165-407: Coolie (also spelled koelie , kouli , khuli , khulie , kuli , cooli , cooly , or quli ) is a pejorative term used for low-wage labourers , typically those of Indian or Chinese descent. The word coolie was first used in the 16th century by European traders across Asia. In the 18th century, the term more commonly referred to migrant Indian indentured labourers . In the 19th century, during
330-600: A cheap source of manpower. As a consequence, a large-scale trade of primarily Indian and Chinese indentured labourers began in the 1820s to fill this need. In 1838, 396 South Asian workers arrived in British Guiana, and such a stream of migrant labour would continue until the First World War . Other European nations, especially colonial powers such as France, Spain, and Portugal, soon followed suit, especially as Britain, through several treaties such as Strangford Treaty and
495-467: A cursed people, Africa and slavery, which laid the ideological groundwork for justifying the transatlantic slave trade. The term "race" was used by the English beginning in the 16th century and referred to family, lineage, and breed. The idea of race continued to develop further through the centuries and was used as a justification for the continuation of the slave trade and racial discrimination. Slavery
660-495: A developed factor for enslaving people; nonetheless, by the 15th century, Europeans used both race and religion as a justification to enslave sub-Saharan Africans. An increase of enslaved African people from Senegal occurred in the Iberian Peninsula in the 15th century. As the number of Senegalese slaves grew larger Europeans developed new terminologies that associated slavery with skin color. The Spanish city of Seville had
825-560: A dollar would be taken from coolies every month in order to pay off their debts. Workers from China were mainly transported to work in Peru and Cuba . However, many Chinese labourers worked in British colonies such as Singapore , New South Wales , Jamaica , British Guiana (now Guyana ), British Malaya , Trinidad and Tobago , British Honduras (now Belize ), as well as in the Dutch colonies within
990-550: A family clan. In contrast, European slaves were chattel, or property, who were stripped of their rights. The cycle of slavery was perpetual; children of slaves would, by default, also be slaves." Millions of enslaved people from some parts of Africa were exported to states in Africa, Europe, and Asia prior to the European colonization of the Americas . The Trans-Saharan slave trade across
1155-527: A form of protection against enslavement. African resistance movements were carried out in every phase of the slave trade to resisting marches to the slave holding stations, resistance at the slave coast, and resistance on slave ships. For example, aboard the slave ship Clare, the enslaved Africans revolted and drove the crew from the vessel and took control of the ship and liberated themselves and landed near Cape Coast Castle in present-day Ghana in 1729. On other slave ships enslaved Africans sunk ships, killed
1320-670: A fort for the slave trade at the Bay of Arguin . In the Middle Ages , religion and not race was a determining factor for who was considered to be a legitimate target of slavery. While Christians did not enslave Christians and Muslims did not enslave Muslims, both allowed the enslavement of people they regarded to be heretics or insufficiently correct in their religion, which allowed Catholic Christians to enslave Orthodox Christians, and Sunni Muslims to enslave Shia Muslims; similarly both Christians and Muslims approved of enslaving Pagans , who came to be
1485-448: A glorious and advantageous trade this is ... It is the hinge on which all the trade of this globe moves." Meanwhile, it became a business for privately owned enterprises , reducing international complications. After 1790, by contrast, captains typically checked out slave prices in at least two of the major markets of Kingston, Havana, and Charleston, South Carolina (where prices by then were similar) before deciding where to sell. For
1650-568: A justification to Christianize them. In 1452, Pope Nicholas V issued papal bull Dum Diversas which gave the King of Portugal the right to enslave non-Christians to perpetual slavery. The clause included Muslims in West Africa and legitimized the slave trade under the Catholic church. In 1454, Pope Nicholas issued Romanus Pontifex . "Written as a logical sequel to Dum Diversas, Romanus Pontifex allowed
1815-411: A labour force, and maintained better hygiene habits in comparison to Indian labourers, who were viewed as being lower in status and treated as children who required constant supervision. Unlike slavery, coolie labour was (in theory) under contract, consensual, paid, and temporary, with the coolie able to regain complete freedom after their term of service. Regulations were put in place as early as 1837 by
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#17328549320891980-542: A maritime route to "the Indies" (India), where they could trade for luxury goods such as spices without having to obtain these items from Middle Eastern Islamic traders. During the first wave of European colonization , although many of the initial Atlantic naval explorations were led by the Iberian conquistadors , members of many European nationalities were involved, including sailors from Spain , Portugal , France , England ,
2145-499: A million indentured labourers were present on the island. They worked on sugar estates, factories, in transport, and on construction sites. In 1837, the British East India Company issued a set of regulations for the trade. The rules provided for each labourer to be personally authorised for transportation by an officer designated by the company, limited the length of service to five years subject to voluntary renewal, made
2310-496: A more profitable source of labour and encouraging their use. Historian David Eltis argues that Africans were enslaved because of cultural beliefs in Europe that prohibited the enslavement of cultural insiders, even if there was a source of labour that could be enslaved (such as convicts, prisoners of war and vagrants). Eltis argues that traditional beliefs existed in Europe against enslaving Christians (few Europeans not being Christian at
2475-510: A much greater extent than their Indian counterparts, and consequently, there was a much higher level of Chinese emigration during this period. The trade flourished from 1847 to 1854 without incident, until reports began to surface of the mistreatment of the workers in Cuba and Peru. As the British government had political and legal responsibility for many of the ports involved – including Amoy – such ports were immediately closed. Despite these closures,
2640-513: A new and larger market for the already existing trade. While those held as slaves in their own region of Africa could hope to escape, those shipped away had little chance of returning to their homeland. The Atlantic slave trading of Africans began in 1441 with two Portuguese explorers, Nuno Tristão and António Gonçalves. Tristão and Gonçalves sailed to Mauritania in West Africa and kidnapped twelve Africans and returned to Portugal and presented
2805-577: A pejorative, there remain LGBT individuals who are uncomfortable with having this term applied to them. The use of the racial slur nigger (specifically the - a variant ) by African Americans is often viewed as another act of reclamation, though much like the latter in the LGBT movement, there exists a vocal subset of people with Sub-Saharan African descent that object to the use of the word under any circumstances. Atlantic slave trade The Atlantic slave trade or transatlantic slave trade involved
2970-418: A position to call the shots." The earliest known use of the phrase began in the 1830s, and the earliest written evidence was found in an 1836 published book by F. H. Rankin. Portuguese coastal raiders found that slave raiding was too costly and often ineffective and opted for established commercial relations. The colonial South Atlantic and Caribbean economies were particularly dependent on slave labour for
3135-868: A preferred and comparatively profitable target of the slave trade in the Middle Ages: Spain and Portugal were provided with non-Catholic slaves from Eastern Europe via the Balkan slave trade and the Black Sea slave trade . In the 15th century, when the Balkan slave trade was taken over by the Ottoman Empire and the Black Sea slave trade was supplanted by the Crimean slave trade and closed off from Europe, Spain and Portugal replaced this source of slaves by importing slaves first from
3300-460: A proto-racial law. It prevented people with Jewish and Muslim ancestry from settling in the New World. Limpieza de sangre did not guarantee rights for Jews or Muslims who converted to Catholicism . Jews and Muslims who converted to Catholicism were respectively called conversos and moriscos . Some Jews and Muslims converted to Christianity hoping it would grant them rights under Spanish laws. After
3465-404: A severe minority, their morality was questioned and the actions of men as a result of having so few women was blamed on the women. Between 1858 and 1859, laws were put into place stating that the ratio of men to women could not exceed 2:1, whereas before it was 3:1. However, there continued to be a severe shortage of women. This gave women a new sense of power when it came to choosing a partner. With
