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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 November 2020
Chinese immigration to the Philippines has traditionally been studied in relation to commercial activities. But between 1850 and 1898, there was an unparalleled influx of Chinese labourers, which raised the number of Chinese residents to 100,000. This influx was fuelled by the abundant profits obtained by Chinese brokers and foremen, Spanish institutions and authorities in Manila, consuls in China, and Spanish and British ship captains, all of whom extracted excessive fees and taxes from the labourers. The trade in and the exploitation of Chinese labourers in the Philippines have yet to be thoroughly researched. This article shows that the import and abuse of Chinese labourers in and to the Philippines continued throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, and that, despite some anti-Chinese Spanish colonial rhetoric, a wide range of actors and institutions, both in China and in the Philippines, took advantage of this unprecedented inflow of immigrants.
1 This article's primary sources are mainly letters and governmental documents from Spanish authorities in the central government in Madrid, authorities in Manila, and consular officers in Xiamen, Hong Kong and Macau preserved in the Archivo Histórico Nacional (AHN) and the National Archives of the Philippines (NAP) in Manila. Documents from the NAP are also available on microfilm at the Archivo del Centro de Ciencias Humanas y Sociales (ACCHS) of the CSIC in Madrid. All the original documents consulted on microfilm at the ACCHS in this article are preserved in and belong to the NAP.
2 Wickberg, Edgar, ‘Early Chinese economic influence in the Philippines, 1850–1898’, Pacific Affairs 35, 3 (1962): 275–85Google Scholar, and The Chinese in Philippine life, 1850–1898 (Manila: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1965); Chu, Richard T., Chinese and Chinese mestizos of Manila: Family, identity, and culture, 1860s–1930s (Leiden: Brill, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wilson, Andrew R., Ambition and identity: Chinese merchant elites in colonial Manila, 1880–1916 (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pérez-Grueso, María Dolores Elizalde, ‘Filipinas, ¿una colonia internacional?’, Illes i Imperis 10–11 (2008): 203–36Google Scholar, and ‘China, Spain, and the Philippines in the nineteenth century: Images and representations’, in Image–object–performance mediality and communication in cultural contact zones of colonial Latin America and the Philippines, ed. Astrid Windus and Eberhard Crailsheim (Münster: Waxmann, 2013). A recent key work on working-class Chinese in 19th century Philippines is Jely Agamao Galang's ‘Vagrants and outcasts: Chinese labouring classes, criminality, and the state in the Philippines, 1831–1898’ (PhD diss., Murdoch University, Perth, 2019).
3 ‘Coolie’ is a pejorative and sensitive term referring to servile Chinese labour immigrants, usually employed using indenture contracts. In this article I will use this term in reference to the trafficking of Chinese labourers, often known as the ‘coolie trade’, and when referring to sources which label certain Chinese immigrants as ‘coolies’. On the history of Chinese coolie labour in Cuba, see Hu-DeHart, Evelyn, ‘Chinese coolie labor in Cuba in the nineteenth century: Free labor or neo-slavery’, Contributions in Black Studies: A Journal of African and Afro-American Studies 12 (1994): 38–53Google Scholar; Ng, Rudolph, ‘The Chinese Commission to Cuba (1874): Reexamining international relations in the nineteenth century from a transcultural perspective’, Transcultural Studies 2 (2014): 39–62Google Scholar; de la Riva, J. Pérez, El barracón: Esclavitud y capitalismo en Cuba (Barcelona: Editorial Crítica, 1978)Google Scholar; Yun, Lisa and Laremont, Ricardo René, ‘Chinese coolies and African slaves in Cuba, 1847–74’, Journal of Asian American Studies 4, 2 (2017): 99–122CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 Hu-DeHart, ‘Chinese coolie labor in Cuba’; Ng, ‘The Chinese Commission to Cuba’, pp. 39–62; Pastor, H. Rodríguez, Hijos del Celeste Imperio en el Perú (1850–1900): Migración, agricultura, mentalidad y explotación (Lima: Instituto de Apoyo Agrario, 1898)Google Scholar.
