Chinese Migration to Singapore, 1896-19411

Abstract

Emigration from China to Singapore in particular and South-East Asia in general during the nineteenth century was not an easy process at all. The Chinese authorities at first frowned on it and sometimes the emigrants were refused re-entry into their homeland. At the same time these emigrants were not well treated on the voyage down and on arrival at their destination. Yet despite this hazardous existence once a person left China, the emigrants increased in number from 2,069 in 1838-1839, to 10,928 in 1849-1850. By 1890 the annual figure had risen to 95,400 and it passed the 100,000 mark in 1895, with 190,901. The reasons for this phenomenal rise in the number of emigrants were to be found partly in the conditions in China which were so bad that the Chinese -were willing to brave any danger to make a new start in life, but mainly in the new attractions of Singapore and South-East Asia which were so promising that they could induce the Chinese, a people naturally conservative and tied to the homeland for ancestral reasons, to emigrate, even permanently in some cases. These may seem to be sweeping statements, but a further analysis of the the facts will confirm them.

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