Trafico de Chinos 7

CHAPTER 7:
COOLIES, SAILORS, AND PIRATES: A CASE STUDY OF THE

“TERESA AFFAIR”
What follows is a case-study of the uprising occurred aboard the Italian ship Teresa in
1868, and its political implications. The Teresa revolt was the first and sole episode in the
bloody history of the coolie trade that received significant attention in the Italian public
debate, unlike comparable events previously occurred on the Carmen (1857), the
Napoleone Canevaro (1866), or other minor occasions. A reason for this can be attributed
to its particularly unfavourable outcome, in which not only dozens of coolies, but also
several Italian sailors lost their lives; but, most importantly, it can be ascribed to the
unrelenting—albeit vain—efforts made by the Teresa’s captain, Sebastiano Bollo, to
obtain compensation for his losses from the Chinese and Italian authorities.
A second reason to investigate the Teresa case lies in the unparalleled range of primary
sources it left in libraries and archives, which allows not only detailing the dynamic of the
coolie insurrections, but also to analyze and discuss the motives and thoughts of its
actors, casting interesting questions on traditional interpretations of the coolies’ resistance
on the high seas. Moving the emphasis on Sebastiano Bollo and the sailors of the Teresa
we try to complement an historiographical literature more often focused on the coolies or
their employers, but scarcely attentive to the third category of the intermediaries and
maritime “traffickers.”
This will be also the opportunity to tackle more specifically the correlation of Chinese
piracy and the coolie trade, which we have mentioned several times in the previous
chapters. Were the Teresa’s rebellious coolies really pirates in disguise, as maintained by
Bollo and his supporters? Did the interpreters and crewmen contribute in the unfolding of
the revolt? How did the coolies behave, after taking control of the vessel?
To answer these and other questions, this chapter relies on three main sets of sources.
Absolutely essential to examine this episode are, first of all, the six consecutive petitions
and pamphlets submitted to the Italian Parliament by the Bollo family between 1869 and
233
1875, now accessible at the Italian Senate and Chamber of Deputies’ libraries.1 Second, a
useful counterpoint to Bollo and his family’s theses is provided by the records of the
governmental bureaus which dealt with the so-called Teresa affair in the Italian Foreign
and Marine ministries; in particular, the notes sent from Yokohama by the Navy officer
Alberto Racchia, commander of the gunboat Clotilde, 2 and the proceedings and
deliberations of the Consiglio del Contenzioso Diplomatico, a special advisory board of
the Italian Foreign Ministry, interrogated on Bollo’s petitions three times in 1870, 1872
and 1876.3 Finally, the alleged involvement in the rebellion of the interpreter Francisco
do Rosario and at least four Italian sailors (Andrea Brusacà, Giorgio Massa, Giuseppe
Olivari and Nazario Dobrigno), will be addressed, albeit partially, through the few but
precious surviving records of the trials they were subjected to in Genoa and Turin in 1870
and 1872. Documentation of a third appeal in Savona (1875), unfortunately, appears to
have been irremediably lost.4
7.1 The 1868 Teresa revolt
7.1.1 The uprising on the high sea
The events we address in this chapter took place in the small perimeter delimited by
the decks, cabins and hold of the Italian coolie ship Teresa, 1093 t.r., departed from
Macao on the 3 February 1868.5 Owned and captained by Sebastiano Bollo, of Moneglia,
1
Gio. Andrea Bollo, Petizione al parlamento nazionale relativa alla catastrofe toccata alla nave Teresa nei
mari della China (Genova: Tip. del R.I. de’ Sordo-Muti, 1869); Gio. Andrea Bollo, Ragioni e documenti a
confutazione dei rapporti del Comandante Racchia sulla condotta del capitano Sebastiano Bollo (Genova:
Tip. del R.I. de’ Sordo-Muti, 1869); Gio. Andrea Bollo, Petizione al Parlamento: Ancora sulla catastrofe
della Nave Teresa italiana, capitano Sebastiano Bollo (Genova: Tip. del R.I. de’ Sordo-Muti, 1870); Gio.
Andrea Bollo, Brevi cenni storici della pratica nave Teresa in China (Genova: Tip. del R.I. de’ Sordo-Muti,
1870); Gio. Andrea Bollo, Alle LL- EE. i Ministri per gli Affari Esteri e l’Agricoltura, Industria e
Commercio del Regno d'Italia: catastrofe della nave italiana Teresa (Genova: Tip. del R.I. de’ Sordo-Muti,
1871); Gio. Andrea Bollo, Cenni e parere legale sopra i fatti successi alla nave italiana Teresa nel porto
Chinese di Chapo (Genova: Tip. del R.I. de’ Sordo-Muti, 1875).
2
ACS, MM, DGMM, Miscellanea Uffici Diversi 1866-1869, b.475.
3
ASDMAE, Archivio del Contenzioso Diplomatico (1851-1923), Vertenza della nave “Teresa” in China
(capitano Bollo), b.71
4
ASGE, Corte d’Assise di Genova, Verbali di dibattimento (1871), r. 2482; ASTO, Corte di Cassazione di
Torino, Sentenze Penali, r. 168. In the Genoa process, Brusacà and Massa were sentenced to 7 and 5 years
of prison for complicity in piracy, their charges having been downgraded from the original imputation of
piracy and murder, while Dobrigno and Olivari were absolved. The appeal in Turin cancelled the sentence
on procedural errors, while the Savona court, it seems, reaffirmed Genoa’s outcome. Unfortunately, these
archives have not preserved the original documentation of these trials, with the exception of the minutes of
the debate in the Genoa court.
5
The ship measured 190 feet of length (57 m) and 38 of width (11 m). “The new clipper Saracen, of
Boston,” Boston Daily Atlas, 26 October 1854. Transcribed by Lars Bruzelius, The Maritime History
Virtual Archives, http://www.bruzelius.info/Nautica/News/BDA/BDA(1854-10-26).html (accessed 05/14).
The article offer a technical description of the ship soon after its construction. As we have stated previously,
234
a character we encountered several times in this thesis, 6 it had been chartered by the
agents Bianchi and Profumo of Lima to carry a load of 300 Chinese coolies (it actually
embarked 293 coolies) for the Peruvian labor market. Its crew counted 36 people, plus
two interpreters, and some civilians: the captain’s (or the mate’s) wife, her Chinese
waitress and a Chinese atai (cabin boy); a German doctor and a French passenger
(Francesco Dublè).7
Let us start this account with a snapshot: 5 April 1868. Dawn. The Teresa is sailing the
waters of the Southwestern Pacific Ocean, about 400 miles east of New Zealand, steadily
driven eastwards by the circumpolar trade winds. The ship’s first mate, Federico Bollo, is
supervising with the boatswain and an armed sailor a group of about twenty coolies,
designed to carry out the routine cleaning of the upper deck. The rest of the ship’s human
cargo, lies confined in the steerage, behind closed hatches, reinforced by iron gratings.
While most of the sailors are still asleep, and the limelight of the night have not
completely dispelled, a well-coordinated plan take execution. On a signal, the twenty
coolies on the deck assail the first mate and his two companions, employing rudimental
weapons they had secretly fabricated in their quarters: kitchen’s stoves, bricks,
improvised cutlasses, woodblocks with nails and so forth. The mate discharges upon them
all the bullets of his revolver, most likely killing some of the assailants, but is
overwhelmed, stabbed, wounded and incapacitated.8
In the space of a few minutes the rebellion propagated all over the ship: the coolies in
the between-decks rose up en masse; the hatches that entrapped them were opened by
their comrades from the outside; and they rushed aft to the ship’s weaponry, seizing most
of the crew’s supply of firearms and ammunitions. In the words of an eyewitness:
Nell’atto si senti in tutta la Nave il grido di Tà Fanquai;9 altri attaccarono le guardie

del boccaporto di maestra e inferriata di poppa, restando in questo modo libera la
salita in coperta. Subito un numero considerevole di Culi si diressero a poppa armati
di dogarelle di botti, ferri, mattoni e pietre che si erano procurate nella stiva e cucina
dei Chinesi, che aveano rotto. Padroni della poppa discesero alcuni alla camera, ed
the Saracen changed name and owners in 1865. See also Certificado de saída, Galera Italiana Theresa, 1
February 1868, AHM, Núcleo 916, Cx. 46, Certificados passados à embarcações, 1867-1872.
6
See the biographical sketch in Chapter 5.3.
7
Bollo, Alle LL- EE. i Ministri..., 21–30. Francesco Dublè, a merchant of French origins, was travelling as a
simple passenger on the Teresa, but was also most likely a close acquaintance of the captain; he acted as
second mate after the revolt.
8
“Ad un tratto costoro si scagliano sopra di lui armati di piccole scuri e ferri, lo atterrano e s’impossessano
della sua persona dopo avergli inflitte ben trentadue ferite, sebbene il prode giovane, scaricasse tutte le
canne della sua rivoltella, circondandosi alla sua volta di coloni feriti” Bollo, Cenni e parere legale..., 8.
9
The Cantonese Ta Fan Gwei-lo, literally “beat the foreign devils”; Robin Hutcheon, China-Yellow (Hong
Kong: Chinese University Press, 1996), 66.
235
entrati al luogo comodo, ove sapevano esistere le armi, si impadronirono di quelle,
lasciando solo tre rifle, due baionette, sciabola e due a tre lancie.10
The captain and a number of sailors reacted to these events, but were too slow. A fierce
fight ensued, with casualties on both sides. The last fifteen fighting members of the crew
sheltered in the aft cabin, but their limited ammunitions started to run over. They were left
with no choice than capitulating.
The rebel coolies, new masters of the vessel, spared their lives, providing they would
steer back the ship to the Chinese coast. Otherwise, the said testimony continues, they
threatened to burn down the ship in the middle of the Ocean, killing everybody on board:
La serenità del Capitano in cosi terribile momento produsse un istante di calma

