From Compradors to Hacendados: Toward an Asian Settler Colonial History of Chinese Migrations to Peru

This paper builds on the work of recent scholars who have begun probing the question of “Asian Settler Colonialism” (Trask 1997; Fujikane 2000; Fujikane and Okamura 2008) to explore Chinese migrations to Peru during the age of mass migrations. By examining the convergences and divergences in the meanings of migration as colonization and development in both China and Peru, the paper examines Chinese migrants as both exploited subjects and beneficiaries of modern nation making processes, including those of colonialism, industrialization, and the forging of modern economies.

Chinese compradors began arriving in Peru after the coolie labor trade of the mid-19^th century. They established branches of Hong Kong-based Gold Mountain firms in Lima and expanded Chinese commercial networks across the interior of Peru. Their efforts became foundational to the integration of a modern Peruvian national market and its articulation with the global economy. Some of these commercial firms were also connected with the recapture and re-indenture of former coolies, making them exploiters of Chinese labor after coolie indenture had formally ended. The arrival of these compradors coincided with Peruvian schemes encouraging white settler colonialism, which failed to attract European settlers. By the 1920s, owners of Chinese commercial firms had become sugar and cotton hacienda owners employing large mestizo labor forces. Meanwhile, back in China, the idea of colonization as a modernizing enterprise also took root. Late Qing intellectuals like Kang Youwei (Tang 2002) advocated for and helped to organize overseas Chinese colonization schemes in Mexico. Migration as colonization and development would continue to frame Chinese intellectual perspectives into the 1940s, and helped define one of the first studies of overseas Chinese undertaken by the sociologist Chen Da (1923, 1940). This paper examines how the meanings of migration as colonization converged and diverged, and how they shaped Chinese migrations.