5 McCarthy, Charles J., ‘Chinese coolie labor minimal in the Philippines’, Annals of the Philippine Chinese Historical Association 5 (1975): 8–29Google Scholar; Arensmeyer, Elliott C., ‘The Chinese coolie labor trade and the Philippines: An Inquiry’, Philippine Studies 28, 2 (1980): 187–98Google Scholar.
6 For instance, entrepreneur Juan Bautista Marcaida's project to introduce Chinese farmers in the Philippines had little success in the long term. Introducción de colonos chinos en Batanes y Babuyanes, AHN, ULTRAMAR, 5162, Exp. 48.
7 With respect to the broader racial debate within the Spanish community in the Philippines, see Rodao, Florentino, ‘“The salvational currents of emigration”: Racial theories and social disputes in the Philippines at the end of the nineteenth century’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 49, 3 (2018): 426–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 van der Linden, Marcel and García, Magaly Rodríguez, On coerced labor: Work and compulsion after chattel slavery (Leiden: Brill, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Regarding the labour history of the Southeast Asian region, see Kaur, Amarjit, Wage labour in Southeast Asia since 1840: Globalisation, the international division of labour and labour transformations (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. As for the global indentured labour trade, see Northrup, David, Indentured labor in the age of imperialism, 1834–1922 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)Google Scholar; Gungwu, Wang, ‘Patterns of Chinese migration in historical perspective’, in The Chinese overseas, ed. Liu, Hong (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 33–49Google Scholar.
9 See Ei Murakami's comparison between the coolie trade and emigration to Southeast Asia in ‘Two bonded labour emigration patterns in mid-nineteenth-century Southern China: The coolie trade and emigration to Southeast Asia’, in Bonded labour and debt in the Indian Ocean world, ed. Gwyn Campbell and Alessandro Stanziani (London: Taylor & Francis, 2013), pp. 153–64. For another case of ‘unfree’ labour in Southeast Asia, see Winn, Phillip, ‘Slavery and cultural creativity in the Banda Islands’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 41, 3 (2010): 365–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
10 V.H. Olmsted, H. Gannett and J.P. Sanger, Census of the Philippine Islands: Taken under the direction of the Philippine Commission in the Year 1903 (Washington, DC: Govt Print. Off., 1905), p. 118. Regarding the origin and labour relations of earlier Fujianese immigrants in the Philippines see Chia, Lucille, ‘The butcher, the baker, and the carpenter: Chinese sojourners in the Spanish Philippines and their impact on southern Fujian (sixteenth–eighteenth centuries)’, Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 49, 4 (2006): 509–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11 Testimony of William Daland, in Report of the Philippine Commission, to the President [January 31, 1900–December 20, 1900] (Washington: Govt. Print. Off., 1900), vol. 2, p. 164.
12 Wilson, Ambition and identity; Chu, Chinese and Chinese mestizos of Manila, pp. 94, 110–11.
13 P.A. Kuhn, Chinese among others: Emigration in modern times (Singapore: NUS Press, 2008), pp. 157–8.
14 McCarthy, ‘Chinese coolie labor minimal in the Philippines’, p. 17.
15 See further, Elliott C. Arensmeyer, ‘British merchant enterprise and the Chinese coolie labour trade, 1850–1874’ (PhD diss., University of Hawai‘i, 1979), pp. 24–38. I would like to express my gratitude to John Shufelt for providing me with this reference.
16 Arensmeyer, ‘The Chinese coolie labor trade and the Philippines’, p. 190.
17 Baak, Paul E., ‘About enslaved ex-slaves, uncaptured contract coolies and unfreed freedmen: Some notes about “free” and “unfree” labour in the context of plantation development in southwest India, early sixteenth century–mid 1990s’, Modern Asian Studies 33, 1 (1999): 125, 131CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Brass, Tom and van der Linden, Marcel, eds., Free and unfree labour: The debate continues (New York: Peter Lang, 1997)Google Scholar; de Vito, Christian G. and Sundevall, Fia, ‘Free and unfree labour: An introduction to this special issue’, Arbetarhistoria 163–64 (2017): 1–7Google Scholar; Hoefte, Rosemarijn, ‘Indentured labour’, in Handbook global history of work, ed. Hofmeester, Karin and van, Marcel der Linden (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017)Google Scholar.