nell’animo esaltato dei Culi Pirati, i quali esigettero un giuramento solenne alla
chinese, che fu di tagliare il collo a un gallo, il quale effettuato dal Capitano,
produsse calma e confidenza; cionondimeno gli fecero conoscere se violava il suo
giuramento, conducendoli ad altro punto che non fosse China, saressimo [sic] tutti
assassinati, incendiata la nave, ove morirebbero pure tutti loro11
7.1.2 At Zhepo
After the events described above, the odyssey of the hijacked Teresa lasted another
three months. Navigating under opposing winds, the vessel finally touched again the
Chinese shores on 5 July 1868, setting the anchor off the village of Zhepo (often spelled
Chapò) on Hailing, a small island located 300 miles southwest of Macao in the Yangjiang
district of the Guangdong province.12 Bollo and Duble’s reports are contradictory on the
reasons the vessel was steered towards that specific place; at times they affirmed it had
been the captain’s decision—as the island was seat, in the captain’s words, of a coastal
battery and a powerful military garrison—elsewhere they blamed the choice on the
10
Bollo, Alle LL- EE. i Ministri..., 22.
11
Ibid., 25. Being a veteran of the coolie trade, at his seventh passage, Sebastiano Bollo knew well the
seriousness of that menace, and the precedents of ships suffering that horrible fate in the past years of the
infamous traffic.
12
“The harbour of Tsapo besides being a fishing station is used as a shelter for junks on the west coast
trade. The village is of moderate extent and at a fort near to it is stationed a Sinkwan (or small naval officer)
to keep the peace and to collect harbour duties. We visited him and he took us on board of a war junk
anchored amongst several merchant junks off the village. This junk was one of a fleet of five under the
command of commander Le who was subordinate to the Chintai, or Commodore of Shaoking prefecture.
The fleet cruised about from Naochow island (south) to Kwangyang (north) for the suppression of piracy.
The commander was away at the district city for the new year, but with the help of his secretary, who
treated us with the greatest courtesy, we succeeded in getting a pilot to take us as far as Naochow. The guns
at the fort were large and looked better than usual, but many of their carriages were old and on one side.
The sampans or boats were somewhat eggshaped and sculled by women, looking much like those of
Macao.” Robert Swinhoe, “Narrative of an Exploring Visit to Hainan,” Journal of the North China Branch
of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1872, 41.
236
coolies, accused of connections and complicity with the local authorities.13
We need to evaluate these versions with a sane dose of skepticism. In both cases, these
claims were meant to fit with a narrative they crafted to depict themselves as victims of a
premeditated and orchestrated act of piracy. The coolies’ aim, they contended, was not
only returning to their homelands, but they had embarked on the Teresa with the specific
purpose of seizing its “precious” cargo of silks, tea, tapestries and other sundries:
Furono dunque gli istinti della rapina che si svegliarono nell’animo di quei pirati
mascherati da emigranti, sapendo che la nave portava un ricco carico, istinti che si
manifestarono più gagliardi quando costoro trovaronsi fuori dell’ azione
dell’Autorità, forti del loro numero e della loro ferocia.14
What is certain, is that after landing at Zhepo, the coolies of the Teresa actually started
to sell the ship’s cargo to local smugglers, along with the personal effects of the captain
and his wife. This drew the attention of the local magistrates, who set up a meeting with
Bollo to clarify the unorthodox appearance of a Western vessel, visibly in distress, in
what was a relatively remote non-treaty port area of South China.
Bollo’s accounts here became even murkier. He and Dublé, testifying in front of the
Italian consul at Macao just after the resolution of the incident admitted they had been
forced to “act a ridiculous farce,”15 telling the magistrates16 through the mediation of the
interpreter Rosario, that the ship was carrying back a group of Chinese entrepreneurs
13
Taking for granted Bollo knew the inherent dangers of the whole Chinese coast south of Macao, Racchia
asked: “resterebbe dunque a sapersi per quale motivo egli dopo 82 giorni di traversata abbia approdato a
Chapò piuttosto che in qualche punto al Nord di Macao se non a Macao stessa, dove avrebbe incontrato
qualche legno Europeo e avuto quegl’aiuti di cui abbisognava. Questo è un punto importante a conoscersi
ma che orai devesi rinunciare di mettere in chiaro [...] giacché da più mesi l’equipaggio è disperso,
coll’eccezione dei quattro prigionieri in questo momento giù in Italia. Racchia to MM, Yokohama, 11 July
1868, in ACS, MM, DGMM, Miscellanea Uffici Diversi 1866-1869, b.475. He added in a successive letter,
commenting Bollo’s pamphlet: “Cosa dovrò poi dire di quanto leggesi [...] ove è detto: ‘il Capitano
Sebastiano fece ogni sforzo per indurre i ribelli ad afferrare il porto di Chapò nell'isola di Hailin
conoscendo come vi dimorasse un mandarino di 1o rango etc..?’ [...] Mi domando adunque come il capitano
Bollo conoscendo tutto ciò, e di più trovandosi ad afferrare sulla costa di Cina in piena epoca del monsone
di S.O. quando cioè facilissimo gli sarebbe stato il rimontare al Nord quanto voleva, mi domando io perché
non cercò di approdare invece ad Hong Kong od anche a Macao regolando se necessario la sua navigazione
in modo da trovarsi di notte tempo, per non destare sospetti nei coloni pirati? Questo sarebbe un punto
importantissimo a dischiararsi, giacché quanto leggesi [...] permette di sospettare che anche il capitano
Bollo cercò deliberatamente di evitare d'approdare sia ad Hong Kong che a Macao, e perché? questo è
quanto sarebbe importante si conoscesse.” Racchia to MM, Yokohama, 30 July 1868, in ACS, MM,
DGMM, Miscellanea Uffici Diversi 1866-1869, b.475.
14
15
“Ivi si fece rappresentare al povero capitano una scena assai ridicola, se pur troppo, non fosse stata anche
essa un anello di cotesta lunga catena di sciagure, sevizie, tradimenti ed assassinii. Checché egli si studiasse
dire a quale rappresentante dell’autorità governativa, può credersi che sia stato voltato in senso opposto
dallo interprete infedele, talché egli venne ricondotto a bordo dai tre capi pirati, senza veruna provvidenza
di quel funzionario dell’Impero Celeste.” Bollo, Petizione al Parlamento Nazionale..., 5.
16
It is not clear if he talks about the Zhepo inferior magistrates or Yangjiang’s military mandarin.
237
from California who had called there in distress after being attacked by pirates. He also
assured the Chinese were the owners of the cargo, and were legitimately selling it off to
repay their losses. This version was confirmed to Dublè by a local English-speaking
inhabitant, who had conferred with the mandarin about the case.17
This may appear a credible account, at a first superficial look. It corresponds, in
particular, with Bollo’s consequent claim that the ship’s interpreter had been an
accomplice of the cooolies, or rather their secret mastermind, “il demone tentatore, lo
Iago di questo dramma”, careful enough to not expose himself too overtly.18 On the other
hand, it looks quite bizarre that in several years of commercial involvement in China and
Macao Bollo had not learned a few basic expressions to call for the help of the mandarin,
although he might have feared the retaliation of the rebels afterwards.
In subsequent accounts, moreover, knowing that part of his reports had been used
against his demands,19 Bollo changed his version,20 or just omitted them. He now claimed
the mandarin had understood perfectly his situation, but had been bribed by the coolies to
turn a blind eye on their actions:
Una simile condotta per parte della autorità chinese, per chi conosce mediocremente
le abitudini delle cancellerie asiatiche quel perpetuo miscuglio di cupidigia e di
legalità, che distingue l’impiegato chinese in ispecie, non ha nulla di strano. Nessuno
ignora che le molte relazioni commerciali e civili, che le principali nazioni del
mondo, sono riuscite a stringere con qualche stabilità in quei mari, dal principio del
secolo in poi, sono state tutte e singole ottenute colla punta della spada, e che oggi
ancora non si mantengono che sotto la protezione immediata del cannone ; un
momento di debolezza basterebbe per rendere lettera morta qualsiasi trattato, e per
convertire in una mano d’assassini, tutti quanti gli agenti più autorizzati e più
ufficiali dell’Impero […] Laonde nessuna meraviglia se il Mandarino di Chapò
avente giurisdizione su di un porto fortificato , potendo disporre di una forza
marittima non indifferente, abbia occultamente, o piuttosto, privatamente patteggiato
coi pirati.21
17
“Durante la permanenza dei Mandarini a bordo la Teresa ebbe a pagare a uno della loro comitiva due
sacchi di riso, per aver dato asilo in sua casa a quattro marinari; questo individuo parlava bene l’inglese, e
disse che i Culi avevano detto al Mandarino che venivano da California, che erano padroni del carico e
pagavano il loro passaggio, e che il Capitano avea detto lo stesso per mezzo del suo interprete.” Bollo, Alle
LL- EE. i Ministri..., 30.
18
“Sebbene nel tempo stesso egli abbia avuto la raffinata astuzia di non commettere di quegli atti di aperta
ribellione, che al suo ritorno in patria potessero togliergli il mezzo di simularsi vittima, o per lo meno,
spettatore impotente delle stragi da lui stesso macchinate” Bollo, Cenni e parere legale..., 41.
19
Reading the Consiglio del Contenzioso reports, we are shown how Bollo produced different versions of
this episode, correcting the declarations made to the Italian Consul in Macao in the immediate aftermath of
the events. Cf. Secondo parere della Commissione, 6 July 1876, ASDMAE, Archivio del Contenzioso
Diplomatico (1851-1923), Vertenza della nave “Teresa” in China (capitano Bollo), b.71.
20
“Condotto dal Mandarino e interrogato per mezzo dell’interprete, rispose che i due suoi ufficiali che
erano li presenti, avevano tutto veduto e poteano dargli esatte informazioni. Poco dopo egli fu ricondotto
sulla Teresa.” Bollo, Alle LL- EE. i Ministri..., 6.
21
Bollo, Cenni e parere legale..., 21.
238
According to this latter reconstruction, the coolies’ reiterated attempts to win over the
mandarin did eventually fail due to his “exaggerated demands.”22 They continued to try to
sell off the cargo to local merchants and retailers for a number of days, carried ashore and
buried the comrades who had been killed during the revolt and the voyage. A few days
later, after the daring escape of some of the sailors, they finally dispersed (11 July). On
the same day the mandarin, notified by the fugitive sailors, appeared again in the port,
escorted by a 8-gun lorcha, to carry off another inspection of the ship. Bollo sat sail to
Macao on that same afternoon, without waiting for the escort the mandarin promised him.
He landed two days after, carrying along the interpreter and five coolies who could not
manage, or did not want, to flee ashore at Zhepo. They were apprehended by the
Portuguese authorities, along with four of the Italian sailors suspected of complicity with
the revolt, who had also stayed on board.23
7.2 Captain Bollo’s petitions and the response of the Italian Government
7.2.1 The reports of Captain Racchia
The first accounts of this mutiny on the China coast newspapers, based on the
witnesses of the captain and the survivors after their return in the port of Macao defined it
as an act of piracy on the high sea, “one of the most horrible of the many horrible
incidents peculiar to the Coolie Trade”, casting “no doubt the greater part of the coolies
were pirates.”24
Bollo’s losses in the incident had been huge, counting the death of his brother
Federico, murdered after the landing at Zhapo, of eleven sailors, and the loss of the entire
cargo, including the value of the coolies’ contracts, estimable at over $50,000.25 Bollo
adds his wife (in some accounts his brother’s) died of “crepacuore” after the return in
Macao, although the story is unverifiable.26
It is no surprise, hence, that his reports of the incident were aimed at extracting the
22
Ibid., 15.
23
BO, 18 July 1868.
24
“Another coolie mutiny,” China Mail, 15 July 1868. To note that the China Mail was the spearhead, with
the Daily Press, of Hong Kong’s press campaign against the “Macao coolie trade.” In 1868 and 1869, in
particular, it had engaged in a libel case with the Portuguese authorities over an alleged defamation of the
ex-governor Coelho de Amaral (Regina v. Saint). Cf. AMNE, Assuntos diversos, Queixas intentadas em
Hong Kong contra os jornais China Mail e Echo do Povo, cx.1054; CO 129/132; CO 129/138; also the
defensive pamphlet Charles A. Saint, A Crown Attempt to Crush a Newspaper: Regina v. Saint (Hong
Kong: China Mail Office, 1869).
25
I calculated this estimate through the assessment by de La Tour, reported in Chapter 4.1; Sallier de La
Tour, “L’emigrazione cinese,” 34.
26
239
highest compensation possible from either the Chinese or the Italian authorities. A
technical obstacle on this path, however, lied within the clauses of the recently signed
Italo-Chinese treaty, signed in 1866 and officially ratified on 21 November 1867, which
explicitly ruled out any claim of pecuniary indemnity in analogous episodes (art. 19)27.
Following the letter of the treaty, the Italian consul at Macao was instructed to ask for
a punitive expedition against the supposed “coolie pirates” and the removal of Zhepo’s
local authorities. Under the advice of the French consul at Canton Baron de Trinqualez, as
early as late August 1868, the Chinese viceroy Ruilin took action, dispatching a French-
manned customs gunboat—the Tien-Po, captain De Longueville—to chase down and
capture as many fleeing coolies of the Teresa as possible, and recover its lost cargo.
We have few reliable information on the Tien-Po expedition. Contemporary
newspaper’s accounts depicted it as a bright success, as did the Italian Consul and
authorities in China.28 After 28 days of campaign in Zhepo and its surroundings, 24 coolie
escapees were captured, three executed as pirates, one died before the sentence.29 Four of
them, allegedly the leaders of the revolt, had been preventively detained at Yangjiang by
the local military mandarin:
A canhoneira resgatou algumas malas com roupa, jóias e prataria da senhora do

