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America Latina

VOLUMEN 5 - Nº 2
JULIO - DICIEMBRE 1994
Identidades en América Latina (II)
Busca en E.I.A.L.:

     

Neither Slave nor Free, Neither Black nor
White: The Chinese in Early Nineteenth
Century Brazil

JEFFREY LESSER
Connecticut College

There is no doubt that race is a critical factor in understanding Brazil. Yet, as Barbara J. Fields has so pointedly noted (in a discussion of the United States), many historians "tend to accord race a transhistorical, almost metaphysical, status that removes it from all possibility of analysis and understanding."1 In the Brazilian case, this occurs because scholars frequently assume ?Trace" to be real and observable, not simply an ideological concept. Yet the superficial notion of race, with its assumption of commonality within a group, never really rang true, even in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Indeed, those broad regional groupings so frequently discussed in the Brazilian context (Africans, Europeans, Brazilian indigenous peoples) did not share language, religion, physical type or culture, something that most Brazilians knew full well.2 Even cursory readings of everything from rural slave-owner reports to mid-twentieth-century diplomatic correspondence show that it was the rare member of the Brazilian elite who believed that a Tupí and a Guaraní, a Portuguese Catholic and German Protestant, or a West African Hausa Muslim and a Central African Bantu animast, were the same. In fact, BraziPs elites went to great lengths to distinguish between, and define hierarchically, the various "races" within "racial" groups, something many historians have not done.4

The races within races are, in modem parlance, ethnic groups. I do not use this term loosely; I mean for readers to understand "ethnicity" broadly, as defining groups distinct from others because of national or regional origin, or because of cultural traits. This separation from the dominant group may come from within or from without, and may be based on cultural differences such as language, attitudes towards marriage, and shared experiences regarding, among other things, food, work and clothing. Ethnicity, then, can be part of, or operate parallel to, both race and religion. Unlike sociologists such as Richard T. Schaefer, I do not classify race, religion, gender and ethnicity separately and exclusively. Furthermore, I do not mean to imply that the "new ethnicity" based on "a movement of self-knowledge ... and renewed self- consciousness" is not a legitimate social category, but rather that it is not useful in the case of nineteenth century Brazil.5

What makes the analysis of ethnic groups in Brazil so difficult is that the intellectuals and economic and political leaders who created and defined social issues in the nineteenth century used a language of race to describe ethnicity. In other words, the presumptions about racial hierarchy and racial categories that had been formalized in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries created a specific language that simultaneously reflected and promoted a sense of white European superiority and generally used the word "race" as a synonym for color. By the mid-nineteenth century, however, no planter, budding industrialist, or politician was unconscious of the fact that Brazilian society was filled with people who did not fit the old categories, be they European Protestants or Jews, Asian Buddhists or Confucians, or North American black lawyers or white confederates. The "racial" differences had become far more complex that those of color alone.

Ideological modifications about culture and identity did not always change the vocabulary used to express the new sense of society. Even so, old language meant markedly new things to Brazil's elites and, from the early nineteenth century forward, race would no longer mean absolute categories based on color or biology but rather an increasingly complex notion of ethnicity bound up in ideas of religion, culture and economic experience, in addition to color.6 Furthermore, day-to-day contact with the wide range of ethnic groups, from within Brazil and from without, forced elites into a grudging respect for various peoples at the same time that they (the elites) were absolutely convinced of their God-given superiority. This contradiction was perturbing and while most planters and politicians knew full well that Asians were not Caucasians, the confusion was so great that, by 1935, one politician could comfortably insist in Brazil's House of Deputies, without fear of rebuttal, that "the Japanese colonist ... is whiter than the Portuguese (one)."7

One of the earliest challenges to Brazil's old racial order carne in the early nineteenth century when moral, political and economic questions about the institution of slavery began to be openly discussed. This was undoubtedly one result of slave resistance, which, as Warren Dean has so eloquently shown, made the institution an increasingly poor financial proposition.8 The economic strains combined with cultural pressure among European and North and South American elites to create a slowly expanding agreement that a new system of labor, and specifically wage labor, was needed. Yet the idea of wage labor in Brazil, at least through 1890, was not mirrored by a desire to implant a system of exactly free labor. Indeed, there is much evidence that abolitionism was less than humanitarian in ideal. Rather, it reflected a desire to rid Brazil of its African populations and should not be construed as a desire to end slave-like treatment of laborers.