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#17328549320893630-584: A shortage of women, it became the responsibility of the male suitor to provide a hefty dowry to a woman's father, regardless of what caste she came from. Unfortunately, this also put women in a very vulnerable position, especially when alone. Rape was a common occurrence, and there were accounts of women being bound and gagged in their own homes by men. Between 1872 and 1900, it was reported that 87 women were murdered, with 65 of those being married women who were accused of being unfaithful. Pejorative term A pejorative word, phrase, slur , or derogatory term
3795-408: A single concept, leaping from word to word in a phenomenon known as the euphemism treadmill , for example as in the successive pejoration of the terms bog-house , privy-house , latrine , water closet , toilet , bathroom , and restroom (US English). When a term begins as pejorative and eventually is adopted in a non-pejorative sense, this is called melioration or amelioration . One example
3960-587: A term of service. In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act barred the entry of any Chinese labourer to the U.S. Despite attempts to restrict the influx of cheap labour from China, beginning in the 1870s Chinese workers helped construct a vast network of levees in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta . These levees made thousands of acres of fertile marshlands available for agricultural production. Although Chinese workers contributed to
4125-596: A total of up to half a million Chinese workers had been exported. However, by 1890, there were still newspaper reports of coolie labour being used in Madagascar. The term coolie was also applied to Chinese workers recruited for contracts on cacao plantations in German Samoa . German planters went to great lengths to secure access to their coolie labour supply from China. In 1908, a Chinese commissioner, Lin Shu Fen, reported on
4290-483: A transition between slaves and free labour. They were neither free nor slaves. Indentured Chinese servants also laboured in the sugarcane fields of Cuba well after the 1884 abolition of slavery in the country. Two scholars of Chinese labour in Cuba, Juan Pastrana and Juan Pérez de la Riva , substantiated horrific conditions of Chinese coolies in Cuba and stated that coolies were slaves in all but name. Researcher Denise Helly believes that despite their slave-like treatment,
4455-514: A treaty with the United Kingdom on the recruitment of contract workers in 1870. In Mauritius, the Indian population is now demographically dominant, with Indian festivals being celebrated as national holidays . This system prevailed until the early twentieth century. Increasing focus on the brutalities and abuses of the trade by the sensationalist media of the time incited public outrage and led to
4620-453: A warm climate, no man will labour for himself who can make another labour for him. This is so true, that of the proprietors of slaves a very small proportion indeed are ever seen to labour." In a 2015 paper, economist Elena Esposito argued that the enslavement of Africans in colonial America was attributable to the fact that the American south was sufficiently warm and humid for malaria to thrive;
4785-486: A way that they became dependent on the plantation owners so that in practice they remained there long after their contracts expired; possibly as little as 10% of the coolies actually returned to their original country of origin. Colonial legislation was also passed to severely limit their freedoms; in Mauritius, a compulsory pass system was instituted to enable their movements to be easily tracked. Conditions were much worse in
4950-449: Is a word or grammatical form expressing a negative or disrespectful connotation, a low opinion, or a lack of respect toward someone or something. It is also used to express criticism , hostility , or disregard. Sometimes, a term is regarded as pejorative in some social or ethnic groups but not in others or may be originally pejorative but later adopt a non-pejorative sense (or vice versa ) in some or all contexts. The word pejorative
5115-500: Is a form of human slavery, and is forever prohibited in this State, and all contracts for coolie labour shall be void." In 1938, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt used the term in one of his fireside chats (Number 13, 24 July 1938) while telling a story about "two Chinese coolies" arguing in a crowd. In South America, Chinese indentured labourers worked in Peru's silver mines and coastal industries (i.e., guano , sugar, and cotton) from
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5280-491: Is derived from a Late Latin past participle stem of peiorare , meaning "to make worse", from peior "worse". In historical linguistics , the process of an inoffensive word becoming pejorative is a form of semantic drift known as pejoration . An example of pejoration is the shift in meaning of the word silly from meaning that a person was happy and fortunate to meaning that they are foolish and unsophisticated. The process of pejoration can repeat itself around
5445-677: Is documented in the Slave Trade Debates of England in the early 19th century: "All the old writers ... concur in stating not only that wars are entered into for the sole purpose of making slaves, but that they are fomented by Europeans, with a view to that object." People living around the Niger River would be transported from these markets to the coast and sold in European trading ports, in exchange for muskets and manufactured goods such as cloth or alcohol. The European demand for slaves provided
5610-603: Is generally understood that the term comes from the Hindi and Telugu word kulī ( कुली ), (కూలి) , meaning "day-labourer", which is probably associated with the Urdu word quli ( قلی ), meaning "slave". The Urdu word is thought to come from the Tamil word kulī ("hire" or "hireling"). The word kūli , meaning "wages", is present throughout the Dravidian language family, with the exception of
5775-559: Is now Sierra Leone and took 300 people to sell in the Caribbean. In 1564, he repeated the process, this time using Queen Elizabeth's own ship, Jesus of Lübeck , and numerous English voyages ensued. Around 1560, the Portuguese began a regular slave trade to Brazil. From 1580 until 1640, Portugal was temporarily united with Spain in the Iberian Union . Most Portuguese contractors who obtained
5940-632: Is preferable to life on a par with the Chinese." In 1868, the Burlingame Treaty would ensure certain protections for Chinese immigrants in the U.S. and emphasise that any Chinese immigration to the U.S. must be free and voluntary, reaffirming that "coolies", being unfree, were unwelcome and prohibited from entering the U.S. In 1875, Congress passed the Page Act , which prohibited the bringing of any Chinese subjects without their consent in order to hold them for
6105-492: Is the shift in meaning of the word nice from meaning a person was foolish to meaning that a person is pleasant. When performed deliberately, it is described as reclamation or reappropriation . Examples of a word that has been reclaimed by portions of the community that it targets is queer , faggot and dyke which began being re-appropriated as a positive descriptor in the early 1990s by activist groups. However, due to its history and – in some regions – continued use as
6270-585: The Americas and enslave Native Americans and Africans. Inter Caetera also settled a dispute between Portugal and Spain over those lands. The declaration included a north–south divide 100 leagues West of the Cape Verde Islands and gave the Spanish Crown exclusive rights to travel and trade west of that line. In Portugal and Spain people had been enslaved because of their religious identity, race had not been
6435-543: The Atlantic slave trade and slavery itself, which for centuries had served as the preferred mode of labour in European colonies in the Americas . The British were the first to experiment with coolie labour when, in 1806, two hundred Chinese labourers were transported to the colony of Trinidad to work on the plantations there. The "Trinidad experiment" was not a success, with only twenty to thirty labourers remaining in Trinidad by
6600-578: The Atlantic slave trade . Mortality was very high; it is estimated that from 1847 to 1859, the average mortality rate for coolies aboard ships to Cuba was 15.2%, and losses among ships to Peru were as high as 40% in the 1850s, and 30.44% from 1860 to 1863. Coolies were sold and taken to work in plantations or mines with very bad living and working conditions. The duration of a contract was typically five to eight years, but many coolies did not live out their term of service due to hard labour and mistreatment. Survivors were often forced to remain in servitude beyond
6765-622: The British authorities in India to safeguard these principles of voluntary, contractual work and safe, sanitary transportation. The Chinese government also made efforts to secure the well-being of their nation's workers, with representatives being sent to relevant governments around the world. Some Western abolitionists saw coolie labour as paving the way towards abolition , to gradually and peacefully replace African slave labour without loss of profit. However, other abolitionist groups and individuals – such as