18 Chu, Chinese and Chinese mestizos of Manila, pp. 110–11. The use of advances was common in plantation work elsewhere, such as in Java's sugar production, where a distinction between the ‘free coolies’, who had not received advances, and the ‘contracted’, who had, is apparent. See Knight, G.R., ‘Gully coolies, weed-women and snijvolk: The sugar industry workers of North Java in the early twentieth century’, Modern Asian Studies 28, 1 (1994): 71CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Labour middlemen were not only a Chinese phenomenon. See, for instance, Bates, Crispin and Carter, Marina, ‘Sirdars as intermediaries in nineteenth-century Indian Ocean indentured labour migration’, Modern Asian Studies 51, 2 (2017): 462–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Nevertheless, cabecillas in the Philippines were unique in that they retained the wages of labour gangs once employed, instead of paying each worker directly.
19 Kuhn, Chinese among others, p. 132.
20 Wickberg, The Chinese in Philippine life, p. 77.
21 I will not go further into detail regarding the problematisation of ‘coolie’ and ‘coolie trade’ in this article, as it deserves deeper consideration. See, for example, Kirkby, Diane and Loy-Wilson, Sophie, ‘Labour history and the coolie question’, Labour History 113 (2017): iii–vGoogle Scholar; Ngai, Mae M. and Loy-Wilson, Sophie, ‘Thinking labor rights through the coolie question’, International Labor and Working-Class History 91 (2017): 5–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
22 Hu-DeHart, ‘Chinese coolie labor in Cuba’; Ng, ‘The Chinese Commission to Cuba (1874)’, pp. 39–62; Pérez de la Riva, El barracón; Yun and Laremont, ‘Chinese coolies and African slaves in Cuba’, pp. 99–122.
23 Wickberg, The Chinese in Philippine life, pp. 56–8.
24 E. Toda i Güell, La vida en el Celeste Imperio (Madrid: El Progreso editorial, 1887)Google Scholar; Foreman, J., The Philippine Islands: A political, geographical, ethnographical, social and commercial history of the Philippine Archipelago and its political dependencies embracing the whole period of Spanish rule (London: Sampson Low, Marston, 1899)Google Scholar; Sawyer, F.H., The inhabitants of the Philippines (New York: Scribner, 1900)Google Scholar; R. Jordana y Morera, , La inmigración China en Filipinas (Madrid: Tipografía de Manuel G. Hernández, 1888)Google Scholar.
25 Jordana, La inmigración China en Filipinas, p. 22; Pérez-Grueso, María Dolores Elizalde, ‘China–España–Filipinas: Percepciones españolas de China — y de los Chinos — en el siglo XIX’, Huarte de San Juan. Geografía e Historia 15 (2008): 109Google Scholar; Chu, Chinese and Chinese mestizos, p. 66; Doeppers, Daniel F., ‘Destination, selection and turnover among Chinese migrants to Philippine cities in the nineteenth century’, Journal of Historical Geography 12, 4 (1986): 384CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
26 Doeppers, ‘Destination, selection and turnover’, p. 382; Reglas que han de regir los pasaportes de chinos y varias solicitudes de licencia de radicación, 1850–1929, CSIC, ACCHS, Rollo 1086, Leg. 6 (hereafter cited as Reglas sobre pasaportes de chinos).
27 Letter fragment, n.d., n.p., in Reglas sobre pasaportes de chinos, 1888, CSIC, ACCHS, Rollo 1089, Leg. 6.
28 Expediente sobre elevación de 30 pesos de los derechos de radicación que pagan los chinos á su inmigración en el Archipiélago Filipino, AHN, ULTRAMAR, 5328, Exp. 5. My translation.
29 Mencarini, J., The Philippine Chinese labour question (Hangzhou? 1900), p. 11Google Scholar.
30 Doeppers, ‘Destination, selection and turnover’, p. 385.
31 Ng, ‘The Chinese Commission to Cuba’, p. 40.
32 See Ginés-Blasi, Mònica, ‘Eduard Toda i Güell: From vice-consul of Spain in China to the Renaixença in Barcelona (1871–84)’, Entremons: UPF Journal of World History 5, 2013: 1–18Google Scholar.
