The Persistence of Resistance: Chinese Kongsi Partnerships in 18th Century Borneo and 19th Century North America

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Arming the Resistance: Recent Scholarship in Chinese Diaspora Archaeology" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Chinese immigrant gold miners in North America are generally portrayed as unskilled laborers eking out a bare subsistence by scouring placer deposits previously worked and abandoned by white miners. Archaeological evidence and historic documentation suggest this is a gross oversimplification. For a century before the discovery of gold in North America Chinese miners organized as kongsi partnerships mined placer gold in Southeast Asia. The kongsi used profit sharing, trade specialization, and travel and trade networks to bypass onerous regulations and taxes. In Borneo they combined and grew in power to become independent governments credited with being the first democratic republics in Asia. The kongsi mining companies in North America did not reach that level of power but did provide an established mechanism to flourish in an oppressive social and legal environment.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Arming the Resistance: Recent Scholarship in Chinese Diaspora Archaeology   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2020

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Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 401