capitão do navio italiano, e aprisionou os quatro principais chefes dos piratas que
roubaram o navio Theresa, bem como uma rapariga, criada da senhora do capitão, e
um atai do piloto, que tão bons serviços fez nos assassinatos cometidos abordo
daquele navio, apesar de ter 12 anos de idade! Os presos e as malas foram detidos no
forte da entrada de Yongkong, por terem causado suspeita ao mandarim militar que o
comandava, vendo nas malas terem roupa de europeus. De todas as autoridades
daquela localidade, parece ter sido aquele mandarim o único que cumpriu o seu
dever, e que não fez causa comum com os piratas.30
Further portions of the cargo were brought back to Macao by the gunboat Chin-Chin,
rescued from a gang of pirates who had robbed the fleeing coolies of their booty.31 Other
coolies were captured in the Barracoons while attempting to re-emigrate:
Sabemos que em Macau tem sido capturados sete dos passageiros chinas da Theresa,
dos quais três ou quatro se apresentaram na superintendência da emigração para de
27
Ibid., 50–68; the text of the treaty can be consulted on Arminjon, “Relazione a Sua Eccellenza il Ministro
degli Affari Esteri, sul trattato conchiuso il 26 ottobre 1866 tra l’Italia e la China.”
28
“Seizure of the Teresa ringleaders”, China Mail, 3rd September 1868
29
Racchia to MM, Yokohama, 30 July 1868, in ACS, MM, DGMM, Miscellanea Uffici Diversi 1866-
1869, b.475.
30
BO, 31 August 1868.
31
“No mesmo dia em que o Tien-Po chegou a Macau, veio de oeste a canhoneira Chin-Chin, trazendo presa
uma embarcação de piratas e 20 ladrões do mar. Parte dos objectos existentes a bordo da presa foram aqui
reconhecidos como mercadorias pertencentes a carga do navio Thereza, e que os piratas presos haviam
roubado ao piratas que roubaram o navio italiano!;” Ibid.
240
novo emigrarem, e onde foram reconhecidos! No numero d’estes inocentes acha-se
um rapaz, nascido em Macau, falando e intendendo bem o português, sendo filho do
conhecido pintor Miva. Todos estes chinas estão na cadeia entregues a acção da
justice.32
The selling of the recovered goods, chairs, laundry baskets, rice, pepper, mats, bahus
and Manila cables,33 fruited a meagre compensation of just about $113, which added to
the stolen cash found in possess of the coolies gave a return of $1,415, far from Bollo’s
expectations.34 Months later, Bollo was forced to sell his Teresa, at the discount price of
$9,000 (a ship of comparable class could be acquired for $30,000 to $40,000).35
After the Tien-Po expedition, therefore, Bollo placed his hopes on the mediation of the
commander of the Italian warship Clotilde, Count Alberto Racchia, which had stopped in
Macao during a cruise of the Chinese sea.36
On the contrary, to Bollo’s disconcert, Racchia, “l’Uomo capace di risolvere
prontamente la vertenza ad onore della bandiera italiana”37 turned quickly into one of his
worst opponents in the whole dispute. In a series of reports sent to the Italian Foreign and
Marine ministers before the end of 1868, Racchia examined the Teresa affair and advised
the Italian officials to dismiss Bollo’s “extravagant” economic pretenses, which the
Ligurian captain had estimated on about 250,000 dollars.38 Through the offices of the
Italian consul at Macao, previously, Racchia had advised Bollo that “sarebbe meglio
cercasse di guadagnare il pane col suo grande bastimento” 39 (before selling it) rather than
“stare appresso al reclamo col Governo Cinese.” That could have been possible,
according to Racchia, “tanto più che il bastimento e carico trovansi assicurati sulla piazza
di Parigi.”40
32
If this behaviour was generally considered by contemporaries a proof that they were pirates, but can also
been explained as a final resource of displaced persons, maybe those who had been robbed by pirates or
somehow had been left out of the partition of the spoils of the Teresa. It also confirms the impression that
the goods stolen and sold at Zhepo were not valuable enough to allow all the coolies to take a share of it.
33
“Anúncio de Leilão”, BO, 31 August 1868
34
“Seizure of the Teresa ringleaders”, China Mail, 3 September 1868. Unsurprisingly, Bollo omitted to
give specific details of the original value and composition of his ship’s cargo. We can speculate that the
original value would most probably not have exceeded that sum by large, as the most precious cargo of a
coolie ship was always constituted by its passengers’ contracts. Bollo, Cenni e parere legale..., 35. more
interesting is the significant sum of cash he was carrying: a leftover from the acquisition of the coolie load?
35
ACS, MM, DGMM, Miscellanea Uffici Diversi 1866-1869, b. 346.
36
BO, 30 November 1868.
37
Bollo, Brevi cenni storici..., 14.
38
“Indennità che, conformemente alla perizia fatta dal Tribunale di Macao in data 15 Maggio 1869 fu
domandata nella somma di [Lire Italiane] 1.354.582,56 e che ora, cumulandovi l’ammontare dei danni
sofferti per il ritardo del pagamento e gli interessi […] si porta alla cifra di L. 1.661.466,60.” Bollo, Alle
LL- EE. i Ministri..., 16.
39
40
Bollo, Ragioni e documenti..., 13.
241
This clearly hostile stance, Bollo accused, had been driven by the false information
spread by the Italian Consul at Macao, the Macanese Barao de Cercal:
L’origine dei mali che fanno seguito a quelli avuti nel porto di Chapò, senza tema
d’errare, si possono attribuire al Console d’ Italia Barone do Cercal Macaese
straniero all’ Italia, di cui disconosce la lingua, poco curante dell’ onore e dignita
italiana, difensore degli interessi cinesi che, per istinto di razza, ne pratica la
menzogna, l’astuzia e gl’inganni.41
Consul Cercal, Bollo continues, had purposedly deceived the Italian authorities and
42
especially Racchia and later La Tour, about the nature of the coolie trade and Bollo’s
activities in China, moved by his vested interests and natural hostility “verso gli uomini
retti e virtuosi” 43 like the captain of the Teresa. Reaffirming common orientalist
stereotypes on the Chinese and Macanese society, Bollo’s attributed these malicious
intents on the Consul’s racial and cultural background as a degraded Sino-Portuguese
mestizo, therefore bound—“per istinto di razza” 44 —to manifest “maggior deferenza
agl’interessi dei Chinesi (coi quali ha comune il sangue e ne trasse le immorali sue
ricchezze) che non agl'italiani” 45:
Infatti qualche mese dopo l'animo del R. Console in Macao, non fu più lo stesso:
egli, anziché vedere nel sig. Sebastiano Bollo un nazionale disgraziato da proteggere,
sembrò considerarlo come un avventuriere che bisognasse smascherare. La tragedia
inaudita della Teresa non lo commuove, e le buone relazioni con le autorità chinesi,
si direbbe, gli stanno infinitamente più a cuore, che non l'onore e gl'interessi dei
cittadini italiani: qualunque sieno le ragioni che possono avere operato questa strana
metamorfosi nel nostro console di Macao, egli è certo, che da quell'ora in poi noi lo
vediamo diventare il nemico, per non dire il persecutore del sig. Sebastiano Bollo.46
Indeed, the attitude of the consul in this question was somewhat enigmatic. As we have
seen in the previous chapter, his opinions towards the coolie trade had changed after the
political realignment fostered by the Annamese crisis, but his duties of consul and his
economic interests in the Macao-Canton ferry companies (A. de Mello & Co.) 47
41
Bollo, Ancora sulla catastrofe..., 6.
42
“Le sue ricchezze il Console Barone, le fa giovare per procacciarsi titoli, cariche e protezioni. Al
principiare del mese di gennaio 1870 giunse infermo in Macao, proveniente da Jokohama il Ministro Conte
de la Tour; fu ospitato per quasi tre mesi, in una magnifica villeggiatura del Barone, prestandoli
assiduamente ogni sorta d’ossequio e servilità, per affezionarselo e renderselo benevolo, ingannarlo sulla
vera posizione della pratica nave Teresa (siccome fece nel 1868 col comandante Racchia e con gli altri
funzionari italiani), affinché al prossimo ritorno in Italia il Conte, presti i suoi buoni uffici presso il
Governo a Firenze, per onestare il suo disleale comportamento.” Ibid.
43
Ibid., 10.
44
Ibid., 6.
45
46
47
Forjaz, Famílias Macaenses, II, 646-657
242
compelled him in to keep a twisted and ambiguous line towards the coolie traffic. Bollo
may have discounted here, as well, his and his family’s isolation and rivalry with other
powerful Italian coolie merchants—particularly Canevaro, who once referred to
Sebastiano’s father as colui “che tanto si adoprò in ogni tempo a farmi del male grande.”48
On the contrary, he seemed to receive more sympathy from sectors of the Macanese
society, especially members of the faction most radically compromised and favorable to
the coolie trade.49 There is reason to think, however, that Cercal’s mistrust of Bollo was
genuine, and caused by the inherent flaws of Bollo’s accounts of the Teresa affair.50
On 30 July 1869 Racchia sent to the Marine Minister in Florence a copy of Bollo’s
first petition (1869) glossed with caustic remarks by Consul Cercal and himself. The
pamphlet is an extraordinary document that shows without restraint the private opinions
of these actors about the coolie trade in its final stages.51 It indicates, in particular, that
Racchia and Cercal were especially upset at Bollo’s self-depiction as an innocent victim
of the coolies’ brutality and violence, and his attempts to sway the Italian public opinion
through the press while concealing the realities of the coolie traffic. Commenting what
Bollo depicted as the “unequal struggle” of his crew during the coolie revolt, for example,
Racchia noted:
Come lotta disuguale, quando sui bastimenti di coolies tutto l'equipaggio è sempre
armato fino ai denti, ed ai coolies non è permesso avere indosso neppure uno spillo!
Sui bastimenti da coolie che tengono i cannoni caricati a mitraglia colla bocca a
prora!52
He repeated the same concept in another instance, adding:
Come, l'equipaggio possedeva armi da fuoco e da taglio e i miserabili coolie nulla!

Ma crede il Sig. Bollo che s’ignori come si esercita questo mercato di carne umana?
forse lo s'ignora in Italia... ma non io né gl’ufficiali della Principessa Clotilde
Addressing the military capabilities of Zhepo’s mandarin, which according to Bollo
48
Canevaro to MAE, 28 February 1864, ASDMAE, Corrispondenza in arrivo, Consolato in Lima (1861-
1867), b. 881.
49
As displayed by the selection of signatures of the “most distinct Macanese merchants” and captains
attached to his second petition; among others, the journalist José da Silva, the notorious traffickers António
Maximiáno dos Remedios and Bernardo Estevão Carneiro, the ex. Superintendente in charge during the
Annamese scandal Felix Hílario de Azevedo, as well as Italian coolie captains like Giuseppe Lavarello,
Antonio Nattini, Gio Batta Castagnola. Bollo, Ragioni e documenti..., 20.
50
especially as regards to the meeting with Zhepo’s mandarin; doubts he actually expressed to Racchia;
“l’On. Console di Macao mi asserì essere tutto questo racconto una favola,” Racchia to MM, Yokohama, 30
July 1869 in ASDMAE, MM, DGMM, Miscellanea Uffici Diversi 1866-1869, b.475.
51
Racchia, comments on a copy of Bollo, Petizione al parlamento nazionale..., 4, enclosure in Racchia to
MM, Yokohama, 30 July 1869 in ASDMAE, MM, DGMM, Miscellanea Uffici Diversi 1866-1869, b.475.
52
Ibid.
243
was responsible of the loss of the Teresa’s cargo, they noted: “L’autore scherza
addirittura!”; what Bollo had called a formidable fortress with a strong garrison had been
reported by Cap. Longueville as a “miserabile parapetto diroccato con otto o nove
cannoncini di ferraccio del medioevo incapaci di fare un tiro a palla, la guarnigione 20
miserabili soldati chinesi”, located in a poor and isolated village “che conta forse fra
uomini e donne mille persone! tutti pescatori e privi di pressoché ogni cosa.” In an
attached report, Racchia wrote:
ora domando io se quella povera gente [Chapò’s garrison] al veder approdare al loro
porto una nave straniera con oltre 120 pirati a bordo che il Sig. Sebastiano Bollo
aveva imbarcato pochi mesi prima a Macao, cosa poteva fare, quale ostacolo serio
poteva opporre a quella disperata masnada fornita di tutte le armi Europee e
munizioni tolte all’equipaggio della Teresa! mentre di più il Capitano Bollo
presentatosi al Mandarino di Chapò per mezzo del suo interprete Europeo, esponeva
che quanto facevasi dai pirati lo si eseguiva con suo pieno consentimento.53
Racchia was also astonished by Bollo’s pretension to include in his requests of

reparations, the value of the lost coolie contracts, and his argument that the Zhepo’s
mandarins should have not only arrested the “coolie pirates” after their landing, but also
forced them aboard to resume the journey for Callao:
In quanto poi alla seconda asserzione ove è detto i coloni chinesi (che razza di
coloni! povero paese destinato a ricevere simil gente) potevano essere obbligati a
compiere gl'impegni contratti l'autore dell'opuscolo parmi siasi ciò scrivendo
dimenticato che come pirati, e tutti più o meno compromessi nelle scene di sangue e
di furto commesse a bordo della Teresa, quei buoni coloni non potevano più essere
imbarcati e fatti seguire per il loro viaggio, ma dovevano invece cadere sotto la mano
della giustizia onde rendere conto dei misfatti commessi. Pur troppo quest'ultima
frase tradisce manifestamente l'animo tanto dell'autore dell'opuscolo quanto del
Capitano della Teresa [...] vale a dire ammettendo che appena approdata la Teresa a
Chapò si fosse trovato chi avesse incatenato i coolies in fondo di cala e liberate tutte
le persone dell'equipaggio, sono persuasissimo [...] che il Capitano della Teresa non
avrebbe esitato a proseguire il suo viaggio, e adottando le più severe misure di
precauzione e repressione avrebbe riuscito a felicemente sbarcare al Callao i 120
quanti erano coloni pirati superstiti! Bel regalo alla Repubblica Peruviana! Ed ecco
precisamente quanto ben spesso accade in questo odioso commercio, e che non si ha
neppure onta di confessare non solo ma di pubblicamente consigliare!
Bollo’s appeals to restore the honor of the nation and the flag, and show the mighty
power of the Italian military on the China coast, finally was meet with the most biting
sarcasm by both Cercal and Racchia, who noticed the absurdity of starting a war with the
Chinese Empire over such a petty issue—“dichiarare Guerra alla China?”—as stated in a
53
Racchia to MM, Yokohama 30 July 1869, ACS, MM, DGMM, Miscellanea Uffici Diversi 1866-1869, b.
475.
244
remark added on page 11 of Bollo’s petition.54 Racchia continued:
Non si può negare all'autore dell'opuscolo un certo merito nell'aver cercato di tirar
partito dall'ignoranza in cui la maggior parte degl'italiani vive relativamente a quanto
accade nell'Impero Chinese e suoi mari, per loro raccontare e dipingere con vivi
colori quanto accadde alla Teresa senza curarsi per altro d'essere troppo
scrupolosamente veritiero e indurre così la stampa e l’opinione pubblica, male
informati sul vero stato delle cose, a far di una questione personale e che soltanto
interessar può pochi individui, una questione nazionale, facendo comparire insultata
la bandiera, manomessi innocenti cittadini dediti a legale ed onestissimo commercio
ed in ultimo vedere per tal modo di esercitare una certa qual pressione sul governo
[...] Ai Bollo poco importa quali possano essere le conseguenze del loro operare
purché credano poter riuscire ad intascare il danaro perduto per la fallita
speculazione. Ecco a parer mio Sig. Ministro la morale dell'opuscolo in questione.
His final remarks were even clearer in their assessment of the coolie trade as a “traffic
in human flesh.” After discussing the topic with the British ambassador in Japan Harry
Parkes,55 Racchia resounded the opinion of many contemporary observers and the filo-
British positions in the coolie debate:
per l’onore del Paese e della bandiera mi auguro che sia dichiarato fuori dalla legge
chi si dedica al commercio dei coolies a meno che questa emigrazione venga
ordinata su nuove basi e rigorosamente e lealmente sorvegliata e fatta di pieno
accordo colle autorità Chinesi. In poche parole, si trattino i poveri coolies come
uomini - abbiano vitto e aria a bordo da poter vivere, si lascino da banda i brigandi e
gl’assassini, l’emigrazione sia volontaria e spontanea di fatto e non di nome e allora
tale emigrazione avrà luogo senza si abbiano a ripetere le miserande catastrofi del
Napoleone Canevaro, del Cayalti del Tamares della Teresa e cento altre che potrei
citare.
If concrete steps could not be taken, he continued, a policy of non-support had to be

