggestions by the British government, the government in Peking had reminded the vice-roy in an official letter that emigration was forbidden under Chinese law but because it was impossible to prevent it in all cases, a regulation had been made in 1866 which guaranteed the rights of emigrants. In the light of this letter, the vice-roy of Canton was letting the governor of Macau know that between 1863 and 1865 a few British and French businessmen had opened emigration agencies in Canton and Shantou under the control of Chinese and foreign commissioners, but that other nations which had not signed the treaty were not entitled to hire contract labour. He went on to point out that an agreement had been reached with the British and French government in 1866 in virtue of the treaty and that this agreement carried the approval of the Emperor. Since then other countries had been informed that these regulations would come into effect immediately and thus no foreign businessmen could come to Canton to open an emigration agency. In 1867 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs had notified him that, as there was no Chinese authority in Macau, foreign businessmen went there to hire clandestinely. Finally, the vice-roy said that the Chinese government had just notified all the foreign ambassadors that businessmen from countries which had not signed the treaty were forbidden from opening emigration agencies either in Macau or in Canton and that ships under the flags of these countries would also not be allowed to transport contract labour. Thus, businessmen from the countries which had signed would be free not only to contract settlers but also to open emigration agencies in Macau. The vice-roy ended his letter by stating that he had given strict orders to punish anybody who contravened the command of the Chinese government and that he trusted the governor of Macau would pass on the strictest orders to his subordinates for them to keep watch and should they find any foreign businessman with an emigration agency in Macau, or a native malefactor with a company for buying stolen men with a view to selling them as emigrants, to deal with them severely.

With all dignity, the governor rejected any attempt to diminish Macau's independence. The vice-roy's letter had no immediate effect but it did make the government in Peking more hostile towards emigration from Macau. Some months later, the viceroy of Canton wrote once more to the governor of Macau, insisting that he pay attention to his previous remarks and referring to the 1866 agreement. However, this agreement was void as it had never been ratified by the French and British governments.

Despite the constant, strict measures adopted by the government of Macau against the abuses of the emigration system, they still continued. One of them was that ships carrying the coolies were sailing under the flag of a country to which they did not belong. The governor of Macau ordained that coolies could only be carried in ships belonging to countries which had signed the treaty with China, or from the countries to which the coolies were being sent.

Facts reflected that the coolies continued to be duped. Moreover, crimes related to mutinies and fires on board the ships indicated that amongst the emigrants there were some pirates and criminals whose aim was to take over the ships once they were on the high seas.

In 1871 a committee was appointed to investigate how emigration was regulated and to propose steps which would guarantee the freedom of the coolies and their good treatment on board the ships.

The governor adopted some measures as a result of the findings of the committee. They were intended to examine the moral attitude of the agents, avoid contact between traffickers and emigrants being held in the Inspectorate or the agencies, make a record of the coolies who arrived in Macau on Chinese boats, inspect the emigrants on board and obtain a declaration from the captain stating that they were carrying neither suspected pirates nor emigrants who had been deceived. Finally, the measures were aimed at improving inspection of the coolie warehouses.

The successive measures adopted by Macau in the emigration trade call our attention to the fact that they were not actually concerned with anything other than inspection of the emigrants while they were being held in the warehouses and Inspectorate. They neither anticipated nor punished abuses committed by the agents while they were trafficking in Chinese territory, nor did they alter the basic conditions of the emigrants' contracts. The authorities hoped to avoid disrupting a business which they believed was vital to Macau's prosperity.

A new regulation was issued in 1872 by the Viscount of S. Januário, the governor at the time. This regulation repeated the orders given in the previous one, modifying some of the points and extending others. The regulation opened by stating that the Chinese were free to emigrate through Macau and that those who declared that they did not wish to do so should be repatriated.

Authorized agents who held a licence to contract emigrants in the permitted ports would have to report the number of warehouses they had and the number of emigrants which they intended to hold in them, as well as the number of assistants they had in order for the authorities to inspect the hygiene of the warehouses and the capacity of the assistants. The assistants had to pay surety of one thousand patacas and were regarded as being responsible for their actions, the authorities being entitled to prevent them from working.

The warehouses had to be open four hours each day for inspection and for the emigrants to receive advice regarding their contracts. Coolies were not to be taken into the Inspectorate until they had been examined by doctors, their contracts read to them and explained to them, and had been examined by the superintendant. Once those who wished to emigrate had been rounded up they were to have no contact with employees from the warehouses. Traffickers, even if they wished to emigrate, were to be kept separate from the coolies. The contracts were signed on the second day before a committee. Coolies who did not wish to emigrate were to be repatriated. This regulation maintained the terms of the contracts with some small changes.

The lack of explicit consent or any cooperation on the part of the Chinese authorities was a major reason why the abuses committed by emigration agents went unchecked. The fact that our treaty with China had not been ratified, the lack of an agreement regarding emigration and the lack of a Chinese representative in Macau, made it impossible to control the actions of the agents in a rigorous and efficient manner.

