?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 600 - $ 900
(SLAVERY AND ABOLITION.) CUBA. CHINESE COOLIE LABOR. Emigracion China para la Isla de Cuba. CONTRATA. Single folio leaf, a partially printed contract, in Spanish on one side and Chinese on the other, on blue paper, accomplished by hand, for Chan Song Luee, 29 years of age from the town of (Swatow?) Signed by Portuguese agents J. R. Ferrar and J.R. Vargas; Mr. Chan has signed with his thumbprint, next to which is a Chinese "chop" Several corrections have been made to the contract in Chinese. Macao, 12 October, 1857
a very early contract for coolie labor in cuba. Documents like these vary depending on who the agents recruiting labor in China might have been. Here, Chan Song Luee agrees to pay back in full an advance of 8 pesos for his passage and a set of clothes, valued at 6 pesos, for a total debt of 14 pesos, to be taken from his salary of 8 pesos a month. Charges like these often continued on the plantation, in much the same manner as those in the Southern United States under Reconstruction. From 1847 t0 1874 approximately 125,000 Chinese laborers were imported to Cuba. The abolition of slavery created an entirely new and very profitable business, once again dominated by the British and Portuguese. The former ran the actual business while the Portuguese with their colony in Macao supplied the bodies. One can only imagine the survival rate during the 9000 mile "Middle Passage" from Macao to Cuba. The distance from West Africa to Cuba is roughly half that. See Evelyn Hu Dehart "Chinese Coolie Labor in Cuba in the 19th Century" in Contributions to Black Studies, 1994