pursued towards Italian traffickers facing the unwanted consequences of that dangerous
commerce:
54
Racchia, comments on a copy of Bollo, Petizione al parlamento nazionale..., 7, enclosure in Racchia to
MM, Yokohama, 30 July 1869 in ASDMAE, MM, DGMM, Miscellanea Uffici Diversi 1866-1869, b.475.
Bollo’s father tried to answer to this objection in one of his subsequent petitions: “Il Barone do Cercal
adoperò tutti i mezzi per ingannare in buona fede Ministro, Consoli e lo stesso Governo a Firenze, come
ingannò il comandante Racchia e lo stesso signor Comm. Peiroleri, segretario al Ministero degli esteri,
sezione commerciale. Diffatti il sottoscritto in varie udienze avute con questo personaggio si persuase che le
gratuite calunnie lanciate dal Barone a carico del capitano Bollo, trovarono fede ed appoggio in quel
burocratico; perché alle istanze e raccomandazioni diretteli, mosse sempre grandi difficolta e dubbi sui fatti
ed esclamò: Volete che per causa di vostro figlio si faccia guerra alla Cina ? A queste parole lo scrivente
rispose (con cognizione pratica della Cina), non abbisogna dichiarazione di guerra, ma solamente una
formale domanda di reintegrazione dei danni avuti nel porto di Chapò, con le sue conseguenze. Se tale
domanda venisse respinta, la spedizione di due navi da guerra bastanti sarebbero per prendere le
soddisfazioni dovute dalla citta dove fu commesso oltraggio; come fanno in assai meno gravi contingenze
le altre nazioni europee. L’imperatore cinese non ha forza per impedirlo, lascia fare e non se ne dà per
inteso.” Bollo, Ancora sulla catastrofe..., 11.
55
Racchia to MM, Yokohama, 18 July 1869, ASDMAE, MM, DGMM, Miscellanea Uffici Diversi 1866-
1869, b.475.
245
Dal momento che un uomo per anni ed anni si dedica a simili speculazioni e ha
incallito il cuore alla vista di tante brutalità e nefandità, deve accettare tutte le
conseguenze della sua posizione e del genere di speculazione a cui la sete del
guadagno lo ha spinto, altrimenti egli manca ai suoi doveri ed è responsa[bi]le delle
disgraziate conseguenze di tale sua improvvida e colpevole condotta. Se un capitano
marittimo crede, senza che ne abbia a soffrire il suo caratter non solo di uomo onesto
ma di cristiano, di potersi dedicare al commercio dei coolies, quale almeno lo si
esercita a Macao, lo faccia pure, ma converrebbe che egli fosse fatto ben persuaso e
sapesse a priori che tale commercio lo esercita a suo rischio e pericolo.56
7.2.2 The parliamentary debate
A comprehensive analysis of the repercussions of the Teresa affair on the Italian public
opinion and press, and the legal struggle of Captain Bollo and his family, though
interesting, is beyond the scope of this work. Here we limit to a brief overview of the
parliamentary debates which examined Bollo’s petitions two distinct sessions in 1869,
and the deliberations of the Consiglio del Contenzioso Diplomatico that rejected three
subsequent appeals to revise that stance.
Discussion of the Teresa affair was prompted initially by the mediation of a Ligurian
representative, the prominent politician Stefano Castagnola, future Minister of
Agriculture, Industry and Trade (December 1869-June 1873). 57 The pretext for raising
the issue was a debate over the budget of the Italian Navy in March 1869; Castagnola
exposed his concerns on the spread of piracy in the South China Sea, arguing for the
dispatch of a squadron of gunboats to protect the Italian commercial interests in the area,
especially the trade in Japanese silk and silkworm eggs.58 Castagnola reported the Teresa
affair as example of piracy, carefully avoiding any reference to the dubious nature of the
ship’s human cargo:
è questo il punto sul quale io vorrei intrattenere la Camera, perché egli è d’uopo che
si conosca in qual guisa accadessero questi fatti improntati della più alta barbarie, e
come i nostri marinai venissero barbaramente trucidati in quelle acque. [...] Voi non
ignorate al certo, o signori, per averlo letto nei giornali, come l’equipaggio della nave
Teresa siasi trovato a cattivo partito precisamente in quelle acque; come divenne
preda dei pirati e fu condotto nel porto di Chapò, nell’isola di Hay Lyn […] I pirati
trattennero più di sette giorni in quel porto la nave, e sotto gli occhi delle autorità
cinesi poterono impunemente consumare la loro pirateria, vendere il carico
56
Racchia to MM, Yokohama, 30 July 1869, ASDMAE, MM, DGMM, Miscellanea Uffici Diversi 1866-
1869, b.475.
57
Camera dei Deputati (Italy), Atti Parlamentari: Discussioni, X legislatura, I sessione (1867-69), tornata
del 16-17 marzo 1869, 9769-9799.
58
Ibid.; on Castagnola’s meddling in the seme-bachi imports from Japan in 1873, see Zanier, Semai: Setaioli
italiani in Giappone (1861-1880), 223–231..
246
preziosissimo di seterie e mettere a morte il secondo del bastimento, il povero
Sebastiano [sic] Bollo.59
In the following day, 17 March 1869, Castagnola’s questions were answererd by the
Marine Minister Admiral Riboty. To defend his position Riboty pulled out of the drawer
Racchia’s reports, reading out the passages accusing Bollo of grave negligence in the
management of the crisis, and “non poche irregolarità” in his overall career as coolie
trafficker.60
The first printed petition of Gio. Andrea Bollo, published in Genoa on his expenses a
month later, was evidently a response to Riboty and Racchia’s insulting remarks. Bollo
had obviously understood that to change the stance of the Italian government towards his
grievances he needed to turn on his side the Genoese and national public opinion. The
issue was debated by influential newspapers of the Ligurian city. On 12 April 1869 the
Commercio di Genova reopened the dispute blaming Racchia and the whole Italian
diplomatic corps in China for their inability to satisfy the demands of a reputable Italian
citizen.61 Five days later a more moderate stance was taken by La Borsa, taking in account
Bollo’s involvement in the coolie traffic, described through an allusive language. It was
apparent that the Borsa’s readers were well-informed on the nature of that business, and it
was deemed unnecessary to explain things further:
Noi non vogliamo entrare nella questione che riguarda il signor Bollo, il ministro
della marina, ed il Comandante Racchia; anzi se dobbiamo esprimere una nostra
opinione, crediamo che a fatto compiuto, forse il Governo Italiano avrebbe fatto bene
a prendere in questa disgraziata faccenda un piglio più risoluto e più vigoroso.
Nondimeno noi non vogliamo tacere che questo ramo di traffico ci spiace assai e che
avremmo voluto veder la nostra marina iniziare un’altra specie di commercio nei
mari dell’Estremo Oriente. [...] Ci si dirà che il Capitano caricando Cinesi non
commette nessun atto riprovevole; che egli si limita a trasferire al di là del Pacifico
quegli abitanti del Celeste Impero che vogliono andare alla California, al Perù, ed al
Chilì; ma queste argomentazioni non bastano a convertirci alla persuasione della
moralità di questo commercio.62
While prudently conceding that the Teresa affair, “riguardando forse un caso di
pirateria, è affatto differente”, 63 the Borsa’s editorialist and director Jacopo Virgilio
59
del 16-17 marzo 1869, 9769-9799.
60
Ibid.
61
“Insomma il Comandante signor Racchia loda i Chinesi, insulta nella parte più delicata il suo
connazionale [Bollo].” Il Commercio di Genova, 12 April 1869, enclosed in ACS, MM, DGMM,
Miscellanea Uffici Diversi 1866-1869, b. 475.
62
Jacopo Virgilio, “La tratta dei coolies”, La Borsa, 17 aprile 1869, in Ferrari, “Sulla tratta dei ‘coolies’
cinesi a Macao,” 324–325.
63
Ibid.
247
launched himself in a discussion of the policies that the Italian Kingdom could enforce to
dissuade its subjects from taking part in the infamous trade. On the other hand, he pointed
out, until that moment the Italian Government had the duty of protecting the interests of
the traffickers who had been granted the right to show the national flag in those seas:
Che si deve dunque fare? La Cina ha proibito questi trasporti; molte altre Nazioni li
hanno ugualmente colpiti di riprovazione non ravvisandoli degni di protezione […]
Crediamo che si provvederebbe ad un tempo alla dignità del paese e si ovvierebbe a
grandi possibili impicci, se il Governo Italiano facesse sentire che egli non concede
la sua protezione ai bastimenti che caricano coolies […] ad ogni modo, sino a che il
Governo non faccia la dichiara[sic] da noi indicata, ponendo sull’avviso i nostri
Capitani affinché non si mischino in queste dubbie faccende, le quali sono ad un
tempo poco onorevoli e pericolose, ci pare che esso dovrebbe prestare un serio ed
efficace appoggio, come si richiede all’onore della bandiera italiana64
On 6 May 1869 the Chambers examined the first petition of Gio. Andrea Bollo, but
expectably, the official position did not divert sensibly from the previous session. In
particular, Virgilio’s plea for a clear statement of the Government on the coolie trade
would be satisfied, marking—at least from a symbolic point of view—a major policy
shift.
The emphasis of the relator Torrigiani, this time, was all put on the reputation and
legitimacy of the coolie trade, openly reckoned as a form of “white slavery”, in the
tradition of the anti-emigration political discourse:
Anche prima che questa petizione venisse presentata alla Camera, era noto come dei
coloni chinesi, chiamati coolies, venga fatto un mercato veramente infame, mercato
che si può caratterizzare col nome di tratta di schiavi bianchi.65
According to the acts of the session, this statement was interrupted by members of the
parliament shouting “schiavi gialli.” To them Torrigiani politely clarified, “è per
distinguerli meglio dai neri.” 66 He then continued remembering how many incidents had
64
Ibid.
65
del 16-17 marzo 1869, 9769-9799.
66
Ibid. For an overview of the construction of the Yellow category see Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds,
Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men’s Countries and the International Challenge of Racial
Equality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). It may be argued whether the debate on the
coolie labor affected the perception by Italian state-bureaucratic elites in the understanding and the
condemnation of similar practices of kidnapping and contract migration which was underway in Italy and
generally some of the southern European countries in the same timeframe. Cf. Carpi, Delle colonie e
dell’emigrazione. On the activities of Italian emigration brokers (padroni) see Donna Gabaccia and Fraser
Ottanelli, “Diaspora or International Proletariat?: Italian Labor, Labor Migration, and the Making of
Multiethnic States, 1815-1939,” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 6, no. 1 (1997): 61–84;
Donna Gabaccia, “The ‘Yellow Peril’ and the ‘Chinese of Europe’ : Global Perspectives on Race and Labor
, 1815-1930,” in Migration, Migration History, History: Old Paradigms and New Perspectives, ed. Leo
Lucassen and Jan Lucassen (Bern: Peter Lang, 1997).
248
happened to ships involved in that traffic, concluding:
Abbiamo, ripeto, dati sufficienti per giudicare le cause della rivolta, e la condotta dei
comandanti, onde formare un giudizio concreto e adeguato conforme alla vera
condizione di cose? Possiamo noi dire francamente, e questo è un punto molto
interessante, se la nave Teresa carica dei 293 coolies facesse essa stessa quel mercato
che sventuratamente fanno molti altri, fra gl’Italiani, Francesi e Spagnuoli? Io insisto
in quest’idea perché, prescindendo dalla conclusione a cui sarà chiamata la Camera
fra momenti su questa petizione, credo pregio dell’opera insistere molto presso il
Ministro degli Affari Esteri, perché vegga di riparare, fin dove è possibile, affinché
questo mercato sia impedito o almeno diminuito, per quanto è possibile.67
The matter was then addressed by Prime Minister Menabrea, who cited again
Racchia’s reports, and announced further investigations on the Teresa affair and the
Italian participation in the coolie trade, which would be carried out by the plenipotentiary
minister in China and Japan, Count Vittorio Sallier de La Tour. 68 Deputy Valerio
intervened to ask Menabrea “se il Governo ha i mezzi, e se cercherà di usare tutti quanti
quelli che ha, per impedire che la bandiera italiana copra quell’infame traffico di cui
abbiamo sentito parlare.”69 Menabrea answered swiftly, enunciating what will be from
that moment the new official paradigm for the Italian diplomatic corps in China:
Ad onore della bandiera nazionale assai importa che sotto la protezione dell’Italia
non sia commesso l’infame traffico, che io chiamerò traffico de’ gialli, perché è un
traffico forse peggiore di quello che si faceva per i neri. Ora queste indagini si
faranno, e saranno date le istruzioni più precise a tutti i nostri bastimenti da guerra ed
ai nostri consoli, perché questo traffico, qualora avesse luogo, venga rigorosamente
impedito.
These public pronouncements, although a fact by themselves, need to be taken in

account carefully. As we discussed before, direct measures against the Italian traffickers
could hardly been undertaken by the Italian consular authorities alone. The belligerent
tone of Menabrea, shared on the field by Racchia and other Italians Navy officers,
particularly the aforementioned Arminjon and Lovera,70 had to deal with the pragmatism
of the local Consular authorities. The case of the Glensannox, analyzed in the previous
67
del 16-17 marzo 1869, 9769-9799.
68
The already mentioned report of Sallier de La Tour, “L’emigrazione cinese.”
69
del 16-17 marzo 1869, 9769-9799.
70
“In quanto a me, ove mai sapessi che a Macao siavi una nave con bandiera Italiana intenta ad imbarcare
dei coolies, se possibile non mancherei di recarmi in quelle acque per presenziare una simile operazione,
assicurarmi personalmente di tutti i dettagli di quel commercio e se non mi sarà dato d'impedire che la
bandiera nostra serva per coprire navi addette a simile commercio, saprò almeno impedire che sotto ai miei
occhi si compiano atti indegni di un popolo civile che vuol farsi iniziatore e propugnatore di principi
d'uguaglianza, di libertà e umanità!” Racchia to MM, Yokohama, 30 July 1869, ACS, MM, DGMM,
Miscellanea Uffici Diversi 1866-1869, b. 475.
249
chapter shows well the degree of ambiguity with which Menabrea’s instructions would be
carried out; not to mention the reluctance of the Italian consul in Peru Ippolito Garrou to
oppose the coolie traffic. By the time of these proclamations, finally, many Italian coolie
traffickers had already started their shift towards the more convenient Salvadorean and
Peruvian flags, and Italian diplomats had obviously no legitimate say to impede or
question their participation in the traffic under foreign national colors.
7.2.3 The verdicts of the Consiglio del Contenzioso Diplomatico
Similar arguments motivated the conclusions of the three subsequent meetings of the
Consiglio del Contenzioso Diplomatico, a high-ranked advisory board of the Italian
Foreign Ministry, which assessed, and eventually contributed to dispel, the complex
Teresa affair in 1870, 1872 and 1876.
The first verdict of 22 June 1870 focused on two points: the interpretation of the Italo-
Chinese Treaty of 1866, and the political consequences of a demand of reparation for the
Teresa case. The Consiglio argued that the only possible basis to demand further
compensation for the incident was the alleged complicity of the local Chinese authorities
in the spoliation of the Teresa’s cargo in Zhepo, which could not be convincingly
demonstrated by any substantial piece of evidence, and was instead seriously questioned
by Captain Bollo’s contradictory accounts:
Secondo la narrazione del Bollo il principale Mandarino di Chapò e i mandarini sotto