Following Brazil's independence from Portugal in 1822, and its reformation as an Empire that would last until 1889, most of Brazil's elite believed that the best way to shift from slave to wage labor, and to "whiten" the country at the same time, was through European immigration. Yet the insistence of imperial leaders that the Catholic Church remain formally established, and that non- Catholics not be permitted public exercise of therr faith, provided a major stumbling block to the entry of the large numbers of Central European Protestants emigrating at the time. Furthermore, many of Brazil's Portuguese settlers opposed European settlement outright, and, according to one observer, they were filled with such a high level of "national prejudice and inherent bigotry" that Irish Catholics were more interested in immigrating to the Protestant United States than to Catholic Brazil.9 Limitations on religious freedom were relaxed in the later years of the Empire to encourage Protestant immigration, but wretched treatment of German colonists in southern Brazil created a poor image among potential European migrants. By 1858, the situation had deteriorated to the point that the Prussian House of Deputies voted to oppose all immigration to Brazil, citing problems of treatment and referring to the German settlers as "négres blancs" (black [slave] whites).10

Many Brazilians continued to believe that Germans were the best colonists for Brazil's economic and social "advancement", but it was clear by mid- century that the expected European migrants would not be forthcoming.11 This, and the desire to rid Brazil of its African-descended population, led to a reconsideration of the social issue, including the possibility of Chinese immigration as a solution to the labor problem. For a Brazilian elite struggling to understand why the United States was booming, Chinese immigration to the U.S. (and to a lesser extent Peru, Cuba, and the British colonies in the Caribbean) provided a model ripe for repetition.12 There was even some sentiment in intellectual circles that Chinese were of the same "racial stock" as the indigenous people of northern Brazil and thus would be particularly easy to integrate.13 At the same time, the widespread European and North American image of Chinese workers as coolies, the derogative term used for Asian workers at the time, suggested that "docile" Chinese could be treated as slaves without fear of a response. Yet, as Ronald Takaki reminds us, Chinese migrants to the Americas as a rule were not coolies who had been kidnapped or coerced into service. Indeed, most Chinese paid for their own passages, frequently borrowing money for the ticket through a broker and contractually agreeing to pay the loan plus interest from future wages.14

Participants in the nineteenth-century debate over the merits and problems of Chinese labor would eventually include Brazil's most important intellectuals, planters and politicians (often the same people). Names such as Quintino Bocayuva (leader of Rio de Janeiro's Republican party), Senator Alfredo D'Escragnolle Taunay (who would later become one of the leaders of the Sociedade Central de Imigragáo - Central Immigration Society), the progressive entrepreneur and industrialist Irineu Evangelista de Sousa (the Baráo de Mauá), Conservative politician and President of the Province of Rio de Janeiro Joáo Lins Vieira Cansangáo de Sinimbú (who was later appointed Prime Minister), and the abolitionist politicians André Rebougas and Joaquim Nabuco, to name just a few, spoke frequently and fervently about "The Chinese Question."

The positions taken where not always consistent with the Liberal or Conservative fame of the aforementioned. Indeed, the virulence of the pro and anti-Chinese movements led a bizarre assortment of Brazil's elites to share the same bed. The "anti" group included fervent nationalist/racists who believed that Chinese were biologically degenerate and that only Europeans could improve Brazil's racial stock, abolitionists who argued that Chinese labor would work in slave-like conditions and thus should not be permitted, and large landowners who believed that only Africans could do back- breaking plantation work. On the other side of the table, there were progressive plantation owners who saw the end of slavery approaching and looked simply to replace African slaves with another servile group, abolitionists convinced that Chinese contract labor would be a step forward on the path to full wage labor, and still others who fervently believed that Chinese workers had some inherited ability as agricultural laborers and would help make Brazil a more competitive player in the word market.

