Papers

• Chinese miners in Southeast Asia: Pioneering mobility and economic struggles Oliver Tappe Heidelberg University

  For centuries, Chinese miners explored the rugged Southeast Asian border regions of present-day Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam. They were involved in the extraction of minerals and the long-distance trade in precious metals and gemstones. Further south, Chinese miners established themselves in the tin mining regions of present-day Thailand and Malaysia and even reached insular Southeast Asia. One example of this is the Chinese mining pioneers in Kalimantan, who mixed with the local Dayak population. The mines of Southeast Asia became not only places of natural resource extraction and economic development, but also places of contingent socio-cultural dynamics.
  In this overview of historical Chinese mining activities in Southeast Asia, special attention is paid to colonial changes. For example, the French in Indochina attempted to oust Chinese actors from the local economy, including the mining sector. Chinese miners faced similar economic struggles elsewhere. Meanwhile, Chinese miners had become part of the social fabric in long-established mining areas (while leaving only fleeting traces of their explorations in other places). Even though the French authorities tried to legally ostracise them as “immigrants”, some Chinese communities in northern Laos and Vietnam held their own and formed part of the cross-border networks that still exist today.

• The Labor Question in Translation: Dutch Sinology and Chinese Miners in the East Indies Nicholas Y. H. Wong The University of Hong Kong

  Late nineteenth-century Dutch Sinologists were trained and hired to govern and communicate with Chinese miners in Indonesia, mixing their earthly concerns for migrant labor rights with philological issues of grammar and vocabulary. For example, mining lexicon in Chinese confounded interpreting work in Banka, as the interpreter Albrecht notes, such that Gustaav Schlegel ostensibly compiled a Dutch-Hokkien bilingual dictionary so that future interpreters could independently “translate an ordinance about logging, expropriation for public use, the exploitation of oil wells etc.—documents edited by special engineers” (Kuiper). These “suitable equivalents in Chinese,” derived from classical Chinese legal texts about agriculture and mining, as well as reference books (leishu), suggest the growing preference for translation of official titles, names, and techniques, rather than transliteration, or phonetic transcription from Malay, Hokkien, Hakka, or Dutch words by 1900. This history of Dutch Sinology and Chinese miners in the East Indies is worth pursuing from another angle: how were language and labor mutually transformative, and how important exactly was Chinese writing in transforming labor practices, given that literacy in Chinese varied, and sometimes, Malay was preferred as the written lingua franca for Chinese speakers to learn about civil and commercial law as it applied to Chinese? Specifically, when and why did mining labor become a point of discussion in late-nineteenth century colonial Dutch sources and translations into Chinese? When Sinologists prepared contracts for Chinese mining laborers, what linguistic issues and contexts did they face and negotiate, and how did Chinese miners respond?

• Chinese miners in Malaya/sia (1930s-1970s): resilience, class struggle and wage-labour dynamics Hui Yun Cher Inalco, CASE, Paris

  In the early 20th century, Chinese miners in Malaysia worked in tin and gold mines as artisan miners or labourers (coolies) organized by clan associations (kongsis). Kongsis were vital in organizing labour, facilitating autonomy, and challenging traditional power structures within the colonial context. During the British colonial era, Hakka and Cantonese tin miners navigated relationships with the colonial government, Chinese capitalists, and European companies. Industrial conflict and class struggle renewed labour relations that were deeply ingrained in the socio-economic history of the mining industry.

  This paper explores the transformation of industrial relations and class structures of Chinese miners between British colonial and early independence years (1930a-1970s). Drawing on historical and archival sources, the study examines how miners mobilised and responded to social and industrial crises, shedding light on their resilience and impacts on segmented class structures. It also investigates the role and process of miners’ associations in negotiating wages and transforming the wage-labour nexus.

Abstract