 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Chinese Caribbean people" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(February 2021) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
| Regions with significant populations | |
|---|---|
 Jamaica | 75,000[citation needed] |
 Dominican Republic | 60,000[citation needed] |
 Cuba | 41,000[citation needed] |
 Suriname | 40,000[1][2] |
 French Guiana | 15,000[citation needed] |
 Belize | 10,000[citation needed] |
 Trinidad and Tobago | 3,984[3] |
 Puerto Rico | 3,000[citation needed] |
 Guyana | 2,722[4] |
 Curaçao | 1,600[citation needed] |
 Aruba | 1,100[5] |
| Languages | |
| Colonial Languages: Varieties of Chinese: | |
| Religion | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Overseas Chinese,Asian Caribbeans | |
Chinese Caribbean people (sometimesSino-Caribbean people) are people who are of predominately ofHan Chinese ethnic origins living throughout theCaribbean. There are small but significant populations of Chinese and their descendants in all countries of theGreater Antilles. This diaspora migrants stretch back as far back as the mid-19th century. They are all part of the large global Chinesediaspora known asOverseas Chinese.
Caribbean Islands:
Mainland Caribbean:
Between 1853 and 1879, 14,000 Chinese indentured servants were imported to the British Caribbean as part of a larger system of low-wage labor bound for the sugar plantations. Imported as a low-wage labor force from China, Chinese settled in three main locations:Jamaica,Trinidad, andBritish Guiana (nowGuyana), initially working on the sugar plantations. Most of the Chinese workers initially went to British Guiana; however when importation ended in 1879, the population declined steadily, mostly due to emigration to Trinidad andSuriname.[6]
Chineseimmigration to Cuba started in 1847 whenCantonese low-wage workers were brought to work in the sugar fields, bringing their nativeChinese folk religion with them. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese were brought in fromHong Kong,Macau, andTaiwan during the following decades to replace and / or work alongside Africanslaves. After obtaining their freedom, some descendants of Chinese indentured servants settled permanently in Cuba, although most longed for repatriation to their homeland. When the United States enacted theChinese Exclusion Act on May 6, 1882, many Chinese in the United States fled to Puerto Rico, Cuba and other Latin American nations. They established small niches and worked in restaurants and laundries.[7]
The Chinese indentured servants who entered theBritish West Indies in the middle and late nineteenth century formed a marginal but distinct part of the global dispersal of southern Chinese characteristics of the period.[8] Next to those in theUnited States, on the one hand, and inCuba andPeru, on the other, they formed the third largest regional grouping of Chinese arrivals to the Western Hemisphere in the mid-century. About 15,000[8] arrived inBritish Guiana, with just under 3,000 going toTrinidad andJamaica, to work as indentured laborers in thesugar industry.[8]
Although the patterns of their entry into these new societies represented a microcosmic version of the story of theChinese diaspora in the nineteenth century, there were a number of note-worthy distinctive traits attached to this regional experience.
The bulk of Chinesecoolies migration to theWest Indies occurred between 1853 and 1866.[9] By the end of the nineteenth century, some 18,000[8] Chinese would arrive in the West Indies, with the vast majority of those workers headed forGuyana.[9] As was the case with most migration out ofChina in the nineteenth century, the workers were drawn from southernChina and were seeking to escape desperate conditions caused by a combination of environmental catastrophes and political unrest.
There were also a considerable number ofChristian converts among theChinese migrants as a result of the colonial government's willingness to rely on Christianmissionaries to assist them in their recruitment endeavors, particularly in the recruiting of family units.[9] The use ofChristian missionaries in recruitment[9] was just one of many measures that the colonial government used in its venture to avoid accusations that indenture was simply another form ofslavery.[9] The government was particularly sensitive to such accusations because it was competing directly with otherEuropean powers, particularlySpain, to recruit low-wage laborers fromChina.[8] The recruitment of the Chinese was generally conducted by professional recruiters, known as "crimps", who were paid per individual recruit, while the recruits themselves received a cash advance. In the 1850s, the demand for Chinese workers and the fees paid to thecrimps increased so dramatically[8] that the system quickly became notorious for its association withabuse andcoercion, includingkidnapping.[9] The system was said to be known as "the sale of Little Pigs",[9] alluding to the inhumane treatment migrants often faced.
The exposure of this inhumane system led to a series ofordinances being passed which, despite not directly enhancing the state ofindentured Chinese, eventually played a key role in ending Chinese exploitation in theWest Indies.[9] In 1866, theKung Convention signed inChina, but never ratified byBritain, specifically provided back passage for the Chinese workers.[10]West Indian planters were not, however, prepared to cover the additional cost that this would incur, especially in light of the fact that India was proving more than sufficient as a source of coolie. After theChinese government refused to back down on the provision, interest in the Chinese Caribbean people as coolies seems to have simply faded.[10]
The manner in which thecolonial powers introduced Chinese into theWest Indies and thesocioeconomic roles that they afforded[8] to the migrants would directly affect how the Caribbean Chinese people were imagined and represented in colonial discourse in terms of where they belonged in the West Indies'social,economic andpolitical landscapes.[8]
The Caribbean Chinese people inliterature, particularly, were regarded as either valuable additions to the multiculturalmosaic of the Caribbean, or an entry into the problematic multiculturalism that existed in the region.George Lamming, for example, in his workOf Age and Innocence andWilson Harris inThe Whole Armour explored the Chinese character through the lens of the former. More often than not, the Caribbean Chinese people are presented as peripheral figures in stereotypical roles, as inscrutable or clever or linguistically deficient rural shopkeepers, preoccupied with money and profit. Such characters appear in the novels ofSamuel Selvon,Michael Anthony,V.S. Naipaul, and even in the short stories of theChinese Trinidadian Willi Chen.
The distance from otherCaribbean people that is attributed to Ethnic Chinese in literary texts also manifests itself in the depiction of the Chinese as being a fundamentally alien presence in theWest Indies.[10] Indeed, Chinese characters are sometimes depicted as the only individuals who can see the larger themes.[9] This can be seen in novels such asPan Beat byMarion Patrick Jones,Mr. On Loong byRobert Standish, andThe Pagoda byPatricia Powell.[9]
In 2022 the Barbados Museum & Historical Society featured a project called "From Beijing to Bridgetown" to highlight the experiences of the island's Chinese diaspora resident in Barbados as far back as roughly the past 200 years.[11][12]
Politics and government
Business and industry
Arts and entertainment
Science and medicine
Sports
it is generally considered that Han ethnic communities migrated to Jamaica, Guyana and Trinidad & Tobago from as early as the beginning of the 1800s, but the largest migration period was between the 1850s-1880s as part of indentured labour schemes on post-emancipation plantation sites.
| By origin in Asia  |
| ||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| By residence |
| ||||||||||||||||||