It should not be surprising that many of Brazil's leaders looked to the Chinese as a solution to the labor problem. Portugal, in 1511, became the first European maritime power to have direct relations with the Chinese empire, and by 1533 the Portuguese colony at Ningpo was "flourishing."15 Long-term economic and political relations with Asia via colonies in Macao and Timor created a climate in which Asians (from various ethnic and national.grous) were historically seen as potential forms of free or semi-servile labor that would provide higher levels of production and lower levels of discontent than African slaves. Indeed, the word "mandarin," frequently used to describe members of the Chinese elite, comes from the Portuguese word "mandar" (to send or to order). In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Brazil itself had some modest commercial relations with Asia and it was not unusual for Brazilian soldiers interested in furthering their careers to be sent to Asia, usually Goa, thus gaining some first-hand knowledge of the region.16 In 1807, the Bahian economist Joáo Rodrigues de Brito, hoping that Brazil could mirror the success of the English colonies, argued that Chinese and East Indian laborers were "not only hard workers but are active, industrious and skilled in arts and Aggrculture"17 ["náo só bragos laboriosos, mas activos, industriosos, e peritos na práctica das artes, e Agricultura."].

Positive assessments of Asian workers, a hope that tea could become an important Brazilian export commodity, and the growing English suppression of the slave trade convinced Portugal's Foreign Minister in Rio de Janeiro, the Conde de Linhares, to consider bringing two million Chinese workers to Brazil. In 1810, several hundred Chinese tea growers began work on the imperial government's tea plantations in Rio de Janeiro's Botanical Gardens and Niteroi's Fazenda Imperial de Santa Cruz (Santa Cruz Imperial Estate).18 This group, according to the Reverend Daniel Kidder, who was journeying in Brazil at the time, "was the probable first and last colony from Asia that ever settled in the New World; at least since its discovery by Europeans."19 In 1812, four or five hundred more male migrants entered as the plan for extensive tea cultivation based on both Chinese technology and labor expanded.20 John Luccock, a British traveller who spent some 10 years in Brazil between 1808 and 1818, notes that these Chinese workers were experienced in the cultivation of tea and carne from the interior provinces rather than the Guandong coastal province where most emigrants embarked.21

Even so, tea cultivation, and thus Chinese colonization, was rapdd1y deemed a failure. Wilhelm L. von Eschwege, a German baron who spent eleven years in Brazil employed by the Court of Portugal as a colonel in the Royal Engineering Corps and Intendant General of Mines, claimed the project was abandoned because a real commodity was never created since "all the attempts to bring women were in vain"22 ["como fossem em váo todos os esforros para a vinda de mulheres."]. John Luccock, on the other hand, believed that the problem was economic: he thought the Chinese were overpaid for their work, which he termed too "diligent ... too precise, and (too) slow in their modes of culture."23

Yet whatever complaints Luccock had, they were subsumed to his curiosity about the racial/ethnic difference of the Chinese workers in the middle of what he saw as a society of blacks and whites. Following a series of conversations with the leader of the Chinese workers at the Fazenda Imperial de Santa Cruz, Luccock deemed the Chinese "extremely ignorant" but with an ability to understand new ideas "with a rapidity of comprehension which surpassed whatever 1 have observed of the kind in any other rase." Indeed, these "modern Greeks" were being held back only by their "barbarian" government and Luccock believed that if China would open itself to the world of science, "milfons [of Chinese] would be raised to the dignity of men."24

Luccock's mixed reviews were mirrored by the Chinese workers, who had similar ambiguous feelings about Brazil. Dislocation was certainly one cause of this frustration. Another may have been that Leandro do Sacramento, director of the Rio de Janeiro Botanical Gardens, treated the Chinese tea growers poorly because he suspected they were intentionally failing to reveal their most sophisticated processing techniques. This may have been true, or it perhaps shows that the Chinese, who drank their tea green, were ignorant of Euro-Brazilian tastes.25 Whatever the reasons for Chinese dissatisfaction, in 1819 all the Chinese workers on Emperor Dom Pedro I's Fazenda Real formally complained about their treatment. The group, all men who signed their Chinese names (in characters) along with the names they had taken (or were forced to take) in Brazil (Manuel, Joaquim, Antonio, Luis, José), decided to take matters somewhat into their own hands since they had come from "remote country to establish themselves ... and be useful to agriculture and commerce"26 [remoto pais establecer - se ... por assim ser util a populagáo agricola e commercio]. They suggested that one of the workers, who used the Brazilian name Domingos Manuel Antonio, be assigned as official interpreter for the group and be paid a special wage by the court for this job. There is no evidence as to whether Dom Pedro 1 ever replied to the request.

