Controlling the coolies: Chinese mineworkers and the struggle for labor in South Africa, 1904-1910

International Journal of African Historical Studies

Volumn 36, Issue 2, 2003, Pages 309-330

  Kynoch, Gary ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 25444445051     PISSN: 03617882     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3559386     Document Type: Review

References (41)

1. Peter Richardson, Chinese Mine Labour in the Transvaal (London, 1982), 204.
2. Africans working on the diamond fields in Kimberley were housed in closedcompounds and subjected to intense surveillance, but these men were free toreturn home following the completion of their contracts, which were measured inmonths instead of years. Moreover, as Patrick Harries has pointed out, thediamond fields "had to attract men from competing areas of employment ...and, to do this, management and labour had to negotiate conditions that wereacceptable to both parties." In this competitive environment, mine ownerslearned to limit the worst abuses and offer sufficient wages to induceexperienced black miners to recontract. With their workers bound by three-yearindentures, employers of Chinese labour had no such concerns. See Patrick Harries, Work, Culture, and Identity: Migrant Laborers in Mozambique and South Africa, c. 1860-1910 (Portsmouth, N.H., 1994), 68;
3. William Worger, South Africa's City of Diamonds: Mine Workers and Monopoly Capitalism in Kimberley, 1867-1895 (New Haven, Conn., 1987), 288-89.
4. Peter Richardson, "Chinese Indentured Labour in the Transvaal Gold Mining Industry, 1904-1910, " in Kay Saunders, ed., Indentured Labour in the British Empire 1834-1920 (London, 1984), 277.
5. Harries, Work, Culture and Identity, 138.
6. For more on desertion see Peter Warwick, "Black Industrial Proteston the Witwatersrand, 1901-1902, "
7. and Sean Moroney, "Mine Worker Protest on the Witwatersrand, 1901-1912, " in Eddie Webster, ed., Essays in Southern African Labour History (Johannesburg, 1978).
8. Moroney "Mine Worker Protest, " 38-39.
9. Richardson, Chinese Mine Labour, 174.
10. Report of Mine Managers, 4.
11. CAD, FLD 7, 147/20/17, E. C. Mayers, Inspector to Superintendent FLD, 7July 1905.
12. CAD, FLD 225, 62/20, H.L. McDonald, Manager, Durban Roodeport Deep Limited to F. Raleigh, Acting General Manager, Rand Mines Ltd., 27 March 1905.
13. CAD, FLD 225, 62/20, Report of District Surgeon J. Dixon, 27 March 1905.
14. rd April 1905;
15. th April 1905;
16. rd July, 1905.
17. thJuly 1905. For other examples of Chinese retaliation: FLD 50 6/3, Report on Van Ryn Gold Mine by the Superintendent FLD, 13 December 1904; FLD 7, 147/20/4, Report of H. Hay, Manager, Witwatersrand Deep Limited, 3 April 1905.
18. thJuly, 1905.
19. th May 1905.
20. thJuly 1905.
21. CAD, EC 86, 82/06, Lord Selborne to Lord Elgin, 29 January 1906.
22. CAD, GOV 209, CON 33/05, Lord Selborne to Alfred Lyttelton, Colonial Office, 7 August 1905.
23. Dunbar Moodie refers to similar accommodations between African miners andmine management as a moral economy. Going for Gold: Men, Mines and Migration(Berkeley, 1994).
24. CAD, GOV 159, GEN 894/04, Governor Milner to Lyttelton, Colonial Office, enclosures from FLD, 12 December 1904.
25. Peter Richardson, "Coolies and Randlords: The North Randfontein Chinese Miners' 'Strike' of 1905, " Journal of Southern African Studies 2(1976), 165.
26. Richardson, "Coolies and Randlords, " 169.
27. CAD, GOV 165, GEN 286/05, Report from the Inspector in Charge, Krugersdorp Police on the Chinese Disturbance at North Randfontein Mine, undated.
28. CAD, GOV 165, GEN 286/05, E.M. Showers, Commissioner of Police to the Acting Secretary of the Law Department, Pretoria, 3 April, 1905.
29. Richardson, "Coolies and Randlords, " 171.
30. CAD, LTG 166, Telegram, Lord Selborne to Secretary of State, 18 April1905.
31. Richardson, "Coolies and Randlords, " 177.
32. CAD, LD 1067, AG 1905/05, Assistant Commissioner of Police, West Rand, Florida to Acting Deputy Commissioner of Police, Johannesburg, 28 April 1905.
33. CAD, LD 1067, AG 1905/05, Commissioner of Police to Secretary of the Law Department, Pretoria, 3 May 1905.
34. CAD, FLD 19, AG 10/05, B.C. Fairfax, Inspector FLD to Superintendent FLD, 25 July 1905.
35. CAD, LD 1487, AG 3168/07, Cason Riot Enquiry and enclosures, 52.
36. CAD, LD 1487, AG 3168/07, Cason Riot Enquiry, enclosure, Chief Inspector Purdon FLD to Superintendent FLD, 23 August 1907.
37. th August 1907.
38. CAD, LD 1507, AG 3773/07, Acting Commissioner of Police to Secretary tothe Law Department, 26 September 1907.
39. st of January 1909.
40. CAD, LD 1696, file 194/04, Confidential interview with Purdon re: Reportof Village Deep Inquiry, 3 February 1909.
41. See David Yudelman, The Emergence of Modern South Africa: State, Capitaland the Incorporation of Organized Labour on the South African Gold Fields(Yudelman, 1984).