This edited article was first published by Stabroek News in the History this week series (No 2003/5) on January 30, 2003. It formed Part I of a two-part feature.
Introduction
By the time the ship Glentanner, on January 12, 1853 disembarked the 262 Chinese labourers, the first of the 13,533 who were eventually to arrive in British Guiana, the local plantocracy had all but won the battle to persuade the colonial authorities that not only the survival of the sugar economy but the survival of civilization in the colony of British Guiana was dependent on their being allowed to import large numbers of immigrants restrained by long indentures. Immigrants from China were to be an integral part of this survival process. Not only were they regarded as equal to the Blacks and superior to the Indian immigrants in their capacity to support the labour of sugar cultivation, but also as part of the entire process which could be used to discipline and control the newly freed Blacks to suit the requirements of the plantation system. Despite the enthusiasm of the planters for Chinese immigrants, the “Chinese Experiment” was comparatively short and erratic and did not yield the expected results. There were several reasons for its failure to do so.
Post-Emancipation labour problems
The labour problems faced by the British West Indian sugar economy in general, but new colonies like British Guiana in particular, did not begin with abolition and Emancipation, but in many respects escalated as a result. The planters had always felt that the Blacks, if they could, would desert the sugar plantations in large numbers at the end of Apprenticeship.
Their often confrontational rather than conciliatory stance during Apprenticeship and in the immediate post-Emancipation period, almost made it a self-fulfilling prophecy.
In British Guiana, some ex-apprentices did move away from the plantations to seek independent livelihoods on the estates they had acquired by purchase or by squatting on Crown lands, but they did not abandon plantation labour entirely. The smallness of the plots in the Proprietary villages and cash-strapped Communal villages made that impossible. However, they attempted to use their new bargaining power to negotiate for higher wages and to withhold their labour if the terms of service were not satisfactory. The planters could not come to terms with the fact that they no longer had absolute command over the movements of the labour force, as had been the case during slavery. In 1842 they attempted to impose rules and regulations and reduce wages. The Blacks responded by a prolonged strike and the planters were forced to withdraw their demands. The bitter confrontation with the planters resulted in even more of the black labouring population abandoning the estates, further exacerbating the labour problem.
A guaranteed protected market in Britain for West Indian sugar was lost with the passing of the Sugar Duties Act of 1846. It ended the West Indian preferential system by equalizing duties on all sugar entering Britain from whatever source. Although the act did not actually come into effect until 1854, the prices of sugar immediately dropped.
Consequently in 1847-48 many merchant houses in London which had engaged in West Indian trade and finance collapsed and this precipitated a severe economic crisis in the West Indies. The planters of British Guiana reacted again by again attempting to reduce wages, and the black labouring population again went on strike. But on this occasion they were unsuccessful due largely to the relatively larger numbers of East Indian and Portuguese immigrants present on the sugar estates. This more than ever convinced the planters and later helped to persuade the Colonial Secretary that large-scale immigration would be the solution to their dilemma.
There had been initial but largely unsuccessful experiments with East Indian and Portuguese immigration between 1838-1845. Now, even more elaborate schemes for the introduction of immigrants into the colony were tabled in the planter-dominated political institutions of the colony. They used that dominance to pass new immigration ordinances. Additionally, their supporters, the West India lobby in London, also helped to persuade the British Parliament not only to support but also to partly finance their immigration proposals despite the lingering reservations of that body over schemes which could bring back slavery in a disguised form.
The campaign for Chinese immigration
A Guiana planter who had been visiting British possessions in the East was so impressed by the Chinese immigrants he saw working on the Isle of Penang that he wrote to the West India Committee in London stating that “during the heat of the day I have seen them cutting canes, digging canals, carrying canes etc… going through all the work as well as the best picked men (Creoles) would do.” Those comments must have been music to the ears of the West India Committee and British Guianese planters who were still smarting from the success of the 1842 strike earlier mentioned. However, any scheme to introduce Chinese immigrants into British Guiana had to overcome the hurdle of the Order-in-Council of September 1838 which declared invalid any contracts for labour entered into outside the colonies.
There were clear indications that it would be necessary to enter into a contract with the Chinese labourers for definite terms of service before they would emigrate with foreigners. The Colonial Secretary was therefore asked to exempt any contracts made with Chinese labourers from the provisions of the Order-in-Council. Eventually, after considering the arguments of the West India Committee, Lord Stanley, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, who had reservations about emigrants unaccompanied by women and the possibility that the immigrant on arrival in the colony might change his mind about the terms of the contract he had entered into, proposed a compromise which would permit the Chinese labourer to rescind his contract on his arrival in the colony if he so desired. His proposal allowed for compensation for the person at whose expense the labourer was being introduced.
On October 27, 1843 in similar dispatches to the Governors of British Guiana, Trinidad and Jamaica, Lord Stanley authorised them to propose legislation in which “any existing provision against contracts made out of the Colony should be waived as to Chinese Labourers provided that such contracts were not for a longer term than 5 years service in the Colony.” He was willing to do this since he felt that because many of the immigrants had made the long journey to Singapore and adjacent settlements on their own, it would be “a guarantee at once of their knowing the nature of the proposals made to them, a question so much disputed in the case of the East Indians.” This compromise was significant in that it represented a breach in the rigid contract policy adopted in 1838 due to pressure from the Anti-Slavery lobby and still fresh memories of the horrors of the Middle Passage. After this, with constant pressure from the West Indian planters, changing public opinion in Britain and its own changing attitudes toward indentured labour, the Colonial Office gave ground. Eventually, permission was granted for the long-term contracts which underpinned the iniquitous indenture system. Based on Lord Stanley’s dispatches, the Court of Policy on the 31st January 1844 passed Ordinance No 2 of 1844 to introduce Chinese labourers into British Guiana. At the same time with the dispatch, earlier mentioned, Lord Stanley issued two licences to private individuals to introduce a total of 2,150 Chinese immigrants into British Guiana.
Constraints to implementation
However, it took almost a decade after the consent of the Colonial Office was secured before any Chinese immigrants actually landed in British Guiana. The factors responsible were the result of the social, economic and political situation in the colony and the socio-political situation in China itself. In the case of the Colony, at the same time the planters were actually campaigning for the introduction of labourers, they were also agitating for the reopening of immigration from India. Ordinance No 12 of 1844 provided a credit of £75,000, the cost of introducing 5,000 Indian immigrants. Consequently, in 1845 state-funded immigration of Indian labourers began. It continued until 1917, stopping only briefly between 1845-1851 because of the financial difficulties facing the colony.
Additionally both Portuguese and Indian immigrants could be procured much more easily and at a cheaper price than Chinese labourers. The Portuguese, in particular, became easily available after a famine in 1846. Immigration from all sources came to an abrupt halt as a result of the Civil List dispute between the governor and the elective section of the Combined Court in 1849-50. They attempted to coerce the governor into letting them have their own way over constitutional reform by threatening not to pass the Civil List. Part of the solution proved to be the passing by Parliament of an act guaranteeing a loan not exceeding £750,000, which the British West Indian colonies could use for certain purposes.
The pre-eminent position of British Guiana as Britain’s most profitable sugar-growing colony was underlined by the fact that half of that sum was allocated to British Guiana. £50,000 of that loan was spent on the construction of a railway. The balance was used for reviving Asian immigration.
The arrival of Asian immigration led to the renewed interest in Chinese immigration. In fact, so keen was the interest of the local planters to have immigrants specifically from China that on July 8, 1850 the Court of Policy read for a first and second time “a Bill for the encouragement of the introduction into the colony of Chinese labourers.” However, that Bill was withdrawn and an ordinance for the introduction of labourers into the colony in general was introduced.
That ordinance fixed a bounty for the introduction of immigrants. In the case of Chinese immigration specific provisions were put in place to take cognizance of the issues of contract.