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6930-411: The British colonial era , the term was adopted for the transportation and employment of Asian labourers via employment contracts on sugar plantations formerly worked by enslaved Africans. The word has had a variety of negative implications. In modern-day English, it is usually regarded as offensive. In India, its country of origin, it is considered a derogatory slur. In many respects it is similar to
7095-537: The Caribbean , Mauritius , Fiji , and the Malay Peninsula . In modern Indian popular culture, coolies have often been portrayed as working-class heroes or anti-heroes. Indian films celebrating coolies include Deewaar (1975), Coolie (1983), and several films titled Coolie No. 1 (released in 1991 , 1995 , and 2020 ). A new Tamil movie titled Coolie starring Rajinikanth is set to release in 2025. It
7260-631: The Chinese Engineering and Mining Company was instrumental in supplying Chinese coolie labour to South African mines at the request of mine owners, who considered such labour cheaper than native African and white labour. The horrendous conditions suffered by Indian coolie labourers in South Africa led some politicians in the British Parliament to question the coolie system. In 1866, the British, French and Chinese governments agreed to mitigate
7425-517: The Dutch East Indies and Suriname . The first shipment of Chinese labourers was to the British colony of Trinidad in 1806 "in an attempt to establish a settlement of free peasant cultivators and labourers". On many of the voyages, the labourers were transported on the same vessels that had been used to transport African slaves in previous years. The coolie slave trade run by American captains and local agents, mainly consisting of debt slavery ,
7590-625: The Fante coalition and fought African and European slave raiders and protected themselves from capture and enslavement. Chief Tomba was born in 1700 and his adopted father was a general from the Jalonke-speaking people who fought against the slave trade. Tomba became ruler of the Baga people in present-day Guinea Bissau in West Africa and made alliances with nearby African villages against African and European slave traders. His efforts were unsuccessful: Tomba
7755-634: The Guinea Coast and left with a few slaves. In 1564, Hawkin's son John Hawkins , sailed to the Guinea Coast and his voyage was supported by Queen Elizabeth I . John later turned to piracy and stole 300 Africans from a Spanish slave ship after failures in Guinea trying to capture Africans as most of his men died after fights with the local Africans. As historian John Thornton remarked, "the actual motivation for European expansion and for navigational breakthroughs
7920-659: The Italian states , and the Netherlands . This diversity led Thornton to describe the initial "exploration of the Atlantic" as "a truly international exercise, even if many of the dramatic discoveries were made under the sponsorship of the Iberian monarchs". That leadership later gave rise to the myth that "the Iberians were the sole leaders of the exploration". European overseas expansion led to
8085-724: The Mamluk Sultanate (1258–1517). The Atlantic slave trade was not the only slave trade from Africa; as Elikia M'bokolo wrote in Le Monde diplomatique : The African continent was bled of its human resources via all possible routes. Across the Sahara, through the Red Sea, from the Indian Ocean ports and across the Atlantic. At least ten centuries of slavery for the benefit of the Muslim countries (from
8250-562: The Netherlands , the United States, and Denmark . Several had established outposts on the African coast, where they purchased slaves from local African leaders. These slaves were managed by a factor , who was established on or near the coast to expedite the shipping of slaves to the New World. Slaves were imprisoned in a factory while awaiting shipment. Current estimates are that about 12 million to 12.8 million Africans were shipped across
8415-505: The Opium Wars , as well as the resulting political and economic instability, to broker deals for "contracted" workers. Anglophone capitalists referred to the opium trade and captive Chinese labour as "poison and pigs". Portuguese Macao was the center of coolie slavery: it was described as "the only real business" in Macao from 1848 to 1873, generating enormous profits for the Portuguese until it
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#17328549320898580-449: The Saracens ", claimed that due to the curse imposed upon Black people , they would inevitably remain permanently subjugated by Arabs and other Muslims . He wrote that the fact that so many Africans had been enslaved even by the heretical Muslims was supposed proof of their inferiority. Through these and other writings, European writers established a hitherto unheard of connection between
8745-457: The Treaty of Paris of 1814 , also pressured other nations to abolish their involvement in the Atlantic slave trade. In most European colonies, the importation of Asian labourers began in earnest after the abolition of slavery. However, in some colonies, such as Cuba , slavery would not end until 1886, about forty years after coolies were introduced. A number of contemporary and modern historians noted
8910-486: The asiento between 1580 and 1640 were conversos . For Portuguese merchants, many of whom were " New Christians " or their descendants, the union of crowns presented commercial opportunities in the slave trade to Spanish America. Until the middle of the 17th century, Mexico was the largest single market for slaves in Spanish America. While the Portuguese were directly involved in trading enslaved peoples to Brazil,
9075-492: The caravel , resulted in ships being better equipped to deal with the tidal currents, and could begin traversing the Atlantic Ocean; the Portuguese set up a Navigator's School (although there is much debate about whether it existed and if it did, just what it was). Between 1600 and 1800, approximately 300,000 sailors engaged in the slave trade visited West Africa. In doing so, they came into contact with societies living along
9240-586: The demarcation line between the Spanish and Portuguese empire, but this was against the WIC-charter". The Royal African Company usually refused to deliver slaves to Spanish colonies, though they did sell them to all comers from their factories in Kingston, Jamaica and Bridgetown, Barbados . In 1682, Spain allowed governors from Havana, Porto Bello, Panama , and Cartagena, Colombia to procure slaves from Jamaica. By
9405-456: The sugar plantations on the Azores , Madeira , Canary, and Cape Verde islands . Europeans participated in African enslavement because of their need for labor, profit, and religious motives. Upon discovering new lands through their naval explorations, European colonisers soon began to migrate to and settle in lands outside their native continent. Off the coast of Africa, European migrants, under
9570-466: The " Old World " ( Afro-Eurasia ) and the " New World " (the Americas). For centuries, tidal currents had made ocean travel particularly difficult and risky for the ships that were then available. Thus, there had been very little, if any, maritime contact between the peoples living in these continents. In the 15th century, however, new European developments in seafaring technologies, such as the invention of
9735-526: The "discovery" of new lands across the Atlantic, Spain did not want Jews and Muslims immigrating to the Americas because the Spanish Crown worried Muslims and non-Christians might introduce Islam and other religions to Native Americans. The law also led to the enslavement of Jews and Muslims, prevented Jews from entering the country and from joining the military, universities and other civil services. Although Jewish conversos and Muslims experienced religious and racial discrimination, some also participated in
9900-418: The 1620s. The Portuguese encroached onto Mbundu lands to expand their mission of trading slaves and establishing a settlement. Nzinga allowed sanctuary to runaway slaves in her nation and organized a military called kilombo against the Portuguese. Nzinga formed alliances with other rival African nations and led an army against the Portuguese slave traders in a thirty-year war. Historians have widely debated
10065-703: The 1690s, the English were shipping the most slaves from West Africa. By the 18th century, Portuguese Angola had become again one of the principal sources of the Atlantic slave trade. After the end of the War of the Spanish Succession , as part of the provisions of the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) , the Asiento was granted to the South Sea Company . Despite the South Sea Bubble , the British maintained this position during
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#173285493208910230-399: The 16th century that led to Africa being underdeveloped in his own time. These ideas were supported by other historians, including Ralph Austen (1987). This idea of an unequal relationship was contested by John Thornton (1998), who argued that "the Atlantic slave trade was not nearly as critical to the African economy as these scholars believed" and that "African manufacturing [at this period]
10395-415: The 1800s. Although there were African nations that participated and profited from the Atlantic slave trade, many African nations resisted such as the Djola and Balanta . Some African nations organized into military resistance movements and fought African slave raiders and European slave traders entering their villages. For example, the Akan , Etsi, Fetu, Eguafo, Agona , and Asebu people organized into
