Historically, in the early days of the coolie trade, these recruitment activities were not legal in either the employer or the employee's home country.

The Manchu Qing Dynasty's "Laws of the Great Qing Dynasty" clearly stipulated that all officials, soldiers, civilians, etc., who went to the sea to do business without permission, and those who emigrated to foreign islands, should be punished according to the law of traffic rebellion. If a county government official is aware of the fraud and does not raise it, he will be immediately decided. Those who are only negligent will never be dismissed. The negligence of officials in science and technology will be reduced by three levels, and the punishment will be reduced by two levels for negligence of supervision, and the punishment cannot be described as severe.

These laws were enacted in a special historical context, initially to curb anti-Qing activities along the southeast coast and later to stop the outflow of agricultural population, but by the middle and late Qing Dynasty, it was clear that these regulations were no longer applicable, both from an economic and political point of view.

In fact, as early as the southeast coastal area in the middle and late Qianlong period, the sea ban order has almost existed in name only, even if a local official has the heart of "serving the country", but in front of the rural clan forces and the silver of the maritime merchants, they will soon open their eyes and close their eyes or even join the stream.

In 1842, the Qing and British signed the Treaty of Nanjing, which not only ceded Hong Kong to the British, but also agreed to open Guangzhou, Fuzhou, Xiamen, Ningbo and Shanghai as treaty ports, which is the so-called "five-port trade".

Lin Zexu's fate made the officials in the coastal areas, especially the bureaucrats in the above-mentioned treaty ports, more and more cautious, for fear that if they accidentally offended the foreigners, they would cause some international disputes in plain water.

The inaction of local officials has increased the arrogance of coolie traders, and the living conditions of Chinese coolies have become even worse, and it is even impossible to protect the lives of these people. At that time, there were more than one tragic case of a large number of coolies dying during transportation, and on average, 30 out of every 100 Chinese coolies were recorded to die on the vast sea thousands of miles away from their hometowns due to various "accidents".

Britain also had some scruples about this trade, and they needed to send large quantities of cheap labor to the colonies, and at the same time they needed to prove the "legitimacy" of the source of these labor, and that these people were not "indentured slaves" in the legal sense.

On this issue, British merchants had to obtain the cooperation of the Manchu government, that is, obtain the endorsement of the Manchu government, prove that these transactions were in accordance with local laws, and promote the industry to be more standardized, and no longer bear the traces and colors of the "slave trade".

However, at that time, how could the top level of the Manchu Qing government allow foreigners to point fingers at the "law of the ancestors", and it happened that they met a stubborn governor Ye Mingchen, who used a set of policies of "no war, no peace, no defense, no death, no surrender, and no departure" to deal with the British, which sounded almost comparable to a certain Mahatma's "non-violent non-cooperation" movement.

The British, finding that they could not even find a way to negotiate, decided to continue to speak with guns. The British Empire had just entered the Victorian era, and was expanding its colonies around the world, and its national power was on the rise.

The results of the Second Opium War are known to everyone, and the ruins of the Old Summer Palace are still there. The Manchu Qing Dynasty signed the "Beijing Treaty" with Britain, France and Russia, the specific contents of which will not be repeated here, one of which is to agree to the British to recruit Chinese workers to work abroad. As a result, Chinese coolies became "indentured immigrants", and coolie recruitment was no longer seen as a disguised "slave trade".

Leaving aside the clothes with B (Brisbane, Australia), P (Peru) or S (Sandwich Harbour in Namibia) painted on the chest, let's talk about the coolies with C (Cuba) painted on their chests, because their experiences are arguably the most representative.

Before they arrived, they were sold to plantations by intermediary companies and became miserable indentured servants. At that time, Cuba was still a Spanish colony, and the laws used by Spain to manage Chinese coolies were actually the previous provisions for black slaves.

The Spanish farmer had almost unlimited power over his own territory, and he was free to withhold the coolie's wages and to inflict all kinds of corporal punishment on the coolie.

Chinese coolies, on the other hand, can only redeem their contracts with money after eight years of service. In fact, many coolies will use various means to force the coolies to renew their contracts after the contract is completed.

What is even more hateful is that the Spanish governor also stipulated that Chinese coolies who had completed the contract were only allowed to continue to live and work in Cuba if they were willing to naturalize into Cubans and believe in Catholicism, and at the same time obtain a local residence permit, otherwise they would be deported.

At that time, the ticket from Cuba to China was eight ounces of gold, and most coolies could not afford this travel fee, so they could only work as slaves on the plantation for life, and many could only choose suicide to end this suffering, at that time Cuba had the highest suicide rate in the world, and one out of every two Cuban suicides was Chinese.

The plight of the Chinese coolies in Cuba was not radically improved until 1877, when the Manchu Qing Dynasty signed a treaty with Spain to protect labor and emigration, but many of them did not make it to this day.

The Americans only became involved in the Chinese coolie business after the Second Opium War, and the coolie traders, mainly from the West Coast.

Speaking of which, you may not believe it, in fact, half a century before the outbreak of the Opium War, the Chinese had already set foot on the North American continent. At that time, at the peak of the Kangxi ban on the sea, the government banned the private sector from manufacturing new ships, and a large number of experienced shipbuilders had to lose their jobs, so in 1788, a British shipbuilder took the opportunity to hire a group of Chinese shipbuilders, and then established a small colony near Vancouver, Canada, to build sailing ships using Canada's rich timber resources.

Since 1820, Chinese have entered the United States, some of whom are employees and servants of merchant ships, but some are traders along the coast of Guangdong, who have gone to the ocean in search of business opportunities. At that time, the gold rush in California had not yet begun, and Chinese merchants were still mainly engaged in the traditional silk and tea business. Some Chinese chose to settle down there, even minus their braids and became American citizens, and before 1840, there were nearly 800 Chinese settled in California.

After the outbreak of the Taiping Rebellion, more and more coastal residents of Fujian and Guangdong chose to leave their homeland to make a living overseas in order to survive, especially after learning that gold mines had been discovered in California, a large number of Chinese laborers boarded coolies to California with the dream of making a fortune.

Most of them could not afford the cost of a ferry ticket or room and board to the New World, so they signed a contract with a coolie company to pay for the upfront costs. As a result, coolie companies became creditors of these coolies, which were called "simple workers on credit" at the time, and they were still legally free immigrants who voluntarily went to the United States at their own expense, rather than so-called "indentured slaves".

But in fact, when they set foot on American soil, they automatically become "debt slaves" of coolie companies. Until the debts of the coolie companies are paid, they can only work in the mines or construction sites of the other party, or transfer them to other contractors who need labor through the transfer of creditor's rights.

Because of the various other expenses that were constantly incurred during the course of the work, plus the interest on the debt itself, it often took a year or two for the coolie to work for the coolie to pay off the debt.

After 1882, the situation changed, and the coolie companies no longer insisted on holding the debts of these coolies, after all, it was costly to manage these Asians, and they chose to transfer the debts to the Sixth Assembly Hall in California once and for all, so that the Chinese could assume the management responsibility.

The so-called Six Great Halls or the six major companies in the American population were formed by the merger of the original six associations of Sanyi, Gangzhou, Renhe, Yanghe, Ningyang, and Hopewell, which is the prototype of the famous Chinese Association in the United States.

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