Anti-Slavery and Indentured Labor in the Age of Global Empire

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 352-369
Author(s):  
Lasse Heerten
Keyword(s):  
Indentured Labor

From Demand for Asiatic Labor to Importation of Indentured Chinese Labor: Race Identity in the Recruitment of Unskilled Labor for South Africa's Gold Mining Industry, 1903–1910

2008 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-68
Author(s):  
T. Huynh Tu
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Gold Mining ◽  
Mining Industry ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
Unskilled Labor ◽  
Capitalist Development ◽  
Indentured Labor ◽  
Race Identity ◽  
Bonded Labor ◽  
Chinese Labor

AbstractDespite international protests against bonded labor, the flow of indentured laborers during the 19th and early decades of the 20th centuries was extensive compared to the earlier centuries. The focus of this article is on the particularity of the “Chinese coolies experiment” in South Africa's gold mining industry which commenced in 1904. This 20th-century episode of indentured labor is notable for several reasons, and it serves as a springboard for the discussion of some fundamental issues in capitalist development, labor and identity formation. This article emphasizes the last, examining how a “Chinese” identity was formed through the development of the gold fields and, in turn, how this formation reinforced a nascent white labor aristocracy. It discusses two dimensions of this labor “experiment” in South Africa: (1) the heady debate on the decision to look to China for cheap labor and (2) desertion by the indentured Chinese laborers from various mining compounds in the Witwatersrand.

Indentured Labor in the Age of Imperialism, 1834-1922

1997 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 195
Author(s):  
Bernard Moitt ◽  
David Northrup
Keyword(s):  
Indentured Labor

Indentured Labor in New Guinea

1946 ◽  
Vol 15 (5) ◽  
pp. 74-78
Author(s):  
Harry Hawthorn
Keyword(s):  
New Guinea ◽  
Indentured Labor

Abolition, Chinese Indentured Labor, and the State: Cuba, Peru, and the United States during the Mid Nineteenth Century

2019 ◽  
Vol 76 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin N. Narváez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Labor Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Slave Labor ◽  
Us South ◽  
Free Labor ◽  
Indentured Labor

Abolition forced planters in the post-Civil War US South to consider new sources and forms of labor. Some looked to Spanish America for answers. Cuba had long played a prominent role in the American imagination because of its proximity, geostrategic location, and potential as a slave state prior to the Civil War. Even as the United States embraced abolition and Cuba maintained slavery, the island presented Southern planters with potential labor solutions. Cuban elites had been using male Chinese indentured workers (“coolies” or colonos asiáticos) to supplement slave labor and delay the rise of free labor since 1847. Planters in coastal Peru similarly embraced Chinese indentured labor in 1849 as abolition neared. Before the Civil War, Southerners generally had noted these developments with anxiety, fearing that coolies were morally corrupt and detrimental to slavery. However, for many, these concerns receded once legal slavery ended. Planters wanted cheap exploitable labor, which coolies appeared to offer. Thus, during Reconstruction, Southern elites, especially in Louisiana, attempted to use Chinese indentured workers to minimize changes in labor relations.

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