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Chinese Contract Labor in the Wake of the Abolition of Slavery in the Americas: A New Form of Slavery or Transition to Free Labor in the Case of Cuba?

ABSTRACT Using Cuban archival material (including many documents acquired by private U.S. collectors), this article examines the lives of Chinese contract laborers in Cuba—“coolies”—in the second half of the nineteenth century after they completed the original eight-year contract and subsequent shorter forced re-contracts. The essay moves the argument beyond Chinese coolies simply replicating or prolonging slavery on Cuban plantations to glimpse the beginning of the transition from slave to free labor.