33 Toda, La vida en el Celeste Imperio, p. 274. My translation.
34 Ibid., pp. 275–7.
35 ‘Report on emigration from the port of Amoy’, in To and from Amoy, 1883, British National Archives (BNA), Kew, FO 228/721. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Douglas Fix for providing me with the sources available at the BNA.
36 Report of the Philippine Commission, vol. 1, pp. 158–9.
37 Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 219–25.
38 Wickberg, The Chinese in Philippine life, p. 111; McCarthy, ‘Chinese coolie labor’, p. 18.
39 Los Chinos en Filipinas: males que se experimentan actualmente y peligros de esa creciente inmigración: Observaciones, hechos y cifras que se encuentran en artículos que La Oceanía Española, periódico de Manila, ha dedicado al estudio de este problema social (Manila: Establecimiento tipográfico de ‘La Oceanía Española’, 1886), p. 128.
40 Foreman, The Philippine Islands.
41 Jordana, La inmigración China en Filipinas, pp. 119, 401, 405.
42 Sawyer, The inhabitants of the Philippines.
43 Ibid., p. 290.
44 Arensmeyer, ‘The Chinese coolie labor trade’, p. 193.
45 Bowring, John, A visit to the Philippine Islands (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1859), p. 311Google Scholar. There are references that human trafficking in Xiamen to the Philippines and Singapore existed before the Opium War, particularly, the sale of girls and women. See Murakami, ‘Two bonded labour emigration patterns’, p. 155.
46 Legarda, Benito J., After the galleons: Foreign trade, economic change and entrepreneurship in the nineteenth century Philippines (Quezon City: Ateneo de Manila University Press, 1999), p. 314Google Scholar.
47 Bowring, A visit to the Philippine Islands, p. 242.
48 McCarthy, ‘Chinese coolie labor’, pp. 14–15; R. Comenge, Cuestiones filipinas. 1a. Parte. Los chinos. Estudio social y político (Manila: Tipo-Lit. de Chofré, 1894), p. 262.
49 McCarthy, ‘Chinese coolie labor’, p. 18.
50 Wickberg, The Chinese in Philippine life, p. 60.
51 Consejo de Administración de Filipinas, Manila, 18 June 1889, in Expediente sobre elevación de 30 pesos.
52 Expediente sobre elevación de 30 pesos.
53 Report of the Philippine Commission, vol. 1, p. 156.
54 Elizalde, ‘China, Spain, and the Philippines’, p. 206.
55 Los Chinos en Filipinas.
56 Wickberg, The Chinese in Philippine life, p. 111; Olmsted, Census of the Philippine Islands, p. 118.
57 Report of the Philippine Commission, vol. 1, p. 154.
58 Elizalde, ‘China, Spain, and the Philippines’, pp. 204–5.
59 Galang, ‘Vagrants and outcasts’, pp. 52–123.
60 Wickberg, ‘Early Chinese economic influence in the Philippines’, p. 284.
61 Testimony of Carlos Palanca, in Report of the Philippine Commission, vol. 2, p. 223. I have conducted a preliminary search on mining companies in the catalogue of the National Archives of the Philippines, nevertheless, access to the Spanish Section is currently restricted, and this has compromised the availability of primary sources. Further research has been postponed in the hope of future accessibility to this Section.
62 Los Chinos en Filipinas, p. 128.
63 Bowring, A visit to the Philippine Islands, p. 315.
64 Marcaida, Juan Batista, ‘Advertencia preliminar’, in Empresas agricolas, con chinos, en Filipinas, tomando por tipo lo que podrian producir en la isla de Mindoro (Manila: Amigos del Pais, 1850)Google Scholar.
65 Ibid., pp. 3–15.
66 Ensayo de la aplicación de filamentos del plátano por Juan Bautista Marcaida, AHN, ULTRAMAR, 435, Exp. 3. Benito Legarda mentions a Marcaida as a consignee of a vessel in the port of Manila. He also mentions a certain Antonio M., who was a ship captain, and also, an A. Marcaida appears to have worked in the British house Smith Bell & Co. in 1862, working in customs, finance and with authorities. Legarda, After the galleons, p. 314.