i suoi ordini seppero ogni cosa e permisero che perfino gli abitanti di Chapò
comperassero le merci che erano state rubate. Ma sotto la frase che si legge nelle
ultime sue istanze della ignobile farsa che egli dovette rappresentare nella residenza
del Mandarino sta tutto il nodo dell'affare perchè egli, nella prima deposizione aveva
confessato che il capo dei coolies ribelli conducendolo insieme all'interprete nella
residenza ufficiale del mandarino gli aveva fatto dichiarare che la nave era tenuta in
mano dei pirati, che questi avevano saccheggiato i passeggeri, che gli stessi si eran
rivoltati e avevan forzato il capitano a ritornare in China col patto che non aveva egli
danaro per rimandarli alle case loro, questi sarebbero stati autorizzati a vendere per
proprio conto le mercanzie.71
From that standpoint, hence, art. 1872 and 1973 of the Italo-Chinese treaty had to be
71
Primo parere del Consiglio, 22 June 1870, in ASDMAE, Archivio del Contenzioso Diplomatico (1851-
1923),Vertenza della nave “Teresa” in China (capitano Bollo), b.71.
72
“Le autorità Chinesi daranno ovunque la massima protezione alle persone ed alle proprietà italiane
specialmente nel caso in cui avessero patito danno e violenza [...] le autorità locali prenderanno le misure
opportune per ricuperare le proprietà rubate, per sopprimere il disordine e fare arrestare i colpevoli, i quali
saranno puniti secondo la legge. Ma se l’autorità locale non riuscirà ad impadronirsi dei colpevoli, tuttociò
che potrà domandarsi al governo Chinese sarà la punizione di dette autorità conformemente alle leggi della
China.” Primo parere del Consiglio, 22 June 1870, in ASDMAE, Archivio del Contenzioso Diplomatico
(1851-1923),Vertenza della nave “Teresa” in China (capitano Bollo), b.71.
250
applied, and no economic compensation could be demanded.
From a political point of view, moreover, the position of the Italian Government
towards the coolie trade as stated officially by Menabrea in the chambers in the previous
year recommended a cautious management of the dispute; pushing too far a dubious (and
unprecedented) claim on the loss of coolie ship, could have jeopardized the economic
intercourse with the Chinese Empire and would have certainly backlashed, given the
international campaign against the traffic, on on the Italian national image abroad:
Rispetto poi al punto di vista politico al quale si riferisce in secondo luogo la

richiesta del Ministero, è da notare che incamminati appena i buoni rapporti col
Governo Chinese, da quale tanti vantaggi possono risultare al commercio e
all'industria italiana, bisogna essere molto guardinghi ad evitare i contrasti quando
non è evidente ragione o interesse preponderante italiano non lo richiedano. Ora la
condotta del Governo Chinese è stata in questa circostanza animata dalle migliori
intenzioni e se v'è un interesse commerciale a proteggere, non sarà certo quello che è
rappresentato dall'ignobile traffico dei coolies, che altri ha chiamato a ragione la
tratta dei gialli. Chi si dedica a codesto traffico ne sopporta i pericoli e i danni, non è
poi tanto meritevole di compassione.74
On 26 May 1872, a second meeting substantially confirmed the results of June 1870.75
A reassessment had been requested by the new Foreign Minister Visconti Venosta after
the publishing of three new pamphlets by the Bollo family, emboldened by the verdict of
the Court of First Instance of Genoa which had decreed the complicity of some Italian
sailors in the coolie rebellion (Corte d’Assise di Genova, Sentenza del 10 Marzo 1871).76
Supported by his lawyers, Bollo was now arguing that the issue had to be settled not
according to the articles 18 and 19, which regulated cases of piracy, but trough art. 20,
concerning humanitarian assistance in case of shipwreck. This article, they maintained,
unlike the two previous, did not exclude explicitly a request of compensation. 77 The
73
Ove una nave italiana nelle acque della China sia aggredita dai ladri o dai pirati, le autorità Chinesi
dovranno fare ogni sforzo per catturare e punire i detti ladri o pirati, e per ricuperare la proprietà derubata,
la quale proprietà sarà consegnata al console per restituirla a chi di ragione. Ma se le autorità Chinesi
mancheranno di arrestare i colpevoli e ricuperare le proprietà rubate tutto ciò che potrà chiedere al governo
Chinese sarà la punizione di tali autorità, secondo le leggi della China, ma giammai d'indennizzare le
presone derubate1° parere del Consiglio del Contenzioso diplomatico, 22.06.1870, in ASDMAE, Archivio
del Contenzioso Diplomatico(1851-1923), Vertenza della nave “Teresa” in China (capitano Bollo), b.71.
74
Ibid.
75
Visconti Venosta to Des Ambrois, Rome, 22 February 1872, in ASDMAE, Archivio del Contenzioso
Diplomatico (1851-1923), Vertenza della nave “Teresa” in China (capitano Bollo), b.71
76
ASGE, Corte d’Assise di Genova, Sentenze (1870-71), r. 1878.
77
Ibid. “1): sull'opinione di uomini dotti in giurisprudenza i quali, secondo che egli afferma, lo han fatto
certo della giustizia del suo reclamo, e del fondamento giuridico che ha la sua domanda d'indennità; 2): sul
processo criminale che si è agitato nel passato anno a Genova innanzi alla Corte d'Assise, contro quattro
marinai della “Teresa”, accusati e ritenuti colpevoli di complicità nella ribellione dei coolies a bordo, da
quale processo, secondo il sig. Bollo, apparve evidente la legalità dell'imbarco dei coolies e la connivenza
con questi delle autorità cinesi di Ciapò, e quindi giustificata l'indennità che egli chiede dal Celeste Impero.
251
Consiglio categorically ruled out this point as a sophism:
Sull'applicazione dell'art. 20 del trattato al caso in specie si osserva che le sue

disposizioni riguardano i casi di naufragio o di rifugio, e si promette di provvedere
per soccorrere e salvare la nave; ma per casi speciali di furto di aggressione di ladri e
di pirati provvedono gli articoli 18 e 19; e però il consiglio nel parere del 20 giugno
1870 si riferisce a questi due articoli, poiché l'approdo all'isola Hailin, al porto di
Chapò, e i reati ivi consumati dai coolis non sono che la continuazione della
ribellione e pirateria cominciata il 5 aprile.78
The final verdict of the Consiglio responded to the last attempt of the Bollo family to
mobilize the public opinion in support of his claims through a new pamphlet published in
1875.79 The petition was accompanied by a legal opinion signed by a number of highly
reputed jurists, law professors and politicians of the caliber of Pasquale Stanislao
Mancini,80 Luigi Ferraris, and others,81 showing support for an “extended interpretation”
of the Italo-Chinese treaty on the matter of economic compensation of damages. This
impressive show of endorsements, however, did not sway the Consiglio from reinstating
again the same crucial arguments of their first resolution:
Per inoltrare una domanda d'indennità al governo Chinese, sempre sarebbe da

