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Recently the low of labour from China to Indonsia has fuelled many discussions but is not a new Phenomenon. It can be traced back to the eighteenth century and continued until the twetieth century. In colonial Indonesia, the Chinese labour force was recruted to wok in the economic sector of mining, plantations, fisheries and forestry. Unfortunately, previos studies about Chinese sociey indonesia more focused on economic and political elites rather than the social history of the Chinese contract coolies. This article attempts to look at the labour history of the Chinese coolie in the forest explotation companies, know as panglong. By focusing on the ways in which they were treated in the recruitement process and workplace, this article show that change for the better did take place in the appalling working conditions of the labourers. Until the second decade of the twentieth century, recruitment, food,and health care were rife with manupulations, exacerbated by arduous working condition and insecurity in the workplace, abuse of power by mandors and forms of non-economics coercion like the use of opium. All these factors were meants to ensure that the Chinese contract laboureres could not break koose form their indentures, a modern form of slavery. Hampered by budgetary restrictions, lack of personnel, and marine transport facility, the state colonial offcial were hamstrung But in the second decade of twetienth century, when the abysmal working conditions of the CHinese coolies were debated on a higher lebel by policians and bureanracts state control was tightened. More effectual contorl by the state had a positive effect on improving of the working and living conditions. |
