THE CHINESE IN TRINIDAD,

And what prompts Government officials to recruit labour from half a world away?

To answer the first question: the first Chinese to arrive in Trinidad on October 12, 1806 were hungry for land. One hundred and ninety nine men (give or take a man or two, historians disagree on the exact number) and a lone woman wanted work and, in time, a plot, a piece of land to call their own where they could raise crops to sell, to prosper and make a better life for themselves and their children. Some came from Macao, or, as it’s spelled today, Macau, the Portuguese colony (as it was then) on the southern coast of China. Most came from Penang, Malaysia, and some were recruited in Calcutta, India.

In The Chinese in the Caribbean Dr Walton Look Lai writes this small, “experimental group of sugar workers and small farmers” were “in fact the first recorded Chinese settlement in the Americas”. However, as we shall see, most of these soon returned whence they had come.

French planters (for most were French in those days) in the newly acquired, sparsely populated colony of Trinidad needed labour to develop the land, to clear the jungle to plant sugar. With the campaign against the slave trade gathering strength in London, and news of slave rebellions in other islands, labour was, or would soon be, in short supply. But where could they find a willing, hard-working labour force? Kenneth MacQueen, a British official who had served in what is now Malaysia reckoned he had the answer to the labour shortage – Chinese indentured labour.

For some time past Chinese workers, desperate for work, had been leaving China to work in countries in South East Asia. It seems so desperate was the overcrowding in China at that time that they were willing to go anywhere there might be work, wherever it might be.

MacQueen was so impressed by the way Chinese immigrants had transformed the jungle on Prince of Wales island in Penang Settlement (as it was then) into valuable plantations growing spices that in his report “Hints on the Cultivation of Trinidad” he suggested to the Colonial Office in London (who always had the final say on what was to happen in Trinidad) that the Chinese would be the ideal workforce to transform the island from a jungle to profitable sugar – and other – plantations.

What the Chinese had done in Penang, he argued, in 1802, they could do in Trinidad. He even reckoned it would be cheaper to have Chinese indentured labour to convert jungle to sugar plantations than to use slave labour. The Colonial Office took its time to consider MacQueen’s proposition (as bureaucracies invariably do, then as now).

And so, eventually, some time in March 1806 (we do not know the exact date) the East Indian Company ship “Fortitude” carrying 147 Chinese men recruited in Macao and Penang and another 53 in Calcutta set sail for the six-month-long journey to Trinidad. Sadly, eight died en route so that on October 12, 1806, only 192 Chinese immigrants arrived in Trinidad.

According to their contracts, signed before they set out, they were to be paid $6 a month for one year or until they were able to support themselves – or they opted to return home because their contracts also stipulated that those who wanted to return to the East would get free passage any time they asked for it, there was no time limit.

Only 24 of the immigrants went to work on sugar estates. The rest were settled in an estate, aptly named “Speculation” in what is now Cocorite. In The Chinese in Trinidad Trevor Millette writes that they were given agricultural tools, and the Government provided them with a boat. It’s said it was these first Chinese immigrants who introduced seine fishing in Trinidad. One account tells they were so successful they dominated the fish market in Port-of-Spain.

Some tamed the bush to plant market gardens on the estate. Some raised pigs and became pork butchers, others were carpenters. It would seem those in charge in the Far East recruited a very mixed bag of Chinese, some agricultural labourers, some fishermen, some craftsmen, some market gardeners, some farmers. There seems to be little doubt that they worked as hard as they were able – and yet the experiment failed; in fact 60 went back to the Far East on the “Fortitude” when the ship left Trinidad to return to the Orient, it seems they had taken one look at Trinidad and decided it was not for them.

The rest stayed on for a year or two; towards the end of 1809 only 30 of the original 192 were still here, when Emancipation came in 1834 there were only about two or three Chinese in Trinidad. What made almost all of the first Chinese immigrants leave? We can’t know for sure, but we can guess. Language might have been a barrier, but since they came from parts of the Far East where, thanks to the influence of the East India Company, some English was spoken, that couldn’t be the only reason.

With malaria taking its toll of all in Trinidad in those days, some must have died of fevers (one imagines Cocorite wasn’t exactly the healthiest spot on the island in those days), some by accident. But it seems the majority couldn’t adjust to life in a new land, new customs, diet could have been a problem when they found essential ingredients used in Far Eastern cooking weren’t available, at that time, in Trinidad.

The disenchanted returned to the Far East. What happened to the few who stayed on? No one knows for sure. Some prospered and actually owned slaves. Some, of course, had children by slaves, in which case, we’re told, they bought the mothers and freed them. The children were sent to English schools, they merged with the increasingly mixed population of Trinidad. The first experiment had failed, but the memory must linger on in traces of genes of Trinidadians who have no idea of their Chinese descent . . .

Next Week The Chinese arrive in earnest.

annehilton@rave-tt.net