In 1814 and 1815, some official Chinese diplomatic missions appear to have arrived in Rio de Janeiro, presumably to discuss both immigration and trade. In September, 1814, the Brazilian Government's official Registro de Estrangeiros (Foreign Register) notes the entry of four Chinese who were housed at the residence of the Conde da Barca, António de Araujo de Azevedo, Minister of War and Foreign Affairs from 1812 to 1817.27 The following year, the Conselheiro Miguel de Arriaga Brum da Silveira contracted a small group of Chinese from Macao to work in the service of Rio de Janeiro's Roya¡ Naval Arsenal.28 In 1835, the German traveller Johann Moritz Rugendas found a group of about three hundred Chinese still working as royal tea planters. His surprise led him to make "special mention" of the group in his accounts of his travels and he even engraved a wood block print entitled a "Plantation Chinoise de Thé dans le Jardim Boutanique de Rio-Janeiro" to illustrate his comments.29 While it would be incorrect to suggest that it was Rugendas who set the terms of the debate over the Chinese in Brazil that would take place throughout the rest of the nineteenth century, it is worth noting that he did focus on exactly the points that would be repeated regularly over the next sixty-five years.

Rugendas believed it would be "a great advantage for [Brazil] to have vast Chinese colonies."30 He suggested that the Chinese were uniquely adaptable to changes in climate, an important point in the debate over which immigrants were best suited to Brazil. Rugendas, without using the word, also claimed that the Chinese were easily assimilable, pointing out that "many of them marry [Brazilians]."31 Indeed, by the 1930s, concerns about assimilation had become so much a part of Brazilian elite culture that it was formalized into law.32 Rugendas looked outside the country for affirmation of his ideas, as did so many other Brazilians. Since Brazil's economic advancement would be colonial in nature, Rugendas argued that Chinese were good for Brazil because of the "growing Chinese colonies in the English concession of Australia."33

Rugendas was nothing if not an honest commentator. Since the tea plantations he observed were far from successful, he needed to explain why the Brazilian government should import Chinese workers in ever larger numbers. Foreshadowing comments that would be regularly made decades later, Rugendas suggested that there were "good" and "bad" Chinese immigrants, terms simply reflective of ethnic and regional differences within China. A notion of ethnic differences was clearly on Rugendas's mind when he scolded the Brazilians for their lack of knowledge of China and the assumption that all Chinese were biologically adept at growing tea since "it is important to choose ... the Chinese who, in their fatherland, already have experience."34 The failure of tea cultivation was thus the fault of the Conde de Linhares, who had erred in not taking "more care in the choice of the Chinese imported," getting coastal residents who were peddlers or cooks rather than experienced tea growers. Yet again Rugendas was prescient; by the late nineteenth century, those opposed to Chinese entry to Brazil often complained that the migrants invariably carne from coastal regions where they had experience in commerce rather than agriculture. In Brazil, the Chinese were viewed as monopolizing certain sectors of commerce (such as the shrimp and street food stall business in Rio de Janeiro) rather than working on the land where they were needed.

By the 1840's, the tea plantations and their Chinese cultivators, which now existed in Rio de Janeiro, Niteroi, and at José Arouche de Toledo Rondon's Sáo Paulo estate, had "dwindled down to be little more than a matter of curiosity."35 What was curious, however, was not the tea but the Chinese. Daniel Kidder, like the aforementioned travellers, dedicated a sub-headed portion of one of the chapters of his book of travels, Sketches of Residence and Travels in Brazil Embracing Historical and Geographical Notices of The Empire and its Several Provinces (1845), to the "Chinese Colony in Brazil."36 Yet it was economics, not ethnicity, that discouraged Brazil's imperial leadership from considering seriously the entry of large numbers of Chinese workers. When the British government suggested, in 1843, that Brazil import 60,000 Chinese to help replace slave labor, and Lord Aberdeen personally offered to help conduct the diplomatic negotiations, the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies refused to act on the plan.37