67 Erección de pueblo de Bohol, 1837. Oficio de Don Juan Bautista Marcaida, director de la Hacienda de Naro, de la Isla de Masbate al Excelentísimo Sr. Gobernador y Capitán General de Filipinas suplicándole vuestra Excelencia se ordene al Gob. Político Militar de Bohol no se ponga obstáculo y se facilite la traslacion de los naturales de aquella provincia a la Hacienda de Naru de su propiedad, NAP, SDS 13936, Exp. 4, S13–24.
68 Wickberg, The Chinese in Philippine life, pp. 56–7.
69 McCarthy, ‘Chinese coolie labor’, p. 15.
70 Chinese emigration: Report of the Commission sent by China to ascertain the condition of Chinese coolies in Cuba (Shanghai: Imperial Maritime Customs Press, 1876), p. 8.
71 Bérriz, M. Rodríguez, Diccionario de la Administración de Filipinas (Manila: Establecimiento Tipo-litográfico de M. Perez, 1887), p. 186Google Scholar; San Pedro, J. Rodriguez, Legislación ultramarina, concordada y anotada por J. Rodríguez San Pedro (Madrid: Imprenta de Manuel Minuesa, 1868)Google Scholar. I would like to thank Jely Galang for pointing out this reference to me.
72 Furthermore, the Manila house Matía Menchacatorre employed Chinese people through Tait while in Xiamen, and in 1850, Tait presented a file to the Governor-General of the Philippines regarding a lawsuit against the ship Juno for carrying a hundred Chinese workers to Batanes, contracted for five years by a Manila company. See Pérez de la Riva, Documentos para la historia de las gentes sin historia: El tráfico de culíes chinos (La Habana: Biblioteca Nacional, 1965), p. 86; Embajadas y legaciones, China, 1836–1865, AHN, M°_EXTERIORES_H,1445. Ander Permanyer Ugartemendia, ‘La participación española en la economía del opio en Asia Oriental tras el fin del Galeón’ (PhD diss., Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, 2013), p. 394.
73 Arensmeyer, ‘The Chinese coolie labor trade’, p. 197.
74 Stan Neal, ‘Jardine Matheson and Chinese migration in the British empire, 1833–1853’ (PhD diss., Northumbria University, Newcastle, 2015), p. 203. Tait became a charterer of the Inglewood, which was involved in such overcrowding cases. See Arensmeyer, ‘The Chinese coolie labor trade’, p. 193; Neal, ‘Jardine Matheson’, p. 204.
75 Wickberg, The Chinese in Philippine life, pp. 112–13.
76 Testimony of O.F. Williams, in Report of the Philippine Commission, vol. 2, p. 252.
77 Ginsberg, Philip, ‘The Chinese in the Philippine Revolution’, Asian Studies: Journal of Critical Perspectives on Asia 8, 1 (1970): 150Google Scholar; Annual Report of Maj. Gen. E.S. Otis, Commanding Department of the Pacific and 8th Army Corps, Military Governor in the Philippine Islands (Washington: Govt. Print. Off., 1899), vol. 2, Appendix D, pp. 187–95.
78 I have recently explored the role of merchant-consuls as middlemen in the coolie trade, focusing on Spanish consuls in treaty ports as a study case, in Ginés-Blasi, Mònica, ‘Exploiting Chinese labour emigration in treaty ports: The role of Spanish consulates in the “coolie trade”’, International Review of Social History (June 2020)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
79 Wickberg, The Chinese in Philippine life, pp. 45–8; Chu, Chinese and Chinese mestizos, p. 93.
80 Wickberg, The Chinese in Philippine life, pp. 52, 56–8; Chu, Chinese and Chinese mestizos, p. 93.
81 Wickberg, The Chinese in Philippine life, p. 57.
82 Regarding the question of semi-reciprocity in the 1864 Sino-Spanish Treaty see Martínez-Robles, David, ‘Constructing sovereignty in nineteenth-century China: The negotiation of reciprocity in the Sino-Spanish Treaty of 1864’, International History Review 38, 4 (2016): 719–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
83 Gaceta de Manila, 18 Sept. 1870.
84 Expediente sobre elevación de 30 pesos.
85 Letter from the Philippine government to the Minister of Overseas Affairs, Manila, 27 June 1862, in Inmigración chinos (1860–1863). Cartas, CSIC, ACCHS, Rollo 222, Leg. 34.
