Battle of the Third Reich Chapter 345: Chinatown (3)

In the early days of the coolie trade in history, these recruitment activities were not legal either in the employer or the employee’s country.

The "Laws of the Qing Dynasty" of the Qing Dynasty clearly stipulates that all officials, soldiers and civilians, those who go to sea for business without authorization, and those who emigrate to foreign islands shall be executed according to the law of traffic rebellion. Some county officials made a decisive decision if they did not know about the fraud. Only those who are oversight, dismissal will never be used. The level of punishment for officials who fail to observe is downgraded to three levels, and that of inspectors is downgraded to two levels.

The formulation of these legal provisions has its special historical background. Initially it was to curb anti-Qing activities in the southeast coast, and later it was to stop the outflow of agricultural population. However, in the middle and late Qing Dynasty, whether it was from an economic or political perspective Look, these regulations are obviously no longer applicable.

In fact, as early as the middle and late Qianlong Qianlong period, the ban on seas almost existed in name only. Even if a local official had the heart to "serve the country", but in the face of the rural clan power and the white silver of sea merchants, Soon, they will open and close their eyes and even converge.

After the outbreak of the First Opium War, the British used naval guns to blast open the gates of "I Qing". In 1842, Qing and Britain signed the "Nanjing Treaty", which not only ceded Hong Kong to Britain, but also agreed The opening of Guangzhou, Fuzhou, Xiamen, Ningbo, and Shanghai as trade ports is the so-called "five-port trade."

The fate of Lin Zexu made coastal officials, especially the bureaucrats at the trade ports mentioned above, become more cautious, fearing that they would accidentally offend foreigners and cause some international disputes to come out. If they just lose their office, they will be dismissed. Forget it, if things get so big, they might even be hacked off their heads, and no one has called you wrong.

The inaction of local officials has increased the arrogance of the coolie traders, and the living environment of the Chinese coolies has become even worse, and the lives of these people cannot even be guaranteed. At that time, there were more than one tragedy in which the coolies died during transportation. In the record, on average, for every 100 Chinese coolies, 30 people died in the vast ocean thousands of miles away from their hometown due to various "accidents."

To say that the United Kingdom also has scrupulous about this kind of trade, they need to send large quantities of cheap labor to the colony, and at the same time need to prove the "legitimacy" of these labor sources, and prove that these people are not in the legal sense. Indentured slaves".

On this issue, British businessmen must obtain the cooperation of the Manchu Qing government, that is, obtain the endorsement of the Manchu Qing government to prove that these transactions comply with local laws, and promote the industry to be more standardized, no longer carry that Kind of traces and colors of the "slave trade".

However, at the time, the Manchu and Qing government officials, how could they allow foreigners to point fingers at the "ancestral law", and happened to meet a stubborn governor Ye Mingchen who used a set of "no war, no peace, no defense, no death, no To deal with the British, it sounds like a certain Mahatma’s "non-violence and non-cooperation" campaign. If this is pushed back a hundred years, it may be a dynamite prize. Come back.

The British found that they could not even find a way to negotiate, so they decided to continue speaking with guns. The British Empire has just entered the Victorian era and is expanding its colonies globally, and its national power is in a period of ascendancy. As soon as a crow sees through the details of "I am Qing", it does not hesitate to start.

Everyone knows the result of the Second Opium War, and the ruins of the Old Summer Palace are still there. The Manchu and Qing Dynasty signed the "Beijing Treaty" with Britain, France and Russia. The specific content will not be repeated here. One of them is to agree to the British recruitment of Chinese workers to work abroad. As a result, Chinese coolies became "indentured immigrants", and coolies recruitment was no longer regarded as a "slave trade" in disguise.

Let’s not mention those clothes whose chests are painted with B (Brisbane, Australia), P (Peru), or S (Sandwich Harbor in Namibia), here I want to talk about the coolie with C (Cuba) painted on the chest, because Their experience can be said to be the most representative.