By the early 1850s, pressure from the English, and a continued sense that there existed specific Chinese ethnic groups who were sophisticated laborers and were genetically servile "racially," encouraged a regeneration of the debate among Brazil's political and economic leaders. In 1850, the Imperial Government gave a ten-year concession to a Rio businessperson, Matheus Ramos, to create a transport and business company between Asia and Brazil, under the condition that he bring twenty colonists a year, at no charge, in order to help improve the Brazilian tea trade.38 That same year, Ramos apparently succumbed to the Yellow Fever, effectively ending the attempt.39 Two years later, an English ship captain named Muir, whose main employment was the transport of Chinese workers, approached Brazil's Legation in London offering to bring workers from the Fukien Province, experienced in sugar cane cultivation, for a relatively low price. The subject, however, was never broached with the Brazilian Imperial Government.40 In 1854, Manoel de Almeida Cardozo, a merchant who had previously worked in transporting Portuguese colonists to various parts of the globe, offered to transport laborers from various Asian ports to Brazil.41 Yet again, nothing seems to have come of this.

At the end of 1854, the Imperial Government ordered its Legation in England to bring at least 6,000 Chinese to Brazil. The negotiations with a British agent, however, did not provide the expected low costs. Initially, the Brazilian Legation entered into discussion with a Member of Parliament, J. Forster, whose company, Forster and Smith, traded with Africa and had promoted Chinese immigration to the English colonies. Forster and Smith quoted a price of £25/person to bring the coolies to Brazil, but this was deemed excessive by the Legation. A later proposal at £22 from a Boston, Massachusetts (U.S.A) merchant was also rejected.

In late June, 1855, Brazil's government finally signed a contract with the Boston firm of Sampson and Tappan, which guaranteed the entrance of 2,000 Chinese over the next 18 months for a price of £20, with a £1 fine/person if the 2,000 person guarantee was not met.42 Eschwege had complained some forty years earlier that the problem with the Chinese brought to cultivate tea in Rio was that they were all males, and the new contract demanded that all the colonists be married, with the right to bring wives and children under 12 years old. Furthermore, men who were engaged to be married had the right to bring their fiancées. The one catch was that the Brazilian government would only pay Sampson and Tappan for women and children not exceeding one-third of the total number.

This contract showed a new sophistication regarding ethnicity on the part of the Brazilian government. It was clearly written with the idea that not all Chinese were the same, certamly not the impression painted by opponents who uniformly portrayed the group as immoral, lazy and biologically defective. The contract, for example, noted experiential differences by stipulating that the largest part of the two thousand workers had to have worked in sugar cane cultivation. Another fifty to one hundred members of the group had to be specialists in tea cultivation from Amoy, Shanghai, Ningpo, Cunsingmoon and Namoe, areas where the leaf was harvested43 Furthermore, rejecting the idea that Chinese men were biologically incapable of drug addiction, the contract specified that each migrant had to be "vigorous, sober, and not addicted to opium."44

The writing of formal immigration contracts did not lead to the large-scale entry of Chinese, in part because demand among Brazil's planters was never high enough to sustain any company set up for the task. Furthermore, as the discussion of abolition moved into the realm of policy, growing numbers of influential Brazilians argued that Chinese labor would be slave-like in nature and would prevent the "whitening" of Brazil.45 This debate became virulent over the course of the nineteenth century and eventually encompassed a complex set of diplomatic negotiations between the Chinese, British and Brazilian governments. The result, however, finally carne from the migrant sending country. In 1879, the Chinese Emperor simply banned all his subjects from migrating to Brazil.46 The story of the Chinese in Brazil had ended, but the idea of Asian labor was not abandoned. Within fifteen years, Japanese diplomats would be meeting with Brazil's highest officials searching for a location to send the "many thousands" who would eventually form the world's largest concentration of Japanese outside Japan.47 The end of the Chinese Question in Brazil was only the beginning of a larger and more complex "Ethnic Question" that still remains unresolved.

