Mònica Ginés Blasi: ”Replacing Chinese Migrants: Spanish Racialized Discourses on Immigration to Cuba and the Philippines (1847-1898)”

Abstract:

This paper shows how nineteenth-century rhetoric and discussions on race with regards to labour – especially plantation labour – were decisive in the selection of labour migrants from specific ethnicities and locations in the colonial world. These discourses became so influential that they even impacted major historical processes, such as affecting international politics and the deployment of armed conflicts. To develop this analysis, I focus on the outsourcing of labour migrants for the Spanish colonies of Cuba and the Philippines during the second half of the nineteenth century – being the Philippines simultaneously a site of potential migrants for Cuba and elsewhere. Based on international source material, this paper aims to provide an integrative perspective of the racial rhetoric circulating among authorities in the Spanish Ministerio de Ultramar (Ministry of colonial affairs), Ministerio de Estado y del Despacho (Ministry of State) and officials in the colonies as a consequence of the need for migrant labour which could replace Chinese migration. These discourses derived from coeval publications – often by authorities and politicians themselves – and from the correspondence exchanged with capitalists and entrepreneurs. To support my argument, I will focus on a series of case study regarding Spanish interest in Annamese, Mexican, Japanese, and also Chinese workers to labour in the colonies. Ultimately, this paper aims to show how the need for cheap labour and racialized discourses on agricultural work were mutually impactful and tightly intertwined, and had ultimate consequences in shaping major historical processes.