Conclusion

Summary

In 1874 the English entomologist William Lucas Distant published a short article giving an overview of ‘Eastern Coolie Labour’, which was based on his observations of plantations in Singapore and Johor. In this article Distant compares Chinese workers favourably against their indigenous counterparts: ‘The Chinese … seem to prosper better under the employment of their own countrymen, cultivate their plots of ground, breed their fowls and pigs, and seem contented with their position and lot. The Chinaman seems also to prosper in contact with the European, he bargains with him.’ Whilst he repeatedly praised the role of Chinese workers and middle management in the development of the plantation economy, he also confirmed long-standing stereotypes as essential to the character of Chinese workers: ‘Of course they gamble – all Chinamen do – and the head Chinaman makes a considerable profit from the opium with which he supplies them.’ Distant's analysis could pass for that of a colonial observer in Singapore in the 1820s and demonstrates the longevity of these tropes from the early colonial period.

In 1879 several prominent Chinese migrants in Australia – Lowe Kong Meng, Cheok Hong Cheong and Louis Ah Mouy – wrote a defence of Chinese immigration in a pamphlet that responded to the anti-Chinese political rhetoric sweeping the Australian colonies. In doing so they placed Chinese migration in the broader context of Anglo-Chinese conflict and highlighted the nexus between free trade and the free movement of people that was key to the success of early colonial Singapore:

The freedom to come and go, to trade and settle, which you [the British] insisted upon claiming for yourselves, you also accorded to the subjects of his Imperial Majesty. He has fulfilled the first part of the compact, and the trade of Great Britain with China has trebled during the last fourteen years, to say nothing of the indirect commerce transacted with that country via Singapore and Hong Kong. Well, our countrymen begin to emigrate to these colonies, and to seek employment on board Australian vessels, in the fullest confidence that the second portion of the compact will be carried out, and they are astounded to find that its fulfilment is resisted by the subjects of Her Majesty Queen Victoria in Australia.