Chinese Caribbeans

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Chinese Caribbeans
Regions with significant populations
 Jamaica75,000[citation needed]
 Dominican Republic60,000[citation needed]
 Cuba41,000[citation needed]
 French Guiana15,000[citation needed]
 Belize10,000[citation needed]
 Suriname7,885[1]
 Trinidad and Tobago3,984[2]
 Puerto Rico3,000[citation needed]
 Guyana2,722[3]
 Curaçao1,600[citation needed]
Languages
Colonial Languages:

Chinese Varieties:

Religion
Related ethnic groups
Overseas Chinese

Chinese Caribbeans (sometimes Sino-Caribbeans) are people who are predominantly of Han Chinese ethnic origin living in the Caribbean. There are small but significant populations of Chinese and their descendants in all countries of the Greater Antilles. They are all part of the large Chinese diaspora known as Overseas Chinese.

Sub-groups

Caribbean Islands:

Mainland Caribbean:

Migration history

Enslavement

Between 1853 and 1879, 14,000 Chinese slaves were imported to the British Caribbean as part of a larger system of low-wage labor bound for the sugar plantations. Imported as a low-wage labor force from China, Chinese settled in three main locations: Jamaica, Trinidad, and British Guiana (now Guyana), initially working on the sugar plantations. Most of the Chinese slaves initially went to British Guiana; however when importation ended in 1879, the population declined steadily, mostly due to emigration to Trinidad and Suriname.[4]

Chinese

Chinese Exclusion Act on May 6, 1882, many Chinese in the United States fled to Puerto Rico, Cuba and other Latin American nations. They established small niches and worked in restaurants and laundries.[5]

British West Indies

The Chinese slaves who entered the British West Indies in the middle and late nineteenth century formed a marginal but distinct part of the global dispersal of southern Chinese characteristics of the period.[6] Next to those in the United States, on the one hand, and in Cuba and Peru, on the other, they formed the third largest regional grouping of Chinese arrivals to the Western Hemisphere in the mid-century. About 15,000[6] arrived in British Guiana, with just under 3,000 going to Trinidad and Jamaica, to work as indentured laborers in the sugar industry.[6]

Although the patterns of their entry into these new societies represented a microcosmic version of the story of the Chinese diaspora in the nineteenth century, there were a number of note-worthy distinctive traits attached to this regional experience.

The bulk of Chinese

coolies migration to the West Indies occurred between 1853 and 1866.[7] By the end of the nineteenth century, some 18,000[6] Chinese would arrive in the West Indies, with the vast majority of those slaves headed for Guyana.[7] As was the case with most migration out of China in the nineteenth century, the slaves were drawn from southern China
and were seeking to escape desperate conditions caused by a combination of environmental catastrophes and political unrest.

There were also a considerable number of

crimps increased so dramatically[6] that the system quickly became notorious for its association with abuse and coercion, including kidnapping.[7] The system was said to be known as "the sale of Little Pigs",[7]
alluding to the inhumane treatment migrants often faced.

The exposure of this inhumane system led to a series of ordinances being passed which, despite not directly enhancing the state of indentured Chinese, eventually played a key role in ending Chinese slavery in the West Indies.[7] In 1866, the Kung Convention signed in China, but never ratified in Britain, specifically provided back passage for the Chinese slaves.[8] West Indian planters were not, however, prepared to cover the additional cost that this would incur, especially in light of the fact that India was proving more than sufficient as a source of coolie. After the Chinese government refused to back down on the provision, interest in the Chinese Caribbeans as slaves seems to have simply faded.[8]

Representations

The manner in which the colonial powers introduced Chinese into the West Indies and the socioeconomic roles that they afforded[6] to the migrants would directly affect how the Caribbean Chinese were imagined and represented in colonial discourse in terms of where they belonged in the West Indies' social, economic and political landscapes.[6]

The Caribbean Chinese in

Chinese Trinidadian
Willi Chen.

The distance from other Caribbeans that is attributed to Chinese[7] in literary texts also manifests itself in the depiction of the Chinese as being a fundamentally alien presence in the West Indies.[8] Indeed, Chinese characters are sometimes depicted as the only individuals who can see the larger themes and issues within the West Indian experience because of their purported distance from them.[7] This can be seen in novels such as Pan Beat by Marion Patrick Jones, Mr. On Loong by Robert Standish, and The Pagoda by Patricia Powell.[7]

Notable people

Politics and government

Business and industry

  • Chang Hong Wing - businessman and founder of Hong Wing's coffee
  • John Lee Lum, businessman and oil-industry pioneer.
  • Carlton K. Mack, grocer and philanthropist.
  • William H. Scott, businessman.
  • Louis Jay Williams, businessman.

Arts and entertainment

Science and medicine

  • Dr.
    Epstein-Barr virus
    .
  • Fr. Arthur Lai Fook, educator and cleric.
  • Dr. Joseph Lennox Pawan, discoverer of the transmission of rabies by vampire bats.
  • Dr. David Picou.
  • Dr. Theodosius Poon-King.
  • Dr. Oswald Siung.

Sports

Other

  • James Chow Bing Quan, first President of Chinese Association 1913, first President of Trinidad branch of Chee Kung Tong 1915/The Chinese FreeMasons of Trinidad (18)
  • Kwailan La Borde, sailor; together with her husband Harold La Borde and son Pierre, the first Trinidadian to circumnavigate the globe.
  • Lyle Townsend, Former Secretary-General, Communication Workers' Union

See also

References

  1. ^ "Censusstatistieken 2012" (PDF). Algemeen Bureau voor de Statistiek in Suriname (General Statistics Bureau of Suriname). p. 76.
  2. ^ Trinidad and Tobago 2011 Population and Housing Census Demographic Report (PDF) (Report). Trinidad and Tobago Central Statistical Office. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2016-03-05. Retrieved 2019-08-20.
  3. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 9 July 2018. Retrieved 25 August 2018.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  4. ^ : Chinese in the English-Speaking Caribbean
  5. ^ "The Chinese Community and Santo Domingo's Barrio Chino". Archived from the original on 2017-08-07. Retrieved 2010-10-30.
  6. ^
    JSTOR j.ctt5hj582
    .
  7. ^
    OCLC 471810855
    .
  8. ^
    ISBN 978-976-640-021-7
    .
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