stabilire, come indispensabile estremo ai fatti, il dolo o quanto meno la colpa delle
autorità locali di Chapò [...] Ora, è precisamente in ordine alla possibilità di provare
questo estremo essenziale di fatto (il dolo o la colpa delle autorità chinesi) che il
consiglio ha sempre trovato una difficoltà insuperabile; né le recenti produzioni del
Bollo sono tali che valgano a dissiparla. Di vero, per quanto il complesso dei fatti
avvenuti possa ingenerar dubbi sul contegno delle autorità Chinesi di Chapò, pur
tuttavia è certo infatti; 1: che il mandarino di quella località disse avergli il Bollo
dichiarato che il carico era di proprietà dei passeggeri; e contro quest’asserzione non
si ha se non un'asserzione del Bollo, la quale (quando pure non fosse in
contraddizione con quella da lui medesimo fatta precedentemente) in fondo non
conchiude nulla, limitandosi egli a dichiarare che i suoi ufficiali erano presenti e
potevano dir tutto […] 2: Che, dietro le rimostranze messe innanzi al Governo
3): Il capitano Bollo sostiene poi che non è l'articolo 19 del trattato tra l'Italia e la Cina quello che si deve
invocare dal governo del Re per formulare la domanda d'indennità, bensì il 20 il quale dice che "se alcuna
nave italiana venga a naufragare od incagliare sulla costa della China, oppure a rifugiarsi in un porto degli
stati di S.M. l'Imperatore della China, le autorità Chinesi, tosto informate del caso, provvederanno per
soccorrere e salvare quella nave. Le persone a bordo saranno trattate in modo amichevole e riceveranno
all'uopo i mezzi necessari per recarsi al più vicino uffizio consolare.”
78
Ibid.
79
80
In the next year Mancini, celebrated pioneer in the field of international law, will be appointed Minister
of Justice in the Depretis government. His involvement in the Teresa affair most likely, had not been
casual; he had been associated with the expansionist clubs of the Italian foreign policy, and had been the
defendant of the merchant family Dall’Oro in 1869, accused of a fraud in the importation of 20,000 empty
boxes of supposed silkworm eggs; see Zanier, Semai: Setaioli italiani in Giappone (1861-1880), 315.
81
“Pasquale Fiore, professore ordinario di Diritto Internazionale della R. Università di Torino; Federico
Spantigati, deputato; Augusto Pierantoni, Giurista nella R. Università di Napoli; Giambattista Varè,
deputato; Giuseppe Saredo, Prof. R.Università di Roma; Giovanni Isnardi ; Tito Orsini; Luigi Priario; Luigi
Mattirolo, Prof. alla R. Università di Torino e alla Scuola di Guerra; Luigi Leveroni, Prof. di Diritto
Commerciale nella R. Università di Genova.” Bollo, Cenni e parere legale..., 67–68.
252
Chinese a nome del Governo Italiano, una inchiesta si sarebbe eseguita, parecchi
arresti si sarebbero fatti, si sarebbero inflitte pene a non pochi - per alcuni capitali -,
ed un mandarino sarebbe stato sostituito; 3: Che, in seguito a ciò, il capitano Racchia
avrebbe ringraziato il vicerè di Canton; il quale poteva quindi a buon diritto ritenere
ormai terminata la vertenza.82
Although the coolie trade in Macao had effectively ended two years before, the
Council believed that it would have not been appropriate to return on a matter that had
been already settled, at the risk of inviting wide international criticism. Bollo’s records as
inveterate coolie trafficker did not play in his favor:
A tutto questo s’aggiunge il poco favore che merita per sé stessa la speculazione del
trasporto dei coolies. Poiché, per quanto orribili siano stati i casi avvenuti a bordo
della Teresa, per quanto angosciosa sia stata la condizione del capitano Bollo, il
quale si vide depredato il carico, uccisa parte dell'equipaggio, assassinato il fratello,
morta di dolore la cognata, non si deve dissimulare che questo capitano Bollo, in cui
le sventure toccate non lasciano ora più vedere che una vittima, aveva già fatto più
viaggi di simil genere, che, in sostanza egli faceva abitualmente il traffico dei
coolies, il quale (malgrado tutte le apparenze di legalità che si vogliano dare ai
contratti stipulati con quegl’infelici) a buon diritto venne chiamato la tratta dei gialli,
e stigmatizzato da ogni animo onesto […] Se quindi il Bollo si avventurava a codesto
traffico, di cui non poteva ignorare i rischi, si esponeva con ciò stesso
volontariamente alle eventualità delle sue conseguenze.83
7.3 Chinese piracy and the coolie trade
In the second section of this chapter we investigate the entangled relationship between
the coolie trade and the issue of piracy in Southern China. The topic will be addressed
under two viewpoints. First, we examine the social and cultural bases of traditional
Chinese—or rather Cantonese—piracy, their historical evolution during the early and
mid-nineteenth century and their links with the coolie recruitment system. Scattered
sources point out the close connections of pirates and corretores, whose activities on the
China coast could be considered, under many aspects, de-facto acts of piracy. The rise and
demise of the Macao lorcha trade, which we assessed in Chapter 3, was arguably the trait
d’union between these two distinct but contiguous and entwined worlds.
Second, a detailed account will be given of a still unanswered historical question: were
organized bands of professional pirates and bandits expressly entering the barracoons,
signing emigration contracts, and boarding the coolie vessels to Cuba and Peru only in
order to rise up, capture and plunder their cargoes? Most contemporary sources argued so,
82
Terzo parere del Consiglio, 06 July 1876, in ASDMAE, Archivio del Contenzioso Diplomatico (1851-
1923), Vertenza della nave “Teresa” in China (capitano Bollo), b. 71
83
Ibid.
253
but historians have been obviously less unanimous. This issue will be dealt with through a
close focus on the innovative sources provided by the Teresa revolt of 1868, and a
previous, repressed, insurrection occurred on the same vessel in 1866. Our purpose is to
overcome a simplistic and dichotomist approach in an effort to deconstruct the dominant
narratives on coolie mutinies and situate them in a more nuanced historical context.
7.3.1 Pirates and corretores in the nineteenth-century Chinese “water world”
Piracy was endemic in nineteenth-century South China Sea. Its roots lied on profound
economic, social and historical conditions: local maritime traditions, thriving trade and
smuggling networks, and a favorable geographical landscape with small creeks, inlets and
shallow waters that provided shelter and strategic advantages to local pirate boats.84 A
deeply unequal distribution of wealth, historians argue, marginalized large strata of the
population to levels of subsistence and encouraged the poorer outcasts to reclaim their
share of the general prosperity by unlawful means. In the words of Dian Murray, as
“society polarized, […] more and more of the “have-nots” resorted to preying off the rich,
and bandit gangs proliferated.”85
Since the fall of the Ming dynasty, moreover, piracy had been enmeshed with political
subversion and the critique of the established Manchu order, in parallel with the spread of
secret societies in the area.86
The critical feature of Chinese piracy at this stage, however, was its occasional, liquid
character. The heterogeneous pirate crews of nineteenth-century South China included
fishermen, coastal villagers, Tanka (pinyin: Danjia) boat dwellers, 87 unemployed and
unmarried urban males etc., whose participation in piratical activities was a temporary
and not professional strategy. To put it simply, villagers, fishermen and sailors in South
China could commit acts of piracy at the emergence of favorable conditions, to turn back
to other means of survival soon afterwards. 88
These social origins, along with the flowering of myths and popular legend have
moved several historians to advance interpretations of Chinese piracy as a form of social
banditry. This model, first proposed by historian Eric Hobsbawm in a comparative
84
Murray, Pirates of the South China Coast 1790-1810, 9–10.
85
Ibid., 12.
86
David Ownby, “Recent Chinese Scholarship on the History of Chinese Secret Societies,” Late Imperial
China 22, no. 1 (2001): 139–58.
87
88
Robert J Antony, Like Froth Floating on the Sea:The World of Pirates and Seafarers in Late Imperial
South China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 82–104.
254
framework in the 1950s and 1960s,89 has been convincingly disputed by historians of the
Chinese piracy, for example Robert Antony, who have emphasized how the strategies,
beliefs and behavior of Chinese and especially Cantonese pirates, was particularly violent
and targeted the same lower and defenseless strata of the local populations from which
the pirates drew their main base of support. 90 Pirates selected their targets, affirms
Antony, according to highly rational calculations of risks and benefits. Their victims were
individuated, almost invariably, among fishermen, passage carriers, and vulnerable petty
merchants. 91 Acting as large criminal syndicates, the major pirate crews organized
systems of “protection money” and extortion that ensured steady and certain profits while
reducing risks of armed confrontation with the authorities. Extreme violence, brutality
and mass slaughter were also common and instrumental to spread intimidation and
eliminate possible testimonies.92
The area situated in between the Tonkin gulf and the western Guangdong province, in
particular, had been interested by alternated cycles of large-scale pirate confederations,
intermingled by periods of widespread but petty piracy at least since the Ming era and the
Ming-Qing transition. 93 A major surge in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries escalated into open anti-dynastical rebellion, mobilizing hundreds thousands of
people, with repercussions on the history not only of the Chinese Empire but also other
Southeast Asian states, particularly in modern-day Vietnam.94
Though not comparable to the early nineteenth-century upsurge, the 1840s and 1850s
witnessed one of the last resurgences of piracy in South China, consequence of the
conditions of social distress and political instability spawned by the anti-dynastical
rebellions and the encroachment of Western imperialism.
89
Eric J. Hobsbawm, Primitive Rebels (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1959); Eric J.
Hobsbawm, Banditi: Il banditismo sociale nell’età moderna (Torino: Einaudi, 1971), especially focused on
the Ming era novel “Water Margin.” On the same paradigm, but focused entirely on China, Jean Chesnaux,
ed., Popular Movements and Secret Societies in China, 1840-1950 (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
1972).
90
Robert J Antony, “Peasants , Heroes , and Brigands: The Problems od Social Banditry in Early
Nineteenth-Century South China,” Modern China 15, no. 2 (1989): 123–48.
91
Robert J Antony, “Bloodthirsty Pirates? Violence and Terror on the South China Sea in Early Modern
Times,” Journal of Early Modern History 16, no. 6 (2012): 481–508.
92
Antony, Like Froth Floating on the Sea, 105–122.
93
Robert J Antony, “Pirates , Merchants, and Rebels on the China Coast,” in Pirates in the Age of Sail
(New York: W. W. Norton Publisher, 2007), 32–44; Dian Murray, “Piracy and China’s Maritime Transition
1750-1850,” in Maritime China in Transition 1750-1850, ed. Wang Gungwu and Chin-Keong Ng
(Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2004), 42–60. Also Robert J Antony, “Piracy and the Shadow Economy
in the South China Sea, 1780-1810,” in Elusive Pirates, Pervasive Smugglers: Violence and Clandestine
Trade in the Greater China Seas (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2010).
94
The most known case is that of the Tayson rebels in the late eighteenth century China-Vietnam frontier:
255
The founding of Hong Kong changed the geography of power in the Chinese waters,
as traditional Cantonese and Fujianese pirates were faced with the intensifying presence
of Western, particularly British, naval patrols, but also by new possible targets and
opportunities.95 Major pirate hades in the vicinities of the British colony were cleared in
the 1850s, triggering the relocation of the major pirate groups in the Pearl River delta
from the north-east of Hong Kong area to places like the Ladrones (wanshan
archipelago), south-east of the Macao peninsula, Kulan (Gaolan) and Beishui on the
south-west. 96 These pirates’ areas of operations extended southwest to the Gulf of
Tunking, already stage of the great piracy of the 1800s and 1810s, and major pirate bases
were organized on Hainan Island, the Leizhou peninsula and the bay of Tienpak
(Dianbai), few miles south of Zhepo. Further measures of control, prevention and
suppression of petty piracy, like Governor MacDonnell’s forceful registration of all the
Chinese ships of Hong Kong in 1866,97 as well as his and his successors’ attempts to ban
the installation of firearms, cannons and the carrying of “stinkpots”—popular explosive
devices of special efficacy in close naval engagements—on fishing and trade junks and
lorchas,98 also accelerated a process of disintegration of the previously larger pirate fleets,
although the major blow to their activities will came only with the creation of a new
Imperial Maritime Customs’ steamer force in Canton (including Longueville’s Tien-Po)
by the end of the decade.99
These events brought forth a general redefinition of pirates’ tactics and objectives. One
of the possibilities to escape the repressive measures of the imperial and Western
authorities was to take shelter in the relatively safe port of Macao, which according to
contemporary observers, had grown into a haven for disguised piratical enterprises and
smuggling, probably not without some collusion with the colony’s corrupted
authorities.100 The demise of the Portuguese lorcha convoy network in Southeast China,
can be interpreted with these lenses as part of this broader reconfiguration. It is
95
Murakami, “The Reorganization of the Maritime Order.”
96
Kay, “Britain and the Suppression of Piracy,” 127–191.
97
Ibid., 234–249.
98
Ibid., 278–281.
99
“In the long run, the Chinese squadron was more important than the legislative measures MacDonnell
enforced in Hong Kong. Whereas MacDonnell’s legislative measures had brought about the decline of
piracy (to some extent the Chinese steam fleet also contributed to this), such measures did not prevent
pirates from turning to Macao to continue with their piratical activities. It was the Chinese steam fleet that
had prevented piracy from becoming severe again. Although the new Chinese squadron did not wipe out
piracy, it did contain the problem and arrest its escalation to a level. Again, it has to be stressed that this
achievement of the Chinese squadron lasted at least to the end of 1869.” Ibid., 299–300.
100
Ibid., 260. We refer back to the case of the Procurador Antonio Marques Pereira, in Chapter 3.2; also A
Polémica Acerca da Procuratura.
256
reasonable to argue, moreover, that both Cantonese pirates and Sino-Portuguese
lorchamen plunged into the Portuguese colony, increasing the ranks of the estimated
10,000 to 20,000 unlicensed corretores and sub-brokers engaged in the coolie traffic
during its hectic stages in the mid-late 1860s and early 1870s. 101
In first place the typical modus operandi of the corretores, as we have abundantly
observed, could be described as a form of piracy by itself. Kidnapping people was, since
ages, one of the most common and traditional activity of pirates in Southern China.
Captives, called by Antony “reluctant pirates”, provided crucial manpower—or rather
cannon fodder—for the organization of major pirate fleets. 102 Similarly to the Early
Modern Mediterranean, capturing people for ransom was encouraged by the presence of a
system of charities and other official and unofficial channels for the rescue of pirates’
victims.103 In this context, therefore, the barracoons in Macao competed with relatives
and charitable societies in offering a channel to dispose of the captives. This demand was
especially attractive because the barracoons did not differentiate on the social and
economic standing of the captives, accepting even the poorest and displaced persons.
There is in fact sparse but solid evidence that the pirates cooperated with Macanese
corretores in creating a somewhat stable market for the selling and buying of hostages
and pirate captives in Southwestern Guangdong. 104 The most clear-cut example of
collaboration between coolie recruiters and pirates was probably the cited Annamese
incident of 1867-68, of which we have examined the political implications.105 The case,
as we have stated before, involved the kidnapping of 286 Annamese subjects, many of
them soldiers and fishermen, captured in the Tonkin gulf and the coast of Cochinchina
along the first months of 1867. Particularly striking was, among various piratical exploits,
the seizure of the tributary mission of the province of Tuc to Hue, the capital of the
Annamese Kingdom, whose dignitaries were captured along the soldiers that escorted it:
101
Refer back to Chapter 4.1.
102
Antony, Like Froth Floating on the Sea, 97–104.
103
Macao’s BO reported, for example, that in the early 1850s Shanghai-Ningbo region “è mui ordinário
apresentarem-se emissários dos piratas a proporem resgate de prisioneiros ou de navios cahidos em seu
poder […] Até há, em Shanghae nos parece, uma espécie de companhias as que os chinas dão o nome de
Santau ou Satan, com um fundo só destinado a tais resgates pertencentes ao commercio de Shanghae para o
norte.” BO, 18 January 1851.
104
Several examples can be drawn from the archives of the Tribunal of Macao: e.g., the witnesses in the
case in AHM, CJDCM, C0163 (1870-1886), MP vs. Lam Lin Quai and Tam Chai, display the collaboration
of the two aforementioned corretores in the kidnapping of 17 people by two pirate lorchas in the vicinities
of Hong Kong.
105
Chapter 3.2.
257
II 15 gennaio del 1867 quattro fuste di pirati attaccarono non lungi da Nam-dinh una
nave annamita, che portava una parte dell'annuo tributo al Re, scortata da 50 soldati
della centrentesima compagnia d’infanteria. Dopo un’ora di combattimento la nave
annamita malconcia dall’artiglieria de’ pirati, si arrese; e i soldati, parte gittaronsi a
nuoto in mare, parte furono fatti prigioni, venduti agli arruolatori, e tradotti a Macao.
Il dì 24 dell’istesso mese tocco l’istessa sorte a un distaccamento di cento annamiti
della cencinquantesima compagnia d’infanteria, i quali, ripartiti in quattro legni male
armati, scortavano il grosso del tributo annuale, ammontante a più di un milione di
franchi. Assaliti d'improvviso da dieci fuste di pirati sul primo schiarire del giorno,
tra il sonno e la veglia, non risposero che debolmente al loro vivissimo fuoco; e
quando videro cader feriti i due mandarini, che li comandavano, e parecchi de’ loro
compagni, mancaron d’animo, e si arresero a discrezione. Anche questi furono fatti
prigionieri, venduti a vil mercato agli arrolatori, e trascinati a Macao; ove arrivarono
il 2 aprile dell’istesso anno 1867.106
The acts of the process instituted in Macao after the discovery of the Annamese
captives in the barracoon of Jaime Peregrino dos Santos, 107 although incomplete, confirm
the picture of a Macanese society profoundly compromised with the criminal underworld
of the South China Sea. The attacks on the treasury junks in the Tonkin gulf, as on other
fishermen and trade junks, 108 according to the testimonies, had been counselled if not
directed by Sino-Portuguese corretores boarding the pirate flagships; on the agreement, it
seemed, to divide “entre Macaistas e Piratas chinas a presa.” 109 After being captured
several Annamese testified having been put ashore at Pak-Hoi (Beihai) and transshipped
on the numerous Macanese lorchas visiting that port in western Guangdong.110 Macao
was also used to launder the booty of the piratical expeditions, part of which were
retrieved in a building near the Barra fortress.111
106
Rondina, “Flora, fauna, avventure: Appunti di un viaggio nell’India e nella Cina,” chap. CXXIII. Cf.
Sallier de La Tour, “L’emigrazione cinese,” 23; Wang, The Organization of Chinese Emigration, 140.
107
Jaime Peregrino dos Santos, Macanese, was recognized by the Hong Kong press as the major
responsible of the Annamese case. Many of the Annamese coolies freed had been hold captives and abused
(deprived of food and beaten) in his barracoon “Cam Van Sing.” After accusation from the Hong Kong
press about the inconclusive results of the Annamese trial, O Independente, 23 October 1868, tried to deny
the existence of a coolie agent with that name “em Macau não ha pessoa alguma por nome Jaime dos
Santos.” The Annamese trial’s papers testify otherwise.
108
Deposition by Foong a Fook, fisherman, Hong Kong, 24 July 1867, in CO 129/123. “On the 30th
January 1867 I was in my boat [...] when I was attacked by a ‘Jow Huang’ boat in which was a Portuguese
and robbed of all I had. I and my crew, ten in all, were forcibly carried away and taken to the Barracoons at
Macao”
109
Termo de declaração, 9 May 1867, in AHM, CJDCM, C0162, Processo dos Annamitas.
110
Deposition of Si Ah King, Hong Kong, 24 July 1867, CO 129/123. Cf. several depositions of Annamese
in AHM, CJDCM, C0162, Processo dos Macaotas, stating that at Pak Hoi they were delivered to the
Macanese Antonio Miguel do Rosario, and put on a number of lorchas to Macao’s barracoons.
111
“os piratas trouxera a elle testemunha com mais seis anamitas para Macao; a lorcha pirata fundou ao pé
do Forte Caza da Barra e os objectos roubados foram desembarcados para uma caza de dois andares, em
que estava em cima alguns estrangeiro.” Testemunha de Nan Tu’an,n.169, in AHM, CJDCM, C0162,
Processo dos Annamitas
258
7.3.2 Origins and success of the “coolie pirate” stereotype
If the connection between Macanese corretores and Chinese pirates—despite needing

