Historically, in the early days of the coolie trade, these recruitment activities were not legal in both employers and employees.

The Qing Dynasty's "The Laws of the Qing Dynasty" clearly stipulated that all officials, military, civilians, etc., who go out to sea to do business privately and migrate to foreign islands should be executed and executed according to the traffic rebellion law. Anyone who has committed fraud and fails to report the information will be executed. Those who are only inadvertent, will be executed and executed. Those who are dismissed from office will never be dismissed. Officials of Kedao have been demoted to three levels of supervision, and the governor's failure to supervise and downward are demoted to two levels of supervision, and the punishment must be said to be cruel.

The formulation of these legal provisions has a special historical background. They were initially intended to curb anti-Qing activities in the southeast coast and later to stop the outflow of agricultural population. However, in the middle and late Qing Dynasty, these regulations were obviously no longer applicable, whether from an economic or political perspective.

In fact, as early as the southeast coastal area of ​​the middle and late Qianlong period, the ban on the sea was almost gone in name only. Even if a local official had the intention of "serving the country", he would soon open his eyes and even become dirty in the face of rural clan forces and maritime merchants' squandering money.

After the outbreak of the First Opium War, the British used naval guns to blow up the borders of the "Qing Dynasty". In 1842, the Qing and Britain signed the Treaty of Nanjing, which not only ceded Hong Kong to Britain, but also agreed to open Guangzhou, Fuzhou, Xiamen, Ningbo and Shanghai to become trading ports, which is the so-called "five-port trading".

Lin Zexu's fate has made officials in coastal areas, especially those above-mentioned trade ports, become more cautious, fearing that they will offend foreigners by accident and cause some international disputes in vain. If they are just lost and dismissed, it will be just a matter of fact. If the matter is too big, they may even be scouted and their heads are cut off, and no one has yet to complain for you.

The inaction of local officials has increased the arrogance of coolie traders. The living environment of Chinese coolie has become worse and cannot even protect the lives of these people. At that time, there were more than one tragedy in which coolie died in a large number of transport. On average, thirty people in every 100 Chinese coolie in the record would die in the vast ocean thousands of miles away from their hometown due to various "accidents".

It is said that the UK also has some concerns about this kind of trade. They need to transport large quantities of cheap labor to the colonies, and at the same time, they need to prove the "legality" of the source of these labors and prove that these people are not "contract slaves" in the legal sense.

On this issue, British businessmen must obtain cooperation from the Qing government, that is, endorsement from the Qing government, prove that these transactions comply with local laws and prompt that the industry will be more standardized and no longer have the traces and colors of the "slave trade".

However, how could the senior executives of the Qing government at that time allow foreigners to point fingers at the "laws of ancestors"? It happened to meet a stubborn governor Ye Mingchen, who used a policy of "not fighting, not being in harmony, not defending, not dying, not surrendering, not leaving" to deal with the British. It sounds like it is comparable to the "non-violent non-cooperation" movement of a certain Mahatma. If this is pushed for a hundred years, it may be possible to get a dynamite prize.

The British found that they could not even find a way to negotiate, so they decided to continue speaking with guns and cannons. The British Empire had just entered the Victorian era and was expanding its colony around the world. The national strength was in the rising period. When they were in a crow, they saw through the details of "My Qing Dynasty", so they did not hesitate to start.

Everyone knows the result of the Second Opium War, and the ruins of the Old Summer Palace are still there. The Qing Dynasty and Britain, France and Russia signed the "Beijing Treaty" one after another. The specific content will not be described here. One of them is that it agrees to the UK to recruit Chinese workers to work abroad. As a result, China's coolie turned into a "contract immigration", and the recruitment of coolie is no longer regarded as a disguised "slave trade".

Let’s not mention the clothes that are painted with B (Brisbane, Australia), P (Peru) or S (Sandwich Port in Namibia), here I will talk about the coolies with C (Cuba) on their chests, because their experience can be said to be the most representative.

Before arriving at the destination, these people were sold to major plantations by intermediary companies and became miserable contract slave labor. At that time, Cuba was still a Spanish colony, and the laws used by Spain to manage Chinese coolies were actually the previous provisions for managing black slaves.

The Spanish farmer has almost unlimited power on his territory. He can deduct coolie's salary at will and also have the right to impose various corporal punishments on the coolie.

Chinese coolies can only use money to redeem their contract after eight years of work. In fact, after many coolies are completed, Spanish employers will use various means to force coolies to renew their contracts.

What's even more hateful is that the Spanish Governor also stipulates that Chinese coolies who have completed the contract will only be allowed to continue living and working in Cuba only if they are willing to naturalize themselves as Cubans and believe in Catholicism, and obtain a local residence permit, or they will be deported.

At that time, the ticket from Cuba to China was eight ounces of gold. Most coolies could not afford the travel expenses at all, so they could only be slaves in the plantations for life. Many people could only choose to commit suicide to end this suffering. At that time, Cuba had the highest suicide rate in the world, and one of every two Cuban suicides was Chinese.

The tragic situation of the Cuban Chinese coolies was not fundamentally improved until the Qing Dynasty signed a treaty for the protection of labor immigration with Spain in 1877, but many coolies failed to persevere until this day.

The Americans only began to intervene in the Chinese coolie business after the Second Opium War, and the coolie merchants mainly came from the West Coast.

Speaking of which, you may not believe it. In fact, half a century before the outbreak of the Opium War, the Chinese had already set foot on the North American continent. At the peak of the Kangxi ban on the sea, the government banned the people from making new ships, and a large number of experienced shipbuilders had to be unemployed. So in 1788, a British ship merchant took the opportunity to hire a group of Chinese shipbuilders, and then established a small colony near Vancouver, Canada, to use Canada's rich timber resources to build sailboats.

Since 1820, Chinese people have entered the United States one after another, some of them were employees and servants on merchant ships, but some were traders from the coast of Guangdong who went to the ocean to look for business opportunities. At that time, the gold rush in California had not yet begun, and Chinese merchants mainly engaged in traditional silk and tea business. Some Chinese people chose to settle down locally, and even reduced their braids to become American nationality. Before 1840, there were nearly 800 Chinese people who settled in California.

After the outbreak of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement, more and more coastal residents in Fujian and Guangdong chose to leave their hometowns and go overseas to make a living in order to survive. Especially when they learned that the gold mines were discovered in California, a large number of Chinese workers boarded the coolie ship to California with the dream of making money.

Most of them could not afford the expenses of boat tickets and food and accommodation to the New World, so they signed a contract with Coolids, and Coolids advanced the payment. So Coolids became the creditors of these Coolids, which was called "credit single work" at the time. Legally, they still voluntarily immigrated to the United States at their own expense, rather than the so-called "contract slaves".

But in fact, when they set foot on the US, they automatically became the "debtor slaves" of Coolid. Before paying off the debts of Coolid, they could only work in the mines or construction sites under the other party, or handed over to other contractors who needed labor through debt transfer.

Because other expenses will be incurred during work, plus the interest on the debt itself, Coolie often needs to work for Coolie for one or two years to repay the debt.

After 1882, the situation changed again. Coolidge Company no longer insisted on holding these Coolidge's debts. After all, managing these Asians requires a lot of money. They chose a one-time and all-out approach to transfer the debts to the six major halls in California, so that the Chinese could assume management responsibilities.

The so-called six major guild halls or six major companies in the United States are formed by the merger of the original six guild halls, Sanyi, Gangzhou, Renhe, Yanghe, Ningyang and Hehe, which is the prototype of the famous Chinese Association in the United States.

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