10560-405: The 1820s. The first side of the triangle was the export of goods from Europe to Africa. A number of African kings and merchants took part in the trading of enslaved people from 1440 to about 1833. For each captive, the African rulers would receive a variety of goods from Europe. These included guns, ammunition, alcohol, indigo dyed Indian textiles, and other factory-made goods. The second leg of
10725-555: The 1820s. However, such efforts inspired Sir John Gladstone , one of the earliest proponents of coolie labour, to seek out coolies for his sugar plantations in British Guiana in the hopes of replacing his Afro-Caribbean labour force after the abolition of slavery there in 1833 . Social and political pressure led to the abolition of slavery throughout the British Empire in 1833, with other European nations eventually following suit. Labour-intensive work in European colonies, such as those involving plantations and mines, were left without
10890-409: The 1866 reforms, the scale of abuse and conditions of near slavery did not get any better – if anything they deteriorated. In the early 1870s, an increased media exposure of the trade led to a public outcry, and the British, as well as the Chinese government, put pressure on the Portuguese colonial authorities in Macau to bring the trade there to an end; this was ultimately achieved in 1874. By that time,
11055-415: The 18th century, becoming the biggest shippers of slaves across the Atlantic. It is estimated that more than half of the entire slave trade took place during the 18th century, with the Portuguese, British, and French being the main carriers of nine out of ten slaves abducted in Africa. At the time, slave trading was regarded as crucial to Europe's maritime economy, as noted by one English slave trader: "What
11220-450: The African rulers to trade as slaves for European consumer goods. Also, Europeans shifted the location of disembarkation points for trade along the African coast to follow military conflicts in West-Central Africa. In areas of Africa where slavery was not prevalent, European slave traders worked and negotiated with African rulers on their terms for trade, and African rulers refused to supply European demands. Africans and Europeans profited from
11385-406: The Asian population was soon a major component of the island demographic. Starting in 1879, many Indians were transported to Fiji to work on the sugarcane plantations. Many of them chose to stay after their term of indenture elapsed, and today their descendants account for about 40% of the total population. Indian workers were also imported into the Dutch colony of Surinam after the Dutch signed
11550-432: The Atlantic over a span of 400 years. The number purchased by the traders was considerably higher, as the passage had a high death rate, with between 1.2 and 2.4 million dying during the voyage, and millions more in seasoning camps in the Caribbean after arrival in the New World. Millions of people also died as a result of slave raids, wars, and during transport to the coast for sale to European slave traders. Near
11715-462: The Atlantic slave trade through Futa Toro , present-day Senegal . Abdul Kader Khan and Futa Toro nation resisted French slave traders and colonizers who wanted to enslave Africans and Muslims from Futa Toro. Other forms of resistance against the Atlantic slave trade by African nations was migrating to different areas in West Africa such as swamps and lake regions to escape slave raids. In West Africa, Efik slave dealers participated in slave dealing as
11880-506: The Atlantic. From 1525, slaves were transported directly from the Portuguese colony of Sao Tomé across the Atlantic to Hispaniola . A burial ground in Campeche , Mexico, suggests enslaved Africans had been brought there not long after Hernán Cortés completed the subjugation of Aztec and Mayan Mexico in 1519. The graveyard had been in use from approximately 1550 to the late 17th century. In 1562, John Hawkins captured Africans in what
12045-580: The British Anti-Slavery Society and the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society , along with American abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison – were highly critical of coolie labour. Proslavery advocates, particularly in the Southern United States , condemned coolie labour but used it to argue against the abolition of American slavery , claiming the latter was more "humane" than the former. In practice, however, as many opponents of
12210-462: The British authorities to regulate and mitigate the worst abuses. Workers were regularly checked up on by health inspectors , and they were vetted before transportation to ensure that they were suitably healthy and fit to be able to endure the rigours of labour. Children under the age of 15 were not allowed to be transported from their parents under any circumstances. The first campaign in England against
12375-601: The Caribbean islands Curaçao , Jamaica and Martinique , as European nations built up economically slave-dependent colonies in the New World. In 1672, the Royal Africa Company was founded. In 1674, the New West India Company became deeper involved in slave trade. From 1677, the Compagnie du Sénégal , used Gorée to house the slaves . The Spanish proposed to get the slaves from Cape Verde , located closer to
12540-475: The Chinese coolies who arrived in Peru between 1849 and 1874 died within the contract period. In 1860, it was calculated that of the 4,000 coolies brought to the Chinchas since the trade began, not one had survived. Because of these unbearable conditions, Chinese coolies often revolted against their Ko-Hung bosses and foreign company bosses at ports of departure, on ships, and in foreign lands. The coolies were put in
12705-535: The Dutch who invested in the British West Indies and Dutch Brazil producing sugar. After the Iberian Union fell apart, Spain prohibited Portugal from directly engaging in the slave trade as a carrier. According the Treaty of Münster the slave trade was opened for the traditional enemies of Spain, losing a large share of the trade to the Dutch, French, and English. For 150 years, Spanish transatlantic traffic
12870-530: The European Catholic nations to expand their dominion over 'discovered' land. Possession of non-Christian lands would be justified along with the enslavement of native, non-Christian 'pagans' in Africa and the 'New World.'" Dum Diversas and Romanus Pontifex may have had an influence with the creation of doctrines supportive of empire building. In 1493, the Doctrine of Discovery issued by Pope Alexander VI ,
13035-476: The European mainland. A vast amount of labour was needed to create and sustain plantations that required intensive labour to grow, harvest, and process prized tropical crops. Western Africa (part of which became known as "the Slave Coast "), Angola and nearby Kingdoms and later Central Africa , became the source for enslaved people to meet the demand for labour. The basic reason for the constant shortage of labour
13200-524: The French colonies of Réunion, Guadeloupe, and Martinique, where workers were 'systematically overworked' and abnormally high mortality rates were recorded for those working in the mines. Generally, Indian coolies were noted to have higher mortality rates as a whole, and were less likely to be able to return home. Companies would often promise good food, durable clothing, adequate housing, safe passage, and schools. However, these promises were rarely kept, leading to
13365-599: The Grenadines , Grenada , Saint Kitts and Nevis , British Honduras , Barbados , the rest of the British West Indies , and British Malaya . The Dutch shipped workers to labour on the plantations on Surinam , the Netherlands Antilles , and the Dutch East Indies . The French shipped labourers to Guadeloupe , Martinique , French Guiana , the rest of the French West Indies , and Réunion . A system of agents
13530-590: The Indian Ocean to the Gulf of Aden . Others were carried across the Red Sea to Arabia and Aden , with sick slaves being thrown overboard, or they were marched across the Sahara desert via the Trans-Saharan slave trade route to the Nile , many of them dying from exposure or swollen feet along the way. However, estimates are imprecise, which can affect comparison between different slave trades. Two rough estimates by scholars of
13695-526: The Kongolese King Afonso I seized a French vessel and its crew for illegally trading on his coast. In addition, Afonso complained to the king of Portugal that Portuguese slave traders continued to kidnap his people, which was causing depopulation in his kingdom. Queen Nzinga (Nzinga Mbande) fought against the expansion of the Portuguese slave trade into Mbundu people's lands in Central Africa in
13860-903: The New World Europeans received tobacco, potatoes, tomatoes, and maize. Other items and commodities becoming important in global trade were the tobacco, sugarcane, and cotton crops of the Americas, along with the gold and silver brought from the American continent not only to Europe but elsewhere in the Old World. By the 15th century, slavery had existed in the Iberian Peninsula (Portugal and Spain) of Western Europe throughout recorded history. The Roman Empire had established its system of slavery in ancient times. Historian Benjamin Isaac suggests proto-racism existed in ancient times among Greco-Roman people . Racial prejudices were based on dehumanizing