further and more specific studies—seems relatively well established, there is a second
link awaiting to be carefully investigated. We refer here to the assumption—widely
accepted by contemporary observers—that coolie mutinies could have been in many
cases instigated and carried out by pirate crews, boarding the coolie vessels in disguise
with the purpose of plunder. In the words of Captain Landabaso, testifying about a revolt
which had taken place and had been suppressed on board his ship Camillo Cavour in
1866,
vi sono dei malvagi, e dei pirati di professione i quali espressamente cercano un

contratto, si imbarcano come coloni di passaggio su un bastimento e dopo pochi
giorni dalla partenza si adoperano a far sollevare gli altri, e ciò anche con inganni e
lusinghe, all’oggetto di impadronirsi della nave uccidendone il capitano e
l'equipaggio.112
What was the origin of this theory? Was it based on reliable evidence or just a rumor
spread by the supporters of the coolie trade to deny abuses and maltreatments of the
emigrants and legitimize the repressive measures adopted on the vessels?
Historiographical consensus has not yet been reached on this point. In fact, there are
discordant sources, and the coolie revolts are so numerous that a case by case
comprehensive account would be needed. There is a need to qualify, in first place, the
word pirate in the Chinese context. Contemporary sources, especially Western, were
attaching this label to many unrelated phenomena, conflating actual pirates with bandits,
“desperadoes” or simple thieves.113 Second, we need to define criterions to discriminate a
“staged” versus a “spontaneous” uprising, discriminating revolts planned before from
those organized after the entrance in the emigration mechanism (that is, taking contact
with the corretores, or entering a barracoon). Third, what role should we assign to the
involvement on external actors (corretores, sailors, interpreters, smugglers) in the
organization and execution of the revolts?
112
Interrogatorio del capitano Francesco de Landabaso, enclosed, Castelli to MM, Lima, 12 October 1866
113
As explained by Antony, the term conflated what the Chinese called Haidao, Haizei Haifei, or Haikou,
and can maybe better understood as varieties of amphibious “sea bandits.” Antony, “Piracy and the Shadow
Economy,” 7. Also, many times the use of the term was entirely inappropriate, as discussed by Kay,
“Britain and the Suppression of Piracy,” 4. In a very different context, we may observe comparatively how
the semantic of piracy was extended on cases of slave rebellions in the Atlantic middle passage; an example
are the first popular accounts of the Amistad revolt: Marcus Rediker, The Amistad Rebellion: An Atlantic
Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom (New York: Viking, 2012), 91–117.
259
Drawing principally on the well documented 1870’s Nouvelle Penelope case, which
involved the French and British consular administrations in China, some of the classic
studies on the coolie trade have argued that many coolie revolts had in effect been
premeditated by pirates or bandits.114 Arnold Meagher, in particular, quoting rumors from
contemporary Hong Kong and China Coast newspapers and other testimonies went as far
as to suggest an active role of secret societies, charitable institutions, and the Tung-Wah
Hospital in Hong Kong, in their organization and staging. He was nevertheless unable to
corroborate these claims with direct evidence.115
On the other hand, historians belonging to the Cultural or Asian American Studies
have generally dismissed this view, attributed to biased and interested accounts, and have
pictured the coolie revolts as forms of genuine resistance to maltreatment, exploitation
and imperialism. 116 Our aim in these pages is to try to bridge the gap between these
studies, attempting a more nuanced and complicated answer to this question.
Similar doubts and discrepancies were present even among the contemporary Western
community in China. The “piracy” thesis was strongly advocated, for example, by
Portuguese officials in Macao and people directly involved in the traffic. Its proponents
presented as evidence of it the criminal record of coolies involved in mutinies.
Investigations conducted at Macao after the Nouvelle Penelope revolt, for instance,
ascertained that many of its protagonists had been former criminals, marked on the ears as
outlaws in Hong Kong.117 Besides, many of them were recognized and apprehended in
the Macao barracoons while trying to re-embark on another coolie ship, allegedly a proof
they were “taking the emigration as a mode of life”, and planning to reiterate their
criminal exploits a second or a third time:
many of those criminals showed in Macau to emigrate again, following the example
of many other criminal coolies who take the emigration as a mode of life – this
proves, evidently, that the crime was not committed because they were deceived or
coerced, but only in reason of their perversity.118
114
Irick, Ch’ing Policy Toward the Coolie Trade, 211.
115
Meagher, The Coolie Trade, 185.
116
Yun, The coolie speaks; and especially Yun, “Under the Hatches”; Hu-DeHart, “La Trata Amarilla.”
117
“Parece que entre os passageiros ia uma porção de coolis já marcada nas orelhas em Hong-Kong por
ladrões de profissão, e que fizerão a revolta para roubar onde julgarão existir dinheiro e carga valiosa.”
Sousa to MMU, Macao, 10 Novembro 1870, copy, AMNE, 3P, 20A, Emigração Chinesa pelo porto de
Macau 1871-1882. Interestingly, the Portuguese authorities omitted to report why people they can clearly
identify as thieves passed the exam of the Superintendencia and were admitted aboard the Nouvelle
Penelope.
118
“Muitos daqueles malfeitores se apresentaram em Macau para novamente emigrarem, seguindo o
exemplo de muitos outros coolis criminosos que fazem da emigração o seu modo de vida - esse facto prova
260
Similar views were shared by several informed observers in Macao, and even
opponents of the traffic. Portuguese officials seemed unable to notice, however, that their
narrative was a double-edged sword, as it displayed publicly the failure of the Macanese
authorities’ attempts to control the emigration system. 119 This general impression of
powerlessness is well expressed by the increasingly complex formulations of the
certificates of departure issued by Macao’s harbor master, which after these events started
to require from the captains of the coolie ships a formal declaration that “no unwilling
emigrant or pirate”,120 was on board at departure.
The most radical and outspoken detractors of the coolie trade, primarily British and
American newspapers and humanitarian societies, instead, were more incline to
downplay, if not entirely dismiss the allegations of piracy in these cases. As explains La
Tour,
Non potrebbesi tuttavia ammettere ciò che molti affermano, doversi cioè attribuire le
sedizioni a pirati cinesi, che mascherati da emigranti, si lasciano arrolare dagli
agenti, per mescolarsi ai passeggeri del bastimento e poi predarlo. Questa
spiegazione, sebbene oggi possa dirsi di moda fra gli europei dediti al traffico dei
coolies, non è però accettata dalle autorità cinesi.121
On the contrary, he adds, episodes of revolt had increased—apparently—

notwithstanding the general retraction of piracy in the South China sea in the late 1860s
and early 1870s:
Ed invero, se può concedersi che qualche volta debbano le sollevazioni imputarsi a

