Cantonese Chinese "Coolie" Contract Laborer Hospital Admittance and Death Certificate in Colonial Cuba, 1869

Chinese Indentured Servant Migrant Healthcare

Manuscript & Autographs

Cantonese Chinese migrant hospital certificate from Havana in 1869, recording the death and burial administration of a man identified in manuscript as “natural de Asia, provincia de Canton” during the height of Chinese contract migration to Cuba. Evidence collected from 1,176 Chinese laborers by the 1874 Cuba Commission identified 998 as coming from Canton, and recent scholarship estimates that approximately 85 percent of Chinese laborers transported to Cuba originated in the province. More than 141,000 Chinese workers reached Cuba during the trade from 1847 to 1874, where colonos asiáticos supplied low paid bound labor to sugar plantations and other sectors while African slavery remained legal. The manuscript designation on this sheet therefore connects an individual hospital patient to the principal South Chinese migration stream supplying nineteenth century Cuba’s contract labor system.

Real Hospital de Caridad de San Felipe y Santiago, Comisaría. Havana, 1869. One partially printed document completed in manuscript in brown ink, one leaf. 5.75" x 7.25". The form identifies the deceased as “natural de Asia, provincia de Canton,” followed by manuscript entries in printed fields for civil status, age, and parentage. Its formula begins “Ha fallecido en la...” and records his entry into the “Real Hospital” followed by the circumstances of his death. The printed disposition directs that “cuyo cadaver se remite al Cementerio general para que se le de sepultura,” placing the individual within the administrative sequence connecting hospital death with municipal burial. The certificate closes “Luego á V. se sirva dar las órdenes oportunas, para que asi se verifique. Dios guarde á V. muchos años,” followed by a manuscript date of August 10, 1869 and signatures. The sheet carries substantial brown manuscript writing and administrative notations, with extensive ink offsetting and show through on the verso.

Chinese contract migration to Cuba developed alongside slavery rather than replacing it immediately, allowing Cuban planters to supplement enslaved African labor with a substantially cheaper bound workforce. Between 1865 and 1874 alone, more than 64,000 Chinese indentured laborers entered Cuba, and the majority worked initially on sugar plantations. Canton and the Pearl River Delta supplied the overwhelming share of these migrants, whose standard first indentures commonly lasted eight years; the trade continued until 1874, while existing contracts remained in force afterward. By the time this certificate was issued in 1869, Chinese laborers were present not only on plantations but in factories, transportation, construction, public works, and urban occupations, creating institutional encounters extending beyond the labor contract itself. Moderate toning and staining, several small punctures and marginal tears, old folds, extensive manuscript ink offsetting and show through; principal printed and manuscript content remains legible. Overall good condition. An individualized record connecting Cantonese migration to Cuba with the hospital, death, and burial bureaucracy encountered by Chinese migrants within the island’s nineteenth century contract labor society.

Item #23808

Price: $1,250.00