14025-652: The North Dravidian branch. It is also thought that the Hindi word qulī could have originated from the name of a Gujarati aboriginal tribe or caste. The Chinese word kǔlì ( 苦力 ) is an instance of phono-semantic matching that literally translates to "bitter strength" but is more commonly understood as "hard labour". In 1727, Engelbert Kämpfer described coolies as dock labourers who would unload Dutch merchant ships at Nagasaki in Japan. Merriam-Webster classifies
14190-526: The Portuguese to "tap into" the "well-developed commercial economy in Africa ... without engaging in hostilities". "Peaceful trade became the rule all along the African coast", although there were some rare exceptions when acts of aggression led to violence. For instance, Portuguese traders attempted to conquer the Bissagos Islands in 1535. In 1571, Portugal, supported by the Kingdom of Kongo , took control of
14355-819: The Sahara had functioned since antiquity, and continued to do so up until the 20th-century; in 652, the Rashidun Caliphate in Egypt enforced an annual tribute of 400 slaves from the Christian Kingdom of Makuria by the Baqt treaty, which was to be in effect for centuries. It supplied Africans for slavery in the Rashidun Caliphate (632–661), the Umayyad Caliphate (661–750), the Abbasid Caliphate (750–1258) and
14520-563: The Spanish Empire relied on the Asiento de Negros system, awarding (Catholic) Genoese merchant bankers the license to trade enslaved people from Africa to their colonies in Spanish America . Cartagena , Veracruz , Buenos Aires , and Hispaniola received the majority of slave arrivals, mainly from Angola . This division of the slave trade between Spain and Portugal upset the British and
14685-415: The Spanish king gave permission for ships to go directly from Africa to the Caribbean colonies, and they started taking 200–300 per trip. During the first Atlantic system, most of these slavers were Portuguese, giving them a near-monopoly. Decisive was the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas which did not allow Spanish ships in African ports. Spain had to rely on Portuguese ships and sailors to bring slaves across
14850-450: The Spanish term peón , although both terms are used in some countries with different implications. In the 21st century, coolie is generally considered a racial slur for Asians in Oceania , Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Americas; particularly in the Caribbean . The word originated in the 17th-century Indian subcontinent and meant "day labourer"; starting in the 20th century, the word
15015-456: The abuse by requiring all traders to pay for the return of all workers after their contract ended. The employers in the British West Indies declined these conditions, bringing the trade there to an end. Until the trade was finally abolished in 1875, over 150,000 coolies had been sold to Cuba alone, the majority having been shipped from Macau. These labourers endured conditions far worse than those experienced by their Indian counterparts. Even after
15180-477: The authorities when the scale of the abuses became known, but it was soon renewed due to its growing economic importance. A more rigorous regulatory framework was put into place and severe penalties were imposed for infractions in 1842. In that year, almost 35,000 people were shipped to Mauritius. In 1844, the trade was expanded to the colonies in the West Indies , including Jamaica, Trinidad, and Demerara , where
15345-431: The beginning of the 19th century, various governments acted to ban the trade, although illegal smuggling still occurred. It was generally thought that the transatlantic slave trade ended in 1867, but evidence was later found of voyages until 1873. In the early 21st century, several governments issued apologies for the transatlantic slave trade. The Atlantic slave trade developed after trade contacts were established between
15510-532: The beginning of the end of slavery; in September of that year, Lincoln would also issue the Emancipation Proclamation . In another aspect, it was the beginning of Chinese exclusion in the U.S. and the beginning of federal immigration restriction. Within a decade, significant levels of anti-Chinese sentiment had built up, stoked by populists such as Denis Kearney with racist slogans – "To an American, death
15675-469: The building of the first transcontinental railroad in the United States and of the Canadian Pacific Railway in western Canada, Chinese settlement was discouraged after completion of the construction. State legislation, such as California's Foreign Miners' Tax Act of 1850 and 1852, would target Chinese immigrants in the U.S. The 1879 Constitution of California declared that "Asiatic coolieism
15840-465: The captain and the rest of the crew. The captain and crew made a deal with the Africans and promised them their freedom. The Africans took control of the ship and sailed back to Africa's shore. The captain and his crew tried to re-enslave the Africans but were unsuccessful. The Atlantic slave trade is customarily divided into two eras, known as the first and second Atlantic systems. Slightly more than 3% of
16005-576: The captive Africans as gifts to Prince Henry the Navigator . By 1460, seven hundred to eight hundred African people were taken annually and imported into Portugal. In Portugal, the Africans taken were used as domestic servants. From 1460 to 1500, the removal of Africans increased as Portugal and Spain built forts along the coast of West Africa. By 1500, Portugal and Spain had taken about 50,000 thousand West Africans. The Africans worked as domestic servants, artisans, and farmers. Other Africans were taken to work
16170-574: The conquered Canary Islands and then from mainland Africa, initially from Arab slave traders via the Trans-Saharan slave trade from Libya , and then directly from the African West coast through Portuguese outposts, which developed into the Atlantic slave trade and expanded significantly after the establishment of the colonies in the Americas in 1492. In the 15th century, Spain enacted a racially discriminatory law named limpieza de sangre , which translates as "blood purity" or "cleanliness of blood",
16335-616: The contact between the Old and New Worlds producing the Columbian exchange , named after the Italian explorer Christopher Columbus . It started the global silver trade from the 16th to 18th centuries and led to direct European involvement in the Chinese porcelain trade . It involved the transfer of goods unique to one hemisphere to another. Europeans brought cattle, horses, and sheep to the New World, and from
16500-667: The contracted period. The 1860 Reglamento para la introducción de trabajadores chinos a la isla de Cuba (Regulation for the Introduction of Chinese Workers to the Island of Cuba) passed in Cuba. This regulation stipulated that the Coolie workers must recontract with their previous employer or another employer or they must leave Cuba at their own expense within 2 months after the end of their contract. Coolies were usually unable to afford to leave Cuba and were forced to recontract. This regulation blurred
16665-635: The contractor responsible for returning the worker after the contract elapsed, and required the vessels to conform to basic health standards . Despite this, conditions on the ships were often extremely crowded, with rampant disease and malnutrition . Coolies were also not informed about the length of the trip or about the island that they would be going to. The workers were paid a pittance for their labour, and were expected to work in often awful and harsh conditions. Although there were no large-scale scandals involving coolie abuse in British colonies, workers often ended up being forced to work, and manipulated in such
16830-534: The coolie trade likened the system of indentured labour to the slavery of the past. The campaign against coolie emigration was led by Joseph Sturge , with the Society of Friends. Petitions from Sturge, the Society of Friends, various other humanitarian groups, and from citizens of entire cities were routinely sent to the Colonial Offices. In response to this pressure, the labour export was temporarily stopped in 1839 by
16995-515: The crew, and set fire to ships with explosives. Slave traders and white crewmembers prepared and prevented possible rebellions by loading women, men, and children separately inside slave ships because enslaved children used loose pieces of wood, tools, and any objects they found and passed them to the men to free themselves and fight the crew. According to historical research from the records of slave ship captains, between 1698 and 1807, there were 353 acts of insurrection aboard slave ships. The majority of
17160-466: The cruel treatment of coolie workers on German plantations in the western Samoan Islands. The trade began largely after the establishment of colonial German Samoa in 1900 and lasted until the arrival of New Zealand forces in 1914. More than 2,000 Chinese coolies were present in the islands in 1914 and most were eventually repatriated by the New Zealand administration. Debates over coolie labour and slavery
17325-730: The directions of the Kingdom of Castile , invaded and colonised the Canary Islands during the 15th century, where they converted much of the land to the production of wine and sugar. Along with this, they also captured native Canary Islanders, the Guanches , to use as slaves both on the Islands and across the Christian Mediterranean. After the success of Portugal and Spain in the slave trade other European nations followed. In 1530, an English merchant from Plymouth, William Hawkins , visited