pirati di mestiere, non si può punto comprendere come possa reggere questa
spiegazione a fronte della crescente frequenza onde simili ribellioni si verificarono
negli ultimi anni, malgrado che la pirateria sia andata costantemente scemando nei
mari della Cina mercè la vigilanza delle crociere europee e cinesi, né si capisce
d’altra parte come pirati potrebbero così facilmente infingersi e trarre in inganno i
corretores generalmente cinesi anch’essi ed astuti.122
Indeed, amidst those epochal changes it is plausible that ex-pirates in disgrace could
have resorted to emigration as a last strategy of survival in times of necessity.
evidentemente que o crime não foi cometido por terem sido enganados, ou violentados, mas unicamente por
perversidade” Sousa to MNE (extract), 4 April 1871, AHU, SEMU, DGU, Correspondência de Macau e
Timor, cx.42 (1873). On the other hand, there is no proof that those re-embarking coolies were going to
revolt again, nor that they had acquired the means of survival through their precedent revolt.
119
Mesnier, “A Reply to ‘Macao and its Slave Trade.’” Similar arguments are offered by the Portuguese
Foreign Minister João de Andrade Corvo in his report on the abolition of the coolie trade in 1874: “os
crimes, de incêndio e revolta praticados a bordo de alguns navios transportes levavam a suspeitar, que entre
os emigrantes se introduziam piratas e malfeitores com o fim de saquear esses navios no alto mar.” Corvo,
Relatorio e documentos, 16.
120
AHM, Núcleo 916, Cx. 46, Certificados passados à embarcações, 1867-1872.
121
Sallier de La Tour, “L’emigrazione cinese,” 34.
122
Ibid.
261
Disappearing in a foreign country for a certain number of years, in fact, could be a
relatively easy way to escape creditors, foes, or jail, although at a costly price. Former
pirates, rebels or bandits, moreover, whenever had joined the coolie ranks by deception or
necessity, were surely more likely to employ violent means—or at least to take a leading
role—in the event of a revolt breaking out.123 On the other hand, if discovered, they were
also more likely to receive “special care” during the journey. As testified by a survivor of
the Don Juan revolt in 1871, Macanese spies were usually able to recognize pirates or
former pirates in the cohorts of the emigrants:
Among the coolies I saw a Portuguese who was dressed in Chinese costume [...] On
the 4th May that Portuguese left the ship. Before he left I heard him tell the Captain
that he heard the Chinese say that when they were out two days they would take the
ship and wash their hands in the European's blood. He wrote down the number of the
coolies who were bad ones. All the coolies had numbers on their jackets in red paint.
He said that n.288 was the captain of a Pirate vessel and that he ought to be watched.
124
7.3.3 Insights from the Teresa revolt
At least three aspects make the Teresa revolt a rare, if not unique, episode, worthy of
special analysis: first, it unusually took place several days after departure, well outside the
area of the South China Sea and Nanyang, where the coolie rebels could have found
shelter among local Chinese immigrant communities; second, it seems to have been
planned or at least executed with the complicity of the ship’s “Western” interpreter, and
allegedly some members of the crew; third, it unleashed an outbreak of inter-ethnic
violence among its participants. In addition, sources about a previous, failed, revolt on the
same ship Teresa, two years earlier, raise the issue of the plausible involvement of the
Macanese corretores and emigration agents in these occurrences.
The timing of the Teresa revolt is a major setback in Bollo’s claim that his ship had
been taken over by a premeditated plan conceived and implemented by disguised pirates.
According to many available sources, a large majority of the mutinies on coolie ships
123
In the case of the ship Resolução, captured by the Chinese passengers in 1856, contemporary
newspapers speculated on the affiliation of the emigrants with the triads and the ongoing Red Turban revolt.
“Suppõe-se que parte dos chinas que hiam a bordo eram piratas, que tendo pertencido ao partido rebelde, e
vendo-se agora perseguidos pelos mandarins se resolveram deixar-se alistar como colonos aliciando depois
outros para cometerem aquelle atentado com o fim de se passar para alguma das terras dos estreitos, onde e'
sabido que hoje se refugiam os seus partidistas e companheiros das sociedades secretas.” BO, 3 May 1856.
It has been argued that this indiscriminate repression following the Red Turban rebellion, rather than the
war itself, was a major factor in the exponential growth of the coolie trade in the mid-1856, and the
definitive consecration of Macao as emigration hub, as we discussed in Chapter 3.1.
124
Statement of Albert Herker at the Magistracy of Hong Kong, 19 May 1871, enclosed in Whitfield to
Kimberley, Hong Kong, 24 May 1871, CO 129/150.
262
occurred in the very first days after departure. Every day passing, they said, it would have
been increasingly more difficult for them to steer back a coolie vessel to the Chinese
coast, and decreased the stakes of being rescued in case of shipwreck. As Captain
Landabaso explained:
tutti gli ammutinamenti succedono nei primi giorni dalla partenza dal porto di Macao
nel mar della Cina dove sono molte e vicine le isole alle quali possono approdare e
trovare altri compagni e pirati, ed invece più non si ammutinano una volta che la
nave trovasi fuori di quelle acque ed in alto mare dove essi più non saprebbero a qual
lido rivolgersi.125
This point was common knowledge among those involved in the traffic. To prevent
such uprising from taking place, experienced coolie traffickers tended to set sail from
Macao without prior notice, locking up the coolies in the steerage for the first two or three
days of navigation.126 Similar precautions were taken when in vicinity of islands,127 or
other landmasses, in particular destinations of Chinese emigrants like Java and
Sumatra.128
The Teresa mutiny, happening only after sixty-two days of navigation, is therefore a
singular exception to this general rule,129 and suggest us that the plan to rise up against
the crew, contrary to the captain’s accounts, was effectively plotted, or at least became a
practical option, only long after the ship’s departure. The revolt happened in the vicinities
of the New Zealand coast, significantly outside the typical routes of Chinese trading
vessels, and the area of main expertise and knowledge of Cantonese sailors. This situation
forced the coolies, who contrarily to the first press accounts of the rebellion, did not seem
capable of navigating the ship,130 to resort to the collaboration of the crew as their sole
chance of survival in the open ocean. In this sense, the complicity of part of the crew, in
125
Interrogatorio del capitano Francesco de Landabaso, enclosed, Castelli to MM, Lima, 12 October 1866
126
Processo Verbale e Testimoniale della Rivoluzione succeduta a bordo del brick barca Italiana “Amalia”,
enclosed Castelli to MM, Lima, 10 September 1866, ACS, MM, DGMM, Miscellanea Uffici Diversi 1866-
1869, b.271.
127
“Dal giovedi 14 al venerdi 15 [June 1866]. Alle 9 pm si era in vista delle isole nord baschee [batan]. Si
tengono i chinesi più in meno numero in coperta perchè la vista della terra potrebbe indurgli a tentar
qualche colpo su l'equipaggio.” Estratto del giornale nautico della barca Clipper Teresa, enclosed, Castelli
to MM, Lima, 12 October 1866 ACS, MM, DGMM, Miscellanea Uffici Diversi 1866-1869, b.271.
128
As we argued in Chapter 4.3, detailing the Italia case, these places were much more highly regarded
among Chinese emigrants than Latin America.
129
The most extreme case should be anyway that of the Peruvian brig Cayalti (initially confused with the
Italian ship Providencia), whose odyssey back from the Peruvian coast to Japan obtained great publicity in
the anti coolie-trade campaign. Meagher, The Coolie Trade, 287. See also ACS, MM, DGMM, Miscellanea
Uffici Diversi 1866-1869, b.475, fasc. Supposto disastro della nave Provvidenza (1868).
130
Though the first press accounts of the revolt stated they were capable navigators, acquainted with the
compass and the rigs (China Mail, 11 July 1868), there is no further reference to this claim in the petitions.
263
particular the abovementioned four Italian sailors, was crucial, and reassured the rebels
that Captain Bollo’s would abide the agreed course.131
The coolies’ acting in the post-mutiny, furthermore, does not seem particularly
organized and disciplined. Experienced “coolie pirates” would most likely have
slaughtered the captain and the crew at their arrival at Zhepo, to get rid of inconvenient
witnesses. This was an imprudent mistake, and a major cause of their subsequent capture.
In this sense, the torture and murder of Bollo’s brother Federico, killed the day of the
arrival in Zhapo, did not seem a rational action, but rather a gratuitous vengeance for the
harsh treatments he had reserved them in the first days of navigation, as well for the
coolies he had killed during the fights of the 5 of April.132
Their behavior in the aftermath of the crisis seems also confused and emotional, if not
amateurish; although the rebels had organized some kind of structure of command,133 at
the first occasion, their leaders deserted with the most valuable part of the cargo (the
captain’s $3,000 cash valuables), chased by their infuriated comrades. 134 Afterwards,
they run right into the hands of the Yangjiang mandarin, by entering the district capital
showing off the captain’s wife personal effects; many of their subordinates, finally, were
even less fortunate, and were robbed of all their belongings by local fishermen-pirates.
Another interesting element that emerge from the sources are the continuous disputes
and fights occurring among the coolies, which signaled a fundamental disunity of intents
131
132
One of the surviving testimonies of the Genoa trial of 1871, the sailor Massa explained this accordingly:
“il capitano trattava bene i cinesi, se li avesse bastonati come faceva il defunto suo fratello, la rivoluzione
non sarebbe successa, perché se i cinesi gli domandavano qualche cosa, li bastonava.” Udienza del 1 marzo
1871, processo n. 674, ASGE, Corte d’Assise di Genova, Verbali di dibattimento (1871), r. 2482.
133
A colorful account, which should be assessed with a grain of salt, is given by Father Rondina, reporting
his conversation with the captain and sailors of the Teresa. “I ribelli vittoriosi impadronitisi della nave,
proclamarono loro capo, col titolo di Re, l’autore della rivolta, che era un pittore della provincia di Canton;
il quale assunto col regio titolo il governo del fluttuante regno, ordinò al capitano di dar volta, e metter la
prora verso la Cina. Intanto egli vestissi alla reale coi drappi di seta, che trovò nelle casse del capitano;
scelse tra i più arditi e maneschi de’ suoi quei’ che dovevano formare la sua corte e la guardia del corpo;
assegnò a ciascuno di loro il suo uffizio, dettò leggi a ’suoi novelli sudditi, e stabili nella nave una forma di
regolar governo, maneggiandosi in tutto con tanta destrezza, che giunse a padroneggiare quella turba
sbrigliata e feroce per modo, che tutti tremavano innanzi a lui, e ubbidivangli meglio che non avrebbero
fatto all’Imperator della Cina. [...] Il regno di questa nuova Maestà Nettunica durò poc’oltre a un mese, cioè
fino all’approdare che fé la nave in una spiaggia mezzo deserta della Cina meridionale; ove il Re con tutti i
suoi vassalli, dopo avere svaligiata la Maria Teresa [sic], lasciò la nave e il mare per continuare le sue
piraterie in terra.” Rondina, “Flora, fauna, avventure: Appunti di un viaggio nell’India e nella Cina,” chap.
CXXIII. This account, though not particularly reliable, seems to rule out the presence of an organized crew
of professional pirates.
134
“There was again a terrible moment, with wild shrieks, rushing, hurrying all on the remaining lifeboats
in the vessel, in order to pursue the fugitives carrying the loot. In the fury they trample each other, collide,
many fall into the sea, so that the ship was left finally free from the presence of those wicked, with the
exception of five who could not or were not ready enough to find a place in the boats.” Bollo, Alle LL- EE. i
Ministri..., 29.
264
Bollo’s petitions and the press report describe in horrified tones, in particular, the violent
purge of over fifty coolies of Hakka ethnicity, ordered by the Punti leaders after a series
of brawls, and suspects of conspiracy:
Il giorno 30 di Aprile, nella notte, scoprirono una rivoluzione che avevano combinato
i Culi di Ahaes [sic] contro i Puntines, dovendo assassinare questi ultimi alle 12 della
notte. In meno di mezz’ora furono disarmati tutti quei di Ahaes, trentasette
assassinati e gli altri messi ai ferri; prima delle 24 ore avevano compito i cinquanta
morti, compreso uno che si suicidò.135
We may see here a relation with the climate of inter-ethnic clan fight, labelled as the
“Hakka-Punti” war, that spread in South-west China during the 1860s. How we argued in
the previous chapters, these clan fights, concentrated in the sze yup area (the four
counties) of the Guangdong province provided an important source of prisoners and
captives for the Macao coolie trade. 136 It is therefore not unreasonable to assume that
some or many of the coolies on the Teresa had been recruited this way, or had some past
experience in these fights.
Furthermore, the choice of a coolie ship as target for plunder strongly contradicts the
most of the historiographical knowledge about the regular practices of Chinese pirates in
this period, and their ability to select their objectives through rational assessment of risks
and returns. Coolie ships were notoriously equipped as floating dungeons, fitted with
guns, barricades and chains, and embarking as emigrant would have been the worst
possible strategy to try to take control of them, considering how coolies were disciplined
and rigorously disarmed before setting foot on board.
In addition, there is no evidence that the coolie ships carried significantly valuable
cargoes, as very few (if any) products could yield a percentage of profits comparable to
the buying and selling of coolie contracts. Some coolie ships were reported carrying
moderate amounts of cash; the Teresa was carrying about $3,000 and a number of
precious sundries he likely acquired personally, and not as part of Bianchi e Profumo’s
consignment. It is not clear as well if the said $3,000 were the captain’s money or the
leftovers from the acquisition of the coolies, which as we said had not fulfilled entirely
the quota in the bills of lading. These sums, however, were hardly impressive; certainly
not enough to justify alone the risk of being deported for eight year, or more, to an
unknown land. On the other hand, what the coolies expected to find on a coolie ship was
not necessarily based on accurate reporting; we shall return on this point later.
135
Ibid., 27.
136
As we argued in Chapter 4.1.
265
A great deal of confusion among contemporary Western observers derived from the
conflation of reports of the coolie revolts with piratical actions conducted against the
coastal steam navigation in South China, especially along the regular ferry routes
established by Western and Sino-Western companies connecting Macao, Canton and
Hong Kong. The typical tactics to seize these boats did only apparently resemble those
adopted on the coolie ships, but had fundamental differences. In a nutshell: disguised
pirates boarded the ferries, accurately concealing their weapons, and then looked for the
first occasion to assail and slaughter the crews and rob the passengers, not uncommonly
through the support of external pirate boats. The occurrence of similar events in the late
1850s, had then compelled the companies to borrow some of the solutions taken by the
coolie traders to suppress eventual uprisings aboard; in particular, iron gratings and
barricades were set up to separate Chinese “third class” passengers from the crews and
Europeans:
Estas precauções foram tomadas desde 23 de Fevereiro de 1857 em que 20 piratas

disfarçados em passageiros surpreenderam e assassinaram a guarnição e passageiros
do vapor Queen que de Hongkong segue para Macao, roubando 150 caixas de ópio,
largando logo o vapor à próxima distância da cidade de Fatshan; em Dezembro do
mesmo anno, apesar de exemplo apenas exposto repetiu-se outra scena a bordo do
vapor Thiestle que seguia viagem de Cantão a Hongkong sendo assassinado o vice-
cônsul espanhol nesta cidade […] mais alguns passageiros, e parte da tripulação […]
Outro facto se déu em Maio de 1862 abordo do vapor Avon-Prince que de Hongkong
seguia deste porto com carga valiosa.137
Boarding a coastal passage boat entailed, however, a completely different order of

risks, in case of failure, than accepting a contract of indenture and departing for a distant
continent.
7.3.4 Spies, interpreters, sailors, corretores: the complex world of a coolie ship’s
decks
The most puzzling assertion in Bollo’s petitions, however, regards the role played,
allegedly, by one of the ship’s interpreter and some sailors in the organization and
execution of the coolie mutiny. Interpreters and spies, we have said elsewhere, were
employed aboard coolie ships in order to exert stricter control over the emigrants. Their
role was not only to bridge a gap between the European crews and captains and the
passengers, but to actively offer mediation and reassurances about the duration of the
137
Scarnichia to Castro, Macao, 14 April 1871, in AGM, Núcleo 916, cx. 47, r. Correspondência expedida
1871-1873. On a later period see A.D. Blue, “Piracy on the China Coast,” Journal of the Hong Kong
Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society V (1965): 77–80. The Queen case, nevertheless, was suspected to be
the act of “privateers”, Chinese braves acting in the framework of the Second Opium War. Cf. CO 129/65.
266
voyage and the conditions that awaited them at destination. See the following excerpt,
from the 1866 Teresa’s logbook:
Dal giovedì 28 al venerdì 29 [June 1866]. Alle 2 P.M. morì il colono n. 109 venuto
pazzo da due giorni. Gli interpreti, il dottore e il colono n.515 non fanno che parlar
bene ai chinesi del Perù onde tenergli contenti come anche tutto l'equipaggio usa con
essi le attenzioni dovute per tenergli di buon umore.138
Francisco do Rosario (somewhere called Rosario de la Cruz), 139 the Sino-Portuguese

interpreter of the Teresa’s subsequent voyage, instead, played a very controversial role in
the unfolding of the 1868 revolt. As we have argued above, Captain Bollo openly
denounced him as the mastermind and true leader of the revolt. He was nevertheless
absolved of his charges by Macao’s Juiz de Direito in March 1870140—allegedly thanks to
the sympathies and help of the Italian consul Cercal.
We should premise that the evidences provided by Bollo of Rosario’s complicity with
the revolt are not very solid, but the broad picture they describe is captivating and inspires
exciting questions. A very interesting clue on Rosario’s true intention, for instance, is
provided by Bollo’s friend Dublé:
pochi giorni prima della rivolta nelle frequenti visite in corridoio, chiamai a Rosario
perché parlasse ai chinesi sopra la benignità del clima al Perù, quanto felici erano i
Culì che andavano colà, in confronto a quelli di Havana, come era loro facile far
fortuna ecc. E l’interprete gli disse tutto il contrario; - gli disse che si portavano
all’Havana, ove li ucciderebbero a bastonate ecc.141
The above excerpt shows, in first place, that an atmosphere of unrest had been sensed
by Dublé and most probably Bollo, a few days before its actual outbreak. If indeed
Rosario had decided to “spread lies” to the coolies, they were evidently well inclined to
believe them; moreover, if according to other parts of Dublé’s testimony, the revolt had
been planned ashore with the aim of plunder, why did the coolies’ knowledge of the
Peruvian labor market matter in its outcome?
After the revolt, continued Dublé, Rosario tore off his mask definitely. Repaying the
trust of the mutineers, he acted as informed and judge of the poor loyal crewmen, Dublé
continues:
138
Estratto del giornale nautico della barca Clipper Teresa, enclosed, Castelli to MM, Lima, 12 October
1866 ACS, MM, DGMM, Miscellanea Uffici Diversi 1866-1869, b.271
139
Bollo, Ancora sulla catastrofe..., 6. It has been impossible yet to trace his familiar background or more
evidence on his case, due also to the difficulty to identify the Rosario surname, as used by too many
families of Chinese Christians in Macao.
140
ASGE, Corte d’Assise di Genova, Verbali di dibattimento (1871), r. 2482; Oldanini (?) to MNE, 16 may
1870, AMNE, Legação de Itália em Lisboa, cx. 448; BO, 3 January 1870.
141
267
Da questo momento anche principiarono le terribili esecuzioni e carneficine orrende, furono
portati in coperta Marinari e Culi, i quali furono crudelmente assassinati; prima però di
deliberare la sua morte, si consultava il nostro interprete, se era buono o cattivo l'individuo o
individui in questione. Notando questo, gli dissi un giorno che ebbero luogo quattro o cinque
esecuzioni, e che ritornava dal corridoio ove si deliberava: “perché hai un cuore così cattivo?”
– mi rispose che lui operava in coscienza, perché quella gente era stata denunziante
rivoluzione142
There is reason to doubt much of the above statements, fruit of Dublé and Bollo’s
personal antagonism and ulterior motives. A rational defection to the winning side, rather
than a Machiavellian scheme with unspecified ends, appears a more plausible explanation
of Rosario’s conduct. On the other hand, Dublè testifies, Rosario was guilty of the murder
of the second interpreter of the ship, the Chinese Calabaza,
que era chino y fue muerto por lo siguiente : encontrándome rodeado de los cabezas
en el entrepