“Coolie” Trade

The word “coolie” has its roots in the Tamil language of the Indian language family, referring to workers engaged in heavy manual labour. The “coolie” trade was an illegal selling of Chinese labourers to Western Europe and America as slaves. As it is mentioned in A Brief History of Macao, Portuguese colonists began trading slaves as early as the mid-15th century and their illegal human trafficking continued after the occupation of Macao. Though Qing and Ming governments imposed multiple bans on human trafficking, Portuguese and British colonists showed no respect for such bans. After the Opium Wars, as the Chinese nation was weakened and vulnerable, Macao became occupied by a mixture of foreign forces, where the practice of human trafficking was increasingly rampant. After the Xiamen people’s resistance against human trafficking in 1852, Macao became one of the largest ports of “coolie” exports. At that time, Portuguese and British colonists set up “recruitment agencies” (also known as “pigsties,” a place where “pigs” are sold) to deal in the “coolie” trade.

Portuguese people called “pigsty” “barracão”, which refers to a type of heavily guarded enclosure. Most of the “pigsties” trafficking Chinese labourers were opened in Rua de S. Paulo, Rua de Pedro Nolasco da Silva, Rua do Tarrafeiro, Rua do Padre António and Rua dos Cules, etc. A number of “gangsters” recruited by such agencies were spread across the Pearl River Delta and coastal areas of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian and Guangdong. Some of them even went as far as Hunan, Hubei and other inland provinces to deceive and abduct people. Some others beguiled villagers into believing that they would get a job in Macao, but they were sold to Cuba and Peru after being brought to the “pigsties”. These activities brought in great profit for “gangsters”. Due to the considerable profits generated in “coolie” trading, the number of “pigsties” in Macao increased in time. Until the ban on “coolie” trade in 1873, more than 300 “pigsties” were operating across Macao and the annual income made by the Portuguese administration of Macao from the “coolie” trade was about five times the amount of customs duties.