17490-411: The disease had debilitating effects on the European settlers. Conversely, many enslaved Africans were taken from regions of Africa which hosted particularly potent strains of the disease, so the Africans had already developed natural resistance to malaria. This, Esposito argued, resulted in higher malaria survival rates in the American south among enslaved Africans than among European labourers, making them
17655-546: The distinction between indentured servitude and slavery. It allowed for the Coolies to serve as a source of semi-captive labour given the intentional difficulty of returning home. The coolies who worked on the sugar plantations in Cuba and in the guano beds of the Chincha Islands ('the islands of Hell') of Peru were treated brutally. 75% of the Chinese coolies in Cuba died before fulfilling their contracts. More than two-thirds of
17820-571: The early 1850s to the mid-1870s; about 100,000 people immigrated as indentured workers. They participated in the War of the Pacific , looting and burning down the haciendas where they worked after the capture of Lima by the invading Chilean army in January 1880. Some 2,000 coolies even joined the Chilean Army in Peru, taking care of the wounded and burying the dead. Others were sent by Chileans to work in
17985-548: The engines behind the trade in the capital firms, the shipping and insurance companies of Europe and America, or the plantation systems in Americas. They did not wield any influence on the building manufacturing centres of the West. Sometimes trading between Europeans and African leaders was not equal. For example, Europeans influenced Africans to provide more slaves by forming military alliances with warring African societies to instigate more fighting which would provide more war captives to
18150-544: The enslaved people exported from Africa were traded between 1525 and 1600, and 16% in the 17th century. The first Atlantic system was the trade of enslaved Africans to, primarily, American colonies of the Portuguese and Spanish empires. Before the 1520s, slavers took Africans to Seville or the Canary Islands and then exported some of them from Spain to its colonies in Hispaniola and Puerto Rico, with 1 to 40 slaves per ship. These supplemented enslaved Native Americans. In 1518,
18315-470: The entire European continent, rendering it unthinkable to enslave a European since this would require enslaving an insider. Conversely, Africans were viewed as outsiders and thus qualified for enslavement. While Europeans may have treated some types of labour, such as convict labour, with conditions similar to that of slaves, these labourers would not be regarded as chattel and their progeny could not inherit their subordinate status, thus not making them slaves in
18480-511: The foreign peoples they conquered through warfare. Since the fall of the Western Roman Empire , various systems of slavery continued in the successor Islamic and Christian kingdoms of the peninsula through the early modern era of the Atlantic slave trade. In 1441–1444, Portuguese traders first captured Africans on the Atlantic coast of Africa (in what is today Mauritania ), taking their captives to slavery in Europe , and established
18645-550: The free and legal status of the Asian labourers in Cuba separated them from slaves. According to Rodriguez Pastor and Trazegnies Granda, the coolies could challenge their superiors, run away, petition government officials, and rebel. By 1870, labour contractors called enganchadores were used to manage and negotiate the contracts for Chinese Coolies in organised labour squads called Cuadrillas. “The enganchador negotiated all terms of work for his squad and handled all aspects of employment for
18810-580: The great majority of them carried men. This led to a high rate of Chinese men marrying women of other ethnicities, such as Indian women and mixed-race Creole women. The contrast in the female-to-male ratio between Indian and Chinese immigrants has been compared by historians. In Sumatra in the Dutch East Indies, just 18,731 Chinese women and 92,985 Chinese men served as coolies on plantations. Chinese women migrated less than Javanese and Indian women as indentured coolies. The number of Chinese women as coolies
18975-494: The higher mortality rate and image of Indian coolies being "dirty". The voyage itself was often a highly dangerous venture, especially for coolie women. Though some ships had made attempts to prevent assault, rape, and general mistreatment in sailor contracts, these crimes were still common. Even with punishments in place, on ship and land, men who assaulted women and children were rarely punished, leaving women in an even more vulnerable position. However, there were also attempts by
19140-588: The influence of the old form of colonial slavery on the coolie system. The coolie trade, much like the slave trade, was intended to provide a labour force for colonial plantations in the Americas and the Pacific whose cash crops were in high demand across the Atlantic World . Coolies frequently worked on slave plantations which had been previously worked by enslaved Africans, and similarly brutal treatment could be meted out by plantation overseers in response to real or perceived offences. On some Caribbean plantations,
19305-419: The largest African population . "The Treaty of Alcacuvas in 1479 provided traders the right to supply Spaniards with Africans." In addition, in the 15th century, Dominican friar Annius of Viterbo invoked the curse of Ham , from the biblical story of enslavement, to explain the differences between Europeans and Africans in his writings. Annius, who frequently wrote of the "superiority of Christians over
19470-446: The last part of the nineteenth century alone, there were 24 famines. Without permission from the British colonial authorities , the French transported Indian workers to their Pacific colony, Réunion, from as early as 1826. By 1830, over 3,000 labourers had been transported. After this trade was discovered, the French successfully negotiated with the British in 1860 for permission to transport over 6,000 workers annually, on condition that
19635-481: The last sixteen years of the transatlantic slave trade, Spain was the only transatlantic slave-trading empire. Following the British Slave Trade Act 1807 and U.S. bans on the African slave trade that same year, it declined, but the period thereafter still accounted for 28.5% of the total volume of the Atlantic slave trade. Between 1810 and 1860, over 3.5 million slaves were transported, with 850,000 in
19800-515: The mid-16th century, the Spanish New Laws , prohibited slavery of the Indigenous people. A labour shortage resulted. Alternative sources of labour, such as indentured servitude , failed to provide a sufficient workforce. Many crops could not be sold for profit, or even grown, in Europe. Exporting crops and goods from the New World to Europe often proved to be more profitable than producing them on
19965-492: The middle of the 17th century, slavery had hardened as a racial caste, with African slaves and their future offspring being legally the property of their owners, as children born to slave mothers were also slaves ( partus sequitur ventrem ). As property, the people were considered merchandise or units of labour, and were sold at markets with other goods and services. The major Atlantic slave trading nations, in order of trade volume, were Portugal , Britain , Spain , France ,
20130-643: The most likely people to explore the Atlantic and develop its commerce". He identified these as being the drive to find new and profitable commercial opportunities outside Europe. Additionally, there was the desire to create an alternative trade network to that controlled by the Muslim Ottoman Empire of the Middle East, which was viewed as a commercial, political and religious threat to European Christendom. In particular, European traders wanted to trade for gold, which could be found in western Africa, and to find
20295-430: The nature of the relationship between these African kingdoms and the European traders. The Guyanese historian Walter Rodney (1972) has argued that it was an unequal relationship, with Africans being forced into a "colonial" trade with the more economically developed Europeans, exchanging raw materials and human resources (i.e. slaves) for manufactured goods. He argued that it was this economic trade agreement dating back to
20460-629: The newly conquered nitrate fields . By the 1820s, many Indians were voluntarily enlisting to go abroad for work, in the hopes of a better life. European merchants and businessmen quickly took advantage of this and began recruiting them for work as a cheap source of labour. British merchants began transporting Indians to colonies around the world, including Mauritius , Fiji , New South Wales , Natal , Kenya , Tanganyika , Somaliland , Bechuanaland , Seychelles , Uganda , Northern Rhodesia , Southern Rhodesia , Nyasaland , British Guiana , Trinidad and Tobago , Jamaica , Saint Lucia , Saint Vincent and
20625-488: The ninth to the nineteenth) ... Four million enslaved people exported via the Red Sea , another four million through the Swahili ports of the Indian Ocean , perhaps as many as nine million along the trans-Saharan caravan route, and eleven to twenty million (depending on the author) across the Atlantic Ocean. Slaves were marched in shackles to the coasts of Sudan, Ethiopia and Somali, placed upon dhows and trafficked across