NOTES

  1. Barbara J. Fields, "Ideology and Race in American History," in J. Morgan Kousser and James M. McPherson, eds., Region, Race, and Reconstruction: Essays in Honors of C. Vann Woodward (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 143-177 (P. 144). BACK

  2. See, for example, the careful distinctions made between different African slave groups by Rugendas in his lithographs. Johann Moritz Rugendas, Malerische Reise in Brasilein von Moritz Rugendas (Paris: Engelmann and Cie, 1835), published in Portuguese as Joáo Maurício Rugendas, Viagem Pitoresca Através do Brasil, translated by Sérgio Milliet (Sáo Paulo: Livraria Martins Editora, 1976), 7th edition. BACK

  3. Luiz Peixoto de Lacerda Werneck, for example, argued that the Protestant German "character" was better for Brazil than the Catholic Irish "character." Idéas sobre colonizaedo precedidas de uma succinta expos pdo dos principios geraes que regem a popula~cdo (Rio: Eduardo e Henrique Laemmert, 1855), p. 101. BACK

  4. Richard T. Schaefer, Racial and Ethnic Groups (Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman/Little, Brown Higher Education, 1990), pp. 9 -12. Fourth edition. BACK

  5. Michael Novak, "The New Ethnicity," in John A. Kromkowski, ed., Race and Ethnic Relations 94/95 (Guilford, CT: The Dushkin Publishing Group, Inc. 1994), pp. 169-174 (P. 169). BACK

  6. Thomas E. Skidmore, Fact and Myth: Discovering a Racial Problem in Brazil, Helen Kellog Institute for International Studies Working Paper # 173 (Noite Dame: University of Noite Dame, 1992); George Reid Andrews, Blacks and Whites in Sáo Paulo Brazil, 1888-1988 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991); Jan Fiola, Race Relations in Brazil: A Reassessment of the "Racial Democracy" Thesis, Program in Latin American Studies Occasional Paper Series No. 24 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 1990); Pierre-Michel Fontaine, ed., Race, Class and Power in Brazil (Los Angeles: Center for Afro- American Studies, 1985); Thomas E. Skidmore, Black into White: Race and Nationality in Brazilian Thought (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974); Anani Dzdidzienyo, The Position of Blacks in Brazilian Society, Report no. 7 (London: Minority Rights Group, 1971); Florestan Fernandes, "Immigration and Race Relations in Sáo Paulo," in Magnus Mórner, ed., Race and Class in Latin America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), pp. 122- 142. BACK

  7. Speech of Acylino de Leáo, 18 September 1935. Republica dos Estados Unidos do Brasil, Annaes da Camara dos Deputados: Sessdes de 16 a 24 de Setembro de 1935, Vol. 17 (Rio de Janeiro: Off. Graphica D' "A Noite," 1935), p. 432. BACK

  8. Warren Dean, Rio Claro: A Brazilian Plantation System, 1820-1920 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1976). BACK

  9. Francisco Augusto de Carvalho, O Brazil, ColonizaFdo e Emigrapdo - Esboco Historico baseado no estudo dos systemas, e vantagens que offerecem of Estados Unidos, 2nd Ed. (Porto: Imprensa Portugueza, 1876), p. 191; Daniel P. Kidder, Sketches of Residence and Travels in Brazil Embracing Historical and Geographical Notices of The Empire and its Several Provinces, 2 Vols. (Philadelphia: Sorin and Ball; London: Wiley and Putnam, 1845), Vol. II, p. 391. BACK

  10. Prussian House of Deputies vote of 24 April 1858. Cited in A. Legoyt, L'émigration Européenne, son Importance, ses Causes, ses Effets, Avec un Appendice Sur L'émigration Africaine, Hindoue et Chinoise (Marseille: Typ. Roux, no date), p. 126. BACK

  11. See, for example, letter of Augusto Decosterd, Swiss Consul in Bahia, to Sociedade Suissa para o Bem Commun, 23 July 1843. Reprinted in Visconde de Abrantes, Memoria sobre Meios de Promover a Colonisacdo (Berlín: Typ. de Unger Irmaos, 1846), pp. 45-54, or Arthur de Gobineau, "Emigrations actuelles des Allemands," Revue Nouvelle (París) 2 (March, 1845), p. 41. The Visconde de Abrantes, Memoria sobre Meios de Promover a Colonisapdo (Berlín: Typ. de Unger Irmóos, 1846) is an excellent example of the pro-German colonist argument. BACK