Although it had been proved that the ill-treatment meted out by the agents was unpalatable in the extreme, and that this made emigration even more repugnant, the fact remains that no mention was made of this in the 1872 regulation.

The shortcomings in the regulations could not be concealed from the Viscount of S. Januário and he modified them by means of subsequent measures intended to improve the emigrant's lot and protect the honour of the Portuguese colony from the violent accusations flying from the outraged opinions of the outside world.

In 1873, the governor of Macau ordained that a clause guaranteeing a return passage once the contract had been completed should be included in the contracts for emigrant labour.

We can see, then, just how deep-rooted were the vices which accompained the emigration trade. These vices continued in spite of the many measures taken by the government of Macau to combat them. Before they arrived in Macau and came under the control of the authorities, whose job it was to regulate emigration, and even when they were being held in the Inspectorate of the warehouses, the coolies, excited, deluded, fascinated, oppressed, held by promises or threats, driven by the hope of improving their fate, or the terror or returning to poverty, had no understanding of what would be in their best interests. They could not uncover the truth, nor could they resist those who were trading them as if they were no more than common merchandise. Frequently, they had no understanding of the contracts they were signing, nor were they particularly worried about a future which was presented to them as prosperous and free from danger. In addition to the abuses preceding the contracting, there were subsequent failures which made this trade even more dreadful.

Hygiene, lack of space, light, air, and the quality of the food served on board the emigrant ships were all dealt with in regulations from Macau. It is certain, however, that the lack of action once the ships were on the high seas meant that regulations issued in a humanitarian spirit were ignored. Mortality on board the coolie ships on their long voyages to America was so high that it can be assumed that not even the most basic requirements for hygiene were respected, nor was the health of unfortunate emigrants taken into consideration.

In documents presented to the British Parliament in 1855, statistics for emigration to Peru between 1843 and 1855 were revealed. Of the seven thousand, three hundred and fifty six emigrants who had embarked, only four thousand, seven hundred and fifty four arrived at their destination. The proportion of corpses taken to the port of destination by the coolie ships was around ten per cent.

In another document of 1858, there are statistics concerning Chinese workers in Cuba from the 1st of January, 1847 until the 31st of December, 1857. These show that twenty three thousand, nine hundred and twenty eight emigrants left China while twenty thousand, five hundred and eighty six arrived at their destination. Three thousand, three hundred and forty two died on the voyage, over fourteen per cent of the original cargo.

Information from our own consuls confirms this high mortality rate. It was not only this which made the coolie trade so repellent, however. There were also fires, robberies, violence and killings on board some ships.

In the report leading up to the last regulations of 1872, it was stated that: "from 1856, 414 ships carrying settlers left Macau and only 5 failed to reach their destination as they had been looted by the emigrants." This proportion of five catastrophes for just over four hundred ships was considered small. When we contemplate it with due respect it is both extraordinary and frightful. The violence and mutinies perpetrated by the coolies were almost always provoked by either the barbaric treatment they received on board the ships, or by the presence of criminal elements in their midst. Each of these disasters reveals the anxieties, miseries, oppression, hunger and tyrannising suffered by hundreds of men, and the extent of vice in the emigration system in which pernicious malefactors could commit even more atrocious crimes.

By 1873, these multiple and varied reasons led me, in my capacity as Minister of the Navy and the Colonies, to forbid contract emigration from Macau. The governor of Macau was informed of this government resolution by telegram on the 20th of December. On the 20th of January, the Viscount of S. Januário issued an administrative rule which set the 27th of March, 1874 as the date on which emigration would end, once and for all.

Two coolies, one of them smoking an opium pipe, beside a sedan chair in a Hong Kong street (published in "The Graphic, 8th February, 1873 and reproduced in The Hong Kong Illustrated Views and News 1840-1890).

S. Domingos Church, Macau - George Chinnery. Ink on paper, 22 X 19.5cm (Luís de Camões Museum). Chinese smoking opium, gamblers, street-vendors converting their benches into gambling tables, soup stalls, peasants with cattle, ladies wearing the "dó" on their way to church followed by a servant carrying a parasol - the Christian quarter livened up by the hustle and bustle of the inhabitants of the Chinese quarter, which bordered with the rear section of S. Domingos Church.

* João de Andrade Corvo (1824-1890) was an important figure in XIXth century Portugal. He was man of letters and a scientist and completed studies in Mathematics and Natural Sciences as well as Medicine and Engineering. He became a member of the government and was appointed minister on several occassions (Public Works. Commerce and Industry, Foreign Affairs, and the Navy and Colonies). His literary talents were reflected in his output of poetry, theatre and historical novels, the latter being a particularly popular genre during the Romantic period. His book Estudos sobre As Províncias Portuguesas (Academia Real das Ciencias, 1887) included a study of Macau. We are publishing an extract in which the then minister of the Navy and the Colonies presents an intellectually rigorous analysis of the coolie trade. Some slight alterations have been made to the text for editorial purposes.