from time to time
passed by the Portuguese authorities for the purpose of minimizing the
horrors of the Macao trade. They seem, however, to have been
systematically evaded, and to have been practically inoperative. At
Canton and Hong-Kong the coolie trade was put under various regulations,
which in the latter port worked well only when the profits of
"head-money" were ruined. In March 1866 the representatives of the
governments of France, England and China drew up a convention for the
regulation of the Canton trade, which had an unfortunate effect. It left
head-money, the source of most of the abuses, comparatively untouched.
It enacted that every coolie must at the end of a five years' engagement
have his return passage-money paid to him. The West Indian colonies at
once objected to this. They wanted permanent not temporary settlers.
They could not afford to burden the coolie's expensive contract with
return passage-money, so they declined to accept emigrants on these
terms. Thus a legalized coolie trade between the West Indies and China
was extinguished. Thereafter the coolie supply for British colonies was
drawn exclusively from India, until 1904, when an exception was made in
the case of the Transvaal. Under a convention drawn up in that year
between the United Kingdom and China over fifty thousand indentured
Chinese labourers were engaged on three years' contracts to work in the
Witwatersrand gold mines (see TRANSVAAL). To the Malay states and other
parts of eastern Asia there is an extensive yearly migration of Chinese
coolies. This migration, however, is not under contract. From Amoy alone
some seventy-five thousand coolies yearly migrate to Singapore and the
Straits Settlements, whence they are drafted for labour purposes in
every direction.

Indian coolies.

It is scarcely possible to say when the Indian coolie trade began.
Before the end of the 18th century Tamil labourers from southern India
were wont to emigrate to the Straits Settlements, and they also flocked
to Tenasserim from the other side of the Bay of Bengal after the
conquest had produced a demand for labour. The first regularly recorded
attempt at organizing coolie emigration from India took place in 1834,
when forty coolies were exported to Mauritius; but it was not until 1836
that the Indian government decided to put the trade under official
regulations. In 1837 an emigration law was passed for all the
territories of the East India Company,