20790-563: The numbers African slaves held over twelve centuries in the Muslim world are 11.5 million and 14 million, while other estimates indicate a number between 12 and 15 million African slaves prior to the 20th century. According to John K. Thornton , Europeans usually bought enslaved people who had been captured in endemic warfare between African states. Some Africans had made a business out of capturing war captives or members of neighboring ethnic groups and selling them. A reminder of this practice
20955-687: The numbers of coolies present could reach up to six hundred. In 1878, historian W. L. Distant wrote an article for the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute , detailing his time spent on West Indian plantations observing the work ethic and behaviours of coolies, and noted that many overseers believed that Asian coolies, much like enslaved Africans, held an affinity for intensive outdoor labour work. The views of overseers towards coolies differed based on ethnicity: Chinese and Japanese coolies were perceived to be harder working, more unified as
21120-557: The official ending of the coolie trade in 1916 by the British government. By that time, tens of thousands of Chinese workers were being used along the Western Front by the allied forces (see Chinese Labour Corps ). A major difference between the Chinese and Indian coolie trades was that women and children were brought from India, along with men, while Chinese coolies were 99% male. Although there are reports of ships (so called 'coolie ships') for Asian coolies carrying women and children,
21285-531: The period 1863 to 1877 reveals great variation in the terms of the new contracts, diverging not only from the original ones, but from each other. First, most coolies signed up for only one year, at most two years, and some for as few as three and six months – all far short of another eight years. Second, the monthly wages not only varied, but were always greater than the 4 pesos in the original contracts, in some cases significantly greater. Many specified payment in “peso fuerte,” that is, hard currency, not vouchers, which
21450-403: The production of sugarcane and other commodities. This was viewed as crucial by those Western European states which were vying with one another to create overseas empires . The Portuguese, in the 16th century, were the first to transport slaves across the Atlantic. In 1526, they completed the first transatlantic slave voyage to Brazil , and other Europeans soon followed. Shipowners regarded
21615-437: The rebellions by the Africans were defeated. Igbo slaves on ships committed suicide by jumping overboard as an act of resistance to enslavement. To prevent further suicides, white crewmen placed nets around slave ships to catch enslaved persons that jumped overboard. White captains and crewmen invested in firearms, swivel guns , and ordered ship crews to watch slaves to prevent or prepare for possible slave revolts. John Newton
21780-604: The same neighbourhoods as Africans and, since most were unable to return to their homeland or have their wives come to the New World, many married African women. The coolies' interracial relationships and marriages with Africans, Europeans, and Indigenous peoples , formed some of the modern world's Afro-Asian and Asian Latin American populations. In Spanish, coolies were referred to as colonos asiáticos ('Asian colonists'). The Spanish colony of Cuba feared slave uprisings such as those that took place in Haiti , and used coolies as
21945-559: The slave trade of Africans. In Lisbon during the 16th and 17th centuries, Muslims financed by Jewish conversos traded Africans across the Sahara Desert and enslaved Africans before and during the Atlantic slave trade in Europe and Africa. In New Spain , Spaniards applied limpieza de sangre to Africans and Native Americans and created a racial caste system, believing them to be impure because they were not Christian. Europeans enslaved Muslims and people practicing other religions as
22110-483: The slave trade; however, African populations, the social, political, and military changes to African societies suffered greatly. For example, Mossi Kingdoms resisted the Atlantic slave trade and refused to participate in the selling of African people. However, as time progressed more European slave traders entered into West Africa and were having more influence in African nations and the Mossi became involved in slave trading in
22275-620: The slave traders in coastal raids. European slave traders gathered and imprisoned the enslaved at forts on the African coast and then brought them to the Americas. Some Portuguese and Europeans participated in slave raids. As the National Museums Liverpool explains: "European traders captured some Africans in raids along the coast, but bought most of them from local African or African-European dealers." Many European slave traders generally did not participate in slave raids because life expectancy for Europeans in sub-Saharan Africa
22440-567: The slaves as cargo to be transported to the Americas as quickly and cheaply as possible, there to be sold to work on coffee, tobacco, cocoa, sugar, and cotton plantations , gold and silver mines, rice fields, the construction industry, cutting timber for ships, as skilled labour, and as domestic servants. The first enslaved Africans sent to the English colonies were classified as indentured servants , with legal standing similar to that of contract-based workers coming from Britain and Ireland. However, by
22605-499: The south-western region of Angola in order to secure its threatened economic interest in the area. Although Kongo later joined a coalition in 1591 to force the Portuguese out, Portugal had secured a foothold on the continent that it continued to occupy until the 20th century. Despite these incidents of occasional violence between African and European forces, many African states ensured that any trade went on in their own terms, for instance, imposing custom duties on foreign ships. In 1525,
22770-472: The sugar cane fields from the port of Xiamen , one of the five Chinese treaty ports opened to the British by the Treaty of Nanking in 1842. The trade soon spread to other ports in Guangdong , and demand became particularly strong in Peru for workers in the silver mines and the guano collecting industry. Australia began importing workers in 1848. These workers were deceived about their terms of employment to
22935-568: The system argued, abuse and violence in the coolie trade was rampant. Some of these labourers signed employment contracts based on misleading promises, while others were kidnapped and sold into servitude; some were victims of clan violence whose captors sold them to coolie merchants, while others sold themselves to pay off gambling debts. Those who did sign on voluntarily generally had contracts of two to five years. In addition to having their passage paid for, coolies were also paid under twenty cents per day on average. However, in certain regions, roughly
23100-410: The term coolie as "usually offensive". Oxford English Dictionary states it is "dated, offensive". Dictionary.com considers it "disparaging and offensive". The importation of Asian labourers into European colonies occurred as early as the 17th century. However, in the 19th century, a far more robust system of trade involving coolies occurred, in direct response to the gradual abolition of both
23265-422: The time) and those slaves that existed in Europe tended to be non-Christians and their immediate descendants (since a slave converting to Christianity did not guarantee emancipation) and thus by the 15th century Europeans as a whole came to be regarded as insiders. Eltis argues that while all slave societies have demarked insiders and outsiders, Europeans took this process further by extending the status of insider to
23430-457: The trade simply shifted to the more accommodating port within the Portuguese enclave of Macau . Many coolies were first deceived or kidnapped, and then kept in barracoons (detention centres) or loading vessels in the ports of departure, as were African slaves . Their voyages, which are sometimes called the Pacific Passage, were as inhumane and dangerous as the notorious Middle Passage of
23595-449: The trade would be suspended if abuses were discovered to be taking place. The British began to transport Indians to Mauritius starting in 1829. Slavery was abolished there in 1833, with Mauritian planters receiving two million pounds sterling in compensation for the loss of their slaves. The planters turned to bringing in a large number of indentured labourers from India to work in the sugar cane fields. Between 1834 and 1921, around half
23760-574: The transportation by slave traders of enslaved African people to the Americas . European slave ships regularly used the triangular trade route and its Middle Passage . Europeans established a coastal slave trade in the 15th century and trade to the Americas began in the 16th century, lasting through the 19th century. The vast majority of those who were transported in the transatlantic slave trade were from Central Africa and West Africa and had been sold by West African slave traders to European slave traders, while others had been captured directly by