Before arriving at their destination, these people had been sold to major plantations by intermediary companies and became miserable contract slave laborers. Cuba was still a colony of Spain at that time, and the laws that Spain used to govern Chinese coolies were actually the previous provisions governing black slaves.

The Spanish farmer has almost unlimited power on his own territory. He can deduct the wages of the coolies at will, and he has the right to impose various physical punishments on the coolies.

The Chinese coolie can only use money to redeem its contract after working for eight years. In fact, after many coolies have completed their contracts, Spanish employers will use various methods to force coolies to renew their contracts.

What’s even more hateful is that the Spanish governor also stipulated that the Chinese coolies who completed the contract must be willing to become Cubans and believe in Catholicism, and at the same time obtain the local residence permit, are allowed to continue to live and work in Cuba, otherwise they will be expelled. Outbound.

At that time, the ferry ticket from Cuba to China was eight ounces of gold. Most coolies couldn’t afford the travel expenses, so they had to be slaves for a lifetime in the plantation. Many people had to commit suicide to end this. Suicide, Cuba’s suicide rate was the highest in the world at that time, and one of every two Cuban suicides was Chinese.

The tragic situation of the Cuban Chinese coolies did not undergo a fundamental improvement until the Manchu Qing signed a labor immigration treaty with Spain in 1877, but many coolies failed to last until this day.

The Americans only began to intervene in the Chinese coolies business after the Second Opium War. The coolies mainly came from the West Coast.

Speaking of which, everyone may not believe it. In fact, half a century before the outbreak of the Opium War, the Chinese had already set foot on the North American continent. At that time, it was the peak of Kangxi’s prohibition of the sea. The government banned private building of new ships. A large number of experienced shipbuilders had to lose their jobs. So in 1788, a British shipbuilder took the opportunity to hire a group of Chinese shipbuilders. A small colony was established near Vancouver, Canada, where Canada's rich timber resources were used to build sailboats.

Since 1820, Chinese people have entered the United States one after another. Some of them are employees and servants on merchant ships, but some are merchants along the coast of Guangdong who travel across the ocean to find business opportunities. At that time, the gold rush in California had not yet begun, and Chinese merchants were mainly engaged in traditional silk and tea businesses. Some Chinese chose to settle down there, even minus their pigtails and became American citizenship. Before 1840, there were nearly 800 Chinese settled in California.

After the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement broke out, more and more residents along the coast of Fujian and Guangdong chose to leave their homes to make a living overseas in order to survive. Especially when they learned that California had discovered gold mines, a large number of Chinese workers went to California with the dream of getting rich. Coolie boat.

Most of them couldn't afford the ferry tickets, boarding and lodging expenses to the New World at all, so they signed a contract with the Coolie Company, and the Coolie Company paid the upfront cost~IndoMTL.com~ So Coolie Company became these The creditors of coolies, which were called "single labor on credit" at the time, were still legally free immigrants who went to the United States at their own expense, not so-called "indentured slaves."

But in fact, when they set foot on American soil, they automatically became the "debt slaves" of Coolie. Before the debts of the coolie company are paid off, they can only work in the mines or construction sites of the other party, or transfer the debts to other contractors who need labor.

Because various other expenses will continue to be incurred during work, plus the interest on the debt itself, coolies often need to work for coolies for a year or two to pay off debts.

After 1882, the situation changed again. Coolies no longer insisted on holding these coolies' claims. After all, it takes a lot of costs to manage these Asians. They chose a once-and-for-all method to transfer the claims. The Sixth Congress Hall transferred to California allows the Chinese to assume management responsibilities.

The so-called Six Congress Halls, or the six largest companies in the American population, were formed by the merger of the original six guild halls of Sanyi, Gangzhou, Renhe, Yanghe, Ningyang, and Hehe. The prototype of the Chinese Association in the United States.

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