  12. Emília Viotti da Costa, The Brazilian Empire: Myths and Histories (Belmont: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1988), pp. 149-150. BACK

  13. Joáo Maurício Rugendas, Viagem Pitoresca Através do Brasil, p. 50. BACK

  14. Ronald Takaki, A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1993), p. 193. BACK

  15. Hosea Ballou Morse, The International Relations of the Chinese Empire:: The Period of Conflict, 1834-1860 (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1910), p. 42. BACK

  16. Brasil, Annaes da Parlamento Brazileiro, Camara dos Srs. Deputados - Sessdo de 1828 (Rio de Janeiro: Typ. Parlamentar, 1876), Vol. II, Session of 28 June 1828, p. 62. Brasil, Annaes da Parlamento Brazileiro, Camara dos Srs. Deputados - Sessdo de 1831 (Rio de Janeiro: Typ. H.J.

    Pinto, 1878), Vol. I, Session of 3 June 1831, p. 123. José Honorio Rodrigues, "Brasil e Extremo Oriente," Política Externa Independente (August, 1965), pp. 57-94 (pp. 61-64). BACK

  17. Joáo Rodrigues de Brito, Cartas Economico-Políticas sobre a Agricultura, e Commercio da Bahia (Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional, 1821), pp. 35. BACK

  18. Maria José Elias, "Introdugáo ao Estudo da Imigragáo Chinesa," in Anais do Museu Paulista XXIV (Sáo Paulo, 1970), pp. 57-100, (p. 60). BACK

  19. Daniel P. Kidder, Sketches of Residence and Travels in Brazil..., Vol. I, pp. 250-253. Lynn Pann, Sons of the Yellow Emperor:: A History of the Chinese Diaspora (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1990), p. 67. BACK

  20. Wilhelm Ludwig von Eschwege, Pluto Brasiliensis, translation by Domício de Figueiredo Murta (Belo Horizonte: Ed. Itatiaia; Sáo Paulo: Ed. da Universidade de Sáo Paulo, 1979), 2 Vols., Vol. II, p. 267. Originally published as Pluto Brasiliensis: eine reihe von abhandlungen uber Brasiliens gold - diamanten - und anderen mineralischen reichthum, uber die geschicte seiner entdeckung, uber das vorkommen seiner lagerstatien, des betriebs (Berlín, G. Reimer, 1833). BACK

  21. John Luccock, Notes on Rio de Janeiro and the Southern Paris of Brazil: Taken During a Residence of Ten Years in That Country from 1808 to 1818 (London: Samuel Leigh, in the Strand, 1820). Published in Portuguese as Notas sobre o Rio de Janeiro e partes meridionais do Brasil, translated by Milton da Silva Rodrigues, forward by Mário Guimaróes Ferri (Belo Horizonte: Editora Itatiaia and Sáo Paulo: Editora da Universidade de Sáo Paulo, 1975). Daniel P. Kidder, who perhaps had read Luccock's accounts, corroborates the claim that the Chinese tea cultivators were not from the coastal regions. Daniel P. Kidder, Sketches of Residence and Travels in Brazil..., Vol. I, p. 251. BACK

  22. See note 20. BACK

  23. John Luccock, Notes on Rio de Janeiro and the Southern Paris of Brazil..., p. 288. BACK

  24. Ibid. BACK

  25. Warren Dean, With Broadaxe and Firebrand: The Destruction of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), p. 172. BACK

  26. Letter signed by 50 Chinese laborers on the Fazenda Real to Dom Pedro I (or is it II??), 6 Sept 1819. Biblioteca Nacional (Rio), Manuscript Collection - General Collection, 1134.27.4. BACK

  27. Col 370, Livro 1, fls 178v., Arquivo Nacional, Registro de Estrangeiros, 1808-1822 (Rio: Arquivo Nacional, 1960), p. 80. José Honório Rodrigues, "Nota Liminar," in Ministério da Justiga e Negócios Interiores, Arquivo Nacional, Registro de Estrangeiros, 1808-1822 (Rio: Arquivo Nacional, 1960), pp. 5-10 (p. 8). BACK

