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Complete and Large 20 Page Chinese Coolies Shipping Manifest

Currency:USD Category:Antiques Start Price:500.00 USD Estimated At:3,000.00 - 6,000.00 USD
Complete and Large 20 Page Chinese Coolies Shipping Manifest
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VERY RARE, ORIGINAL & COMPLETE 1869 Chinese 20 PAGE SHIP MANIFEST (18pp - pages with writing) , from MACAO, China with 520 Chinese Colonos listed with their ages and where they lived also listed. The document is dated and signed in MACAO, China in 1869, with the name of the Italian ship "Italia" listed as well as the Ship's Captain's name. The ship was bound for Havana, Cuba where the Chinese hoped to find regular work, most however, would later become slaves or at best indentured servants... A few similar manifests exist in the online Exhibition on the Chinese in Cuba at Arizona State University. The manifest in this auction is one of the largest COMPLETE Chinese Ship Manifests in the world today. THIS IS AN EXTREMELY RARE MUSEUM QUALITY DOCUMENT. (33.5 x 23 cm). CATALOG NOTE: From 1847-1874 approximately 125,000 Chinese laborers were imported to Cuba. The inevitable abolition of African slavery created an entirely new and very profitable business, once again dominated by the British and the Portuguese. The former ran the actual business, while the Portuguese, with their colony in Macau supplied the bodies. Many of the Chinese coolies shipped off to Cuba were considered rebels or malcontents in China. One can only imagine the survival rate during the "Middle Passage" from Macao to Cuba, some 9000 miles. The distance from the coast of West Africa to Cuba is roughly half that. (See Evelyn Hu-Dehart "Chinese Coolie Labor in Cuba in the 19th Century: Free labor of Neoslavery," writing in the journal Contributions to Black Studies, 1994.)