Abstract
In 1904, the Transvaal began importing Chinese indentured labourers for the Witwatersrand (Rand) gold mines. This was one experiment in a swathe of efforts to rebuild the local economy and pay back some of the colony’s crippling war debts to Britain after the South African War (1899–1902). Overall, 63,695 Chinese were imported between 1904 and 1907. By 1910, all of the workers had been forcefully repatriated to China, but their introduction had an important and lasting effect around the world.
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Notes
See in particular D. J. N. Denoon’s ‘Capitalist Influence and the Transvaal Government During the Crown Colony Period. 1900–1906’, The Historical Journal, 11:2 (1968), pp.301–331.
Gary Kynoch, ‘Controlling the Coolies: Chinese Mineworkers and the Struggle for Labor in South Africa, 1904–1910’, The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 36:2 (2003), pp.309–329.
Peter Richardson, Chinese Mine Labour in the Transvaal (London, 1982).
Coolies and Randlords, ‘The North Randfontein Chinese Miners’ “Strike” of 1905’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 2 (1976), pp.151–177.
Andrew Thompson, ‘The Language of Loyalism in Southern Africa, c. 1870–1939’, English Historical Review, 118:477 (June 2003), pp.617–650.
Jonathan Hyslop, ‘The Imperial Working Class Makes Itself “White”: White Labourism in Britain, Australia, and South Africa Before the First World War’, Journal of Historical Sociology, 12:4 (1999), pp.398–421.
Peter Merrington, ‘Masques, Monuments and Masons: The 1910 Pageant of the Union of South Africa’, Theatre Journal, 49:1 (1997), pp.1–14.
Nill Nasson, ‘Why They Fought: Black Cape Colonists and Imperial Wars, 1899–1918’, The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 37:1 (2004), pp.55–70.
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© 2013 Rachel K. Bright
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Bright, R.K. (2013). Introduction. In: Chinese Labour in South Africa, 1902–10. Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137316578_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137316578_1
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