  28. José Paulo de Figueiróa Nabuco Araujo, Legislapdo Brazileira ou Collecpdo Chronologica das Leis, Decretos, ResoluFes de Consulta, Provies, etc., etc., no Imperio do Brazil, Desde o Anno de 1808 até 1831 Inclusive, contendo: Além do que se Acha Publicado nas Melhores CollecFóes Para Mais de Duas Mil Pepas Ineditas, Colligidas pelo Conselheiro José Paulo de Figueiróa Nabuco Araujo, 7 Vols. (Rio de Janeiro: Typ. Imp. E Const. de J. Villeneuve E Comp., 1836- 1844). "Aviso de 15 de Julho," Vol. II (1837), p. 149. Francisco Adolfo de Varnhagen, Visconde de Porto Seguro, Historia Geral do Brasil Antes da Sua Separacdo e Independencia de Portugal, 5 Vols. (Sáo Paulo: Companhia Melhoramentos, 1936), 3rd edition, Rodolfo Garcia, ed., Vol. V, p. 111, note 34. BACK

  29. Joáo Maurício Rugendas, Viagem Pitoresca Através do Brasil, translated by Sérgio Milliet (Sáo Paulo: Livraria Martins Editora, 1976), 7th edition, pp. 122-123. BACK

  30. Ibid, p. 124. BACK

  31. Ibid. BACK

  32. Jeffrey Lesser, Welcoming the Undesirables: Brazil and the Jewish Question (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), pp. 108-109. BACK

  33. Joáo Maurício Rugendas, Viagem Pitoresca Através do Brasil, p. 124. BACK

  34. Ibid., pp. 123-4. BACK

  35. Daniel P. Kidder, Sketches of Residence and Travels in Brazil..., Vol. I, 250-253. José Arouche de Toledo Rondon, "Pequena Memoria de Plantagáo e Cultura do Cha," Auxiliador da Indústria Nacional 2 (May, 1834), pp. 145-152; (June 1834), pp. 179- 184. BACK

  36. Daniel P. Kidder, Sketches of Residence and Travels in Brasil..., Vol. I, pp. 250-253. BACK

  37. "Parecer sobre a colonizagáo Chinesa no Brasil. Sala das Sessóes do Conselho do Estado dos Negocios Estrangeiros," Rio, 30 May 1846, Biblioteca Nacional (Rio), Manuscript Collection - Colecgáo Afro-Asiatica, I-48,20,28. The Rio News (Rio de Janeiro), 5 October 1879. BACK

  38. Decree 668A, 1 Feb 1850. CollecFóo das Leis do Imperio do Brasil de 1850, Tomo XIII, Parte 2, Secgáo 1 (Rio de Janeiro: Typ. Nacional, 1851), pp. 17a and 17b. BACK

  39. 64a Sessáo em 18 de Setembro de 1877, Annaes do Senado do Imperio do Brasil, 2a Sesscio da 16a Legislatura no Mez de Setembro de 1877, Vol. IV (Rio de Janeiro: Typ. do Diario do Rio de Janeiro, 1877), p. 194. BACK

  40. José Pedro Xavier Pinheiro, Importapdo de Trabalhadores Chins: Memória Apresentada ao Ministério da Agricultura, Comércio e Obras Públicas e Imprensa por sua Ordem (Rio de Janeiro, Typ. de Joáo Ignacio da Silva, 1869), p. 49. BACK

  41. Ibid., p. 35. BACK

  42. Ibid., pp. 45-46. BACK

  43. Ibid., p. 46. BACK

  44. Ibid. BACK

  45. Speech of Joaquim Nabuco, Annaes do Parlamento Brazileiro, Camara dos Deputados, Prorogapáo da Sessdo de 1879, Vol. V (Rio de Janeiro: Typ. Nacional, 1879), p. 21. Robert Conrad, "The Planter Class and the Debate over Chinese Immigration to Brasil, 1850-1893," International Migration Review, pp. 41-55 (p. 42). BACK

  46. Gazeta de Noticias (Rio de Janeiro), 15 December 1879; The Rio News (Rio de Janeiro), 24 December 1879. BACK

  47. Estado de Sdo Paulo, 30 September 1894; Japan Daily Advertiser (Tokyo), 27 August 1894. BACK