86 Elizalde distinguishes four moments of transformation regarding perceptions of the Chinese in 19th century Philippines. See Elizalde, ‘China, Spain, and the Philippines’, p. 204.
87 The primary sources consulted regarding Chinese government views on Chinese emigration to the Philippines are mainly manuscripts of the Zongli Yamen collection preserved at the Archives of the Institute of Modern History of Academia Sinica, in Taipei. See, for instance, Waijiao bumen, 01-21-025-02-068; 01-19-003-01 and 01-19-003-02-001.
88 Informe sobre inmigración de colonos españoles y braceros asiáticos en Filipinas, Dirección General de Administración y Fomento, AHN, ULTRAMAR, 476, Exp.12-19; Informe del Consejo de Ultramar sobre inmigración japonesa, AHN, ULTRAMAR, 5309, Exp. 34; Expediente de inmigracion japonesa a Filipinas, AHN, ULTRAMAR, 5312, Exp. 4; Expediente sobre elevación de 30 pesos.
89 Francisco Coelho, Consejo de Filipinas y posesiones españolas en el Golfo de Guinea, Madrid, 21 May 1890, in Expediente sobre elevación de 30 pesos.
90 Ginsberg, ‘The Chinese in the Philippine Revolution’, p. 147.
91 Rafael Bernal, ‘The Chinese colony in Manila, 1570–1770’, in The Chinese in the Philippines, ed. Alfonso Jr. Felix (Manila: Solidaridad, 1966), pp. 40–66.
92 Report of the Philippine Commission, vol. 1, p. 152.
93 Informe del Consejo de Filipinas sobre inmigración china. My translation.
94 Wickberg, The Chinese in Philippine Life, p. 50; Chu, Chinese and Chinese mestizos, p. 56.
95 Ibid., p. 57. See also Testimony of Mr. Neil MacLeod in Report of the Philippine Commission, vol. 2, p. 35. According to him, the taxes the Spanish government levied on the Chinese were ‘very, very heavy. They were a big source of revenue to the Spaniards.’.
96 Mencarini, The Philippine Chinese labour question, pp. 10–11.
97 Expediente sobre las ventajas y los inconvenientes de la inmigración china en este Archipiélago, Negociado 5, 1888, CSIC, ACCHS, Rollo 1138.
98 Informe del Consejo de Filipinas sobre inmigración china, Sección de Filipinas, 1890, AHN, ULTRAMAR, 5310, Exp. 3; Expediente sobre elevación de 30 pesos. Regarding the administrative process Chinese immigrants had to go through when disembarking in Manila, see Comenge, Cuestiones Filipinas, p. 33.
99 McCarthy, ‘Chinese coolie labor’, p. 20.
100 Letter from Enrique Fernández to the Governor-General, Manila, 30 Aug. 1889, in Expediente sobre las ventajas.
101 ‘Expediente sobre concesion de pasaportes para Mindanao á Chinos nombrados Comisionados por la Intendencia para la persecucion del contrabando de opio, empieza en 10 de Junio de 1891, termina en 10 de Septiembre de 1891’, in Reglas sobre pasaportes de chinos, 1891, CSIC, ACCHS, Rollo 1089, Leg. 6. Regarding the participation of Chinese merchants in financing and operating opium commerce in Southeast Asia, see Trocki, Carl A., ‘Opium and the beginnings of Chinese capitalism in Southeast Asia’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 33, 2 (2002): 297–314CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.
102 Letter from Fermín Sáenz de Tejada to the Spanish consul in Xiamen, Xiamen, 16 Feb. 1873; Letter from Carlos Ortega Morejón to the Spanish Ministry of State, Xiamen, 17 Feb. 1873, Consulado de Emuy, AHN, M°_EXTERIORES_H,1885.
103 Chal Alabaster to Hugh Fraser, Quarterly intelligence report, Beijing, 26 Feb. 1878, in To and from Amoy, 1878, BNA, FO 228/606; Letter from Emilio de Pereda to the Spanish Ministry of State, Xiamen, 29 May 1879, Consulado de Emuy.
104 Letter from Herbert A. Giles to Thomas F. Wade, Xiamen, 12 Mar. 1881, in To and from Amoy, 1883, BNA, FO 228/721.
105 Ibid. Also from 1898 the Chinese Consul in Manila, who was Carlos Palanca's son, extracted a benefit from Chinese immigrants’ registration, and he would regulate his fees to suit his own interests. The cost of every registration would go into his own pocket. Report of the Philippine Commission, vol. 1, p. 154.
106 Letter from Federico Lobatón to the Governor-General, Manila, 12 Dec. 1888, in Expediente sobre el excesivo número de inmigrantes que conducen los vapores que hacen la travesia entre China y este Archipiélago, Negociado 5, 1888, CSIC, ACCHS, Rollo 1138.
107 Letter to the Governor-General, Manila, 18 July 1888; Letter to the Ministry of Overseas Affairs, Manila, 17 June 1889, in ibid.
108 Letter from the Governor-General to Spanish consuls in Hong Kong and Xiamen, Manila, 29 Aug. 1888, in ibid. My translation.
109 Royal Decree, num. 28, 26 July 1883. Letter from Albino Mencarini to the Ministry of State, Xiamen, 23 Sept. 1883, Consulado de Emuy.
110 Letter from Fernando Gómez de Bonilla to the Ministry of State, Xiamen, 17 Mar. 1889, Consulado de Emuy. Regarding Gómez's position, see Archivo diplomático y consular de España, Madrid, 9 May 1891, p. 19.
111 Letter from Herbert A. Giles to Thomas F. Wade, Xiamen, 12 Mar. 1881, in To and from Amoy.
112 Enrique Albacete, ‘Capitanía del Puerto de Manila y Carite – Número de pasageros que pueden llevar los vapores de la carrera de China, Manila, 25 Sept. 1888’, in Expediente sobre el excesivo número de inmigrantes. Documents of the Spanish administration in the National Archives of the Philippines also mention a British steamer named Dafila. See Letter from Federico Lobatón to the Governor-General of the Philippines, Manila, 6 Aug. 1888, in ibid.
113 Letter from José Reyes, Rafael Reyes and Francisco L. Roxas to the Governor-General of the Philippines, Manila, 2 Sept. 1888, in Expediente sobre el excesivo número de inmigrantes.
114 Letter to the Marine Commander, Manila, 12 Sept. 1888, in ibid.
115 Enrique Albacete, ‘Capitanía del Puerto de Manila y Carite’.
116 Letter to the Ministry of Overseas Affairs, Manila, 17 June 1889, in Expediente sobre el excesivo número de inmigrantes.
117 Ibid.; Letter from Fernando Gómez de Bonilla to the Spanish Ministry of State, Xiamen, 17 Mar. 1889, Consulado de Emuy.
118 Letter from Hipólito de Uriarte, Xiamen, 15 Jan. 1890, Consulado de Emuy.
119 On the history of passports and border control to regulate mobility in relation to nation and identity, and how this arose from attempts to control Asian migration to the Pacific in the 1880s, see McKeown, Adam M., Melancholy order: Asian migration and the globalization of borders (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008)Google Scholar.
120 Letter from Fernando Gómez de Bonilla to the Governor-General, Xiamen, 3 Sept. 1888, in Expediente sobre el excesivo número de inmigrantes.
121 Letter from Herbert A. Giles to Thomas F. Wade, Xiamen, 12 Mar. 1881, in To and from Amoy.
122 Letter from Fernando Gómez de Bonilla to the Governor-General of the Philippines, Xiamen, 29 Mar. 1889, in Expediente sobre el excesivo número de inmigrantes; Registros de buques, 1871–1874, AHN, ULTRAMAR, 5563.
123 Expediente sobre la excepción de la obligación de embarcar médico de dotación á bordo de los vapores ingleses ‘Zafiro’, ‘Diamante’ y ‘Nanzing’ que solicitan sus respectivos consignatarios, 1890, CSIC, ACCHS, Rollo 7314, Leg. 25.
124 Avisos sobre el embarque de chinos a Manila, 1892, CSIC, ACCHS, Rollo 2106, Leg. 50.
125 Report of the Philippine Commission.