23925-463: The triangle exported enslaved Africans across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas and the Caribbean Islands. The third and final part of the triangle was the return of goods to Europe from the Americas. The goods were the products of slave plantations and included cotton, sugar, tobacco, molasses and rum. Sir John Hawkins , considered the pioneer of the English slave trade, was the first to run
24090-410: The triangular trade, making a profit at every stop. The Atlantic slave trade was the result of, among other things, labour shortage , itself in turn created by the desire of European colonists to exploit New World land and resources for capital profits. Native peoples were at first utilized as slave labour by Europeans until a large number died from overwork and Old World diseases. Furthermore, in
24255-405: The west African coast and in the Americas which they had never previously encountered. Historian Pierre Chaunu termed the consequences of European navigation "disenclavement", with it marking an end of isolation for some societies and an increase in inter-societal contact for most others. Historian John Thornton noted, "A number of technical and geographical factors combined to make Europeans
24420-525: The workers, including obtaining advances from the planters for salaries, distributing tools, arranging housing and food, and assuming responsibility for discipline, control, and supervision.” (Hu-DeHart). The enganchador had flexibility in the length of the Coolies’ recontract. The Coolie was also able to negotiate their wages and often had the upper hand as the employer had to yield to market forces. “Recontracting terms varied considerably. A batch of recontracts from
24585-401: Was "very small" while Chinese men were easily taken into the coolie trade. In Cuba, men made up the vast majority of Chinese indentured servants on sugar plantations; in Peru, non-Chinese women married the mostly male Chinese coolies. Polyandry was a common practice among Indian coolies. Between 1845 and 1917, twenty-five per cent of all Indians brought to the Caribbean were women. With women as
24750-415: Was a captain of slave ships and recorded in his personal journal how Africans mutinied on ships, and some were successful in overtaking the crew. For example, in 1730 the slave ship Little George departed from the Guinea Coast in route to Rhode Island with a cargo of ninety-six enslaved Africans. A few of the slaves slipped out of their iron chains and killed three of the watchmen on deck and imprisoned
24915-532: Was banned due to pressure from the British government. Between 1851 and 1874 approximately 215,000 Chinese were shipped from Macau overseas, primarily to Cuba and Peru, with some being shipped to Guiana, Suriname, and Costa Rica . These coolies were obtained via a variety of sources, including some who were entrapped by brokers in Macau through loans for gambling, and others who were kidnapped or coerced. In 1847, two ships from Cuba transported workers to Havana to work in
25080-471: Was called the 'pig trade' as the living conditions were not dissimilar to that of livestock; on some vessels as many as 40 per cent of the coolies died en route. As many as 500 were crammed into a single ship hold, leaving no room to move. The coolies were also stamped on their backs like livestock. Foreign merchants took advantage of the unequal treaties negotiated between the Qing government and Western powers after
25245-476: Was captured by African traders and sold into slavery. Dahomey King Agaja from 1718 to 1740, opposed the Atlantic slave trade and refused to sell African people and attacked the European forts built along the slave coast in West Africa. Donna Beatriz Kimpa Vita in Kongo and Senegalese leader Abd al-Qadir, advocated resistance against the forced exportation of Africans. In the 1770s, leader Abdul Kader Khan opposed
25410-549: Was key in shaping the history of Chinese immigrants in the U.S. In February 1862, "An Act to Prohibit the 'Coolie Trade' by American Citizens in American vessels", also known as the Anti-Coolie Act , was signed into law by Abraham Lincoln, which prohibited any U.S. citizens and residents from trading in Chinese subjects, known as "coolies". In one aspect, the Anti-Coolie Act was the last of the U.S. slave trade laws, as well as
25575-473: Was less than one year during the period of the slave trade because of malaria that was endemic in the African continent. An article from PBS explains: "Malaria, dysentery, yellow fever, and other diseases reduced the few Europeans living and trading along the West African coast to a chronic state of ill health and earned Africa the name 'white man's grave.' In this environment, European merchants were rarely in
25740-552: Was little more than to exploit the opportunity for immediate profits made by raiding and the seizure or purchase of trade commodities". Using the Canary Islands as a naval base, Europeans, at the time primarily Portuguese traders, began to move their activities down the western coast of Africa, performing raids in which slaves would be captured to be later sold in the Mediterranean. Although initially successful in this venture, "it
25905-437: Was more than capable of handling competition from preindustrial Europe". However, Anne Bailey, commenting on Thornton's suggestion that Africans and Europeans were equal partners in the Atlantic slave trade, wrote: [T]o see Africans as partners implies equal terms and equal influence on the global and intercontinental processes of the trade. Africans had great influence on the continent itself, but they had no direct influence on
26070-491: Was not long before African naval forces were alerted to the new dangers, and the Portuguese [raiding] ships began to meet strong and effective resistance", with the crews of several of them being killed by African sailors, whose boats were better equipped at traversing the west-central African coasts and river systems. By 1494, the Portuguese king had entered agreements with the rulers of several West African states that would allow trade between their respective peoples, enabling
26235-472: Was often used during the eight year original indenture.” (Hu-DeHart). Once they had fulfilled their contracts, colonos asiáticos integrated into the countries of Peru, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and Cuba. They adopted cultural traditions from the natives and welcomed non-Chinese to experience and participate in their traditions. Before the Cuban Revolution in 1959, Havana had Latin America's largest Chinatown . From c. 1902–1910 ,
26400-471: Was operating at trivial levels. In many years, not a single Spanish slave voyage set sail from Africa. Unlike all of their imperial competitors, the Spanish almost never delivered slaves to foreign territories. By contrast, the British, and the Dutch before them, sold slaves everywhere in the Americas. The second Atlantic system was the trade of enslaved Africans by mostly English, French, and Dutch traders and investors. The main destinations of this phase were
26565-522: Was prevalent in many parts of Africa for many centuries before the beginning of the Atlantic slave trade. An article from PBS explains the differences between African slavery and European slavery in the Americas . "It is important to distinguish between European slavery and African slavery. In most cases, slavery systems in Africa were more like indentured servitude in that the slaves retained some rights and children born to slaves were generally born free. The slaves could be released from servitude and join
26730-453: Was that, with much cheap land available and many landowners searching for workers, free European immigrants were able to become landowners themselves relatively quickly, thus increasing the need for workers. Labour shortages were mainly met by the English, French and Portuguese with African slave labour. Thomas Jefferson attributed the use of slave labour in part to the climate, and the consequent idle leisure afforded by slave labour: "For in
26895-468: Was used as a justification by Spain to take lands from non-Christians West of the Azores . The Doctrine of Discovery stated that non-Christian lands should be taken and ruled by Christian nations, and Indigenous people (Africans and Native Americans ) living on their lands should convert to Christianity. In 1493, Pope Alexander VI issued a papal bull called Inter Caetera which gave Spain and Portugal rights to claim and colonize all non-Christian lands in
27060-489: Was used in British Raj India to refer to porters at railway stations. The term differs from the word " Dougla ", which refers to people of mixed African and Indian ancestry. Coolie is instead used to refer to people of fully-blooded Indian descent whose ancestors migrated to the British former colonies in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. This is particularly so in South Africa , Eastern African countries, Trinidad and Tobago , Guyana , Suriname , Jamaica , other parts of
27225-475: Was used to infiltrate the rural villages of India and recruit labourers. They would often deceive the credulous workers about the great opportunities that awaited them for their own material betterment abroad. The Indians primarily came from the Indo-Gangetic Plain , but also from Tamil Nadu and other areas to the south of the country. Indians had faced a great number of social and economic disasters, causing them to be more eager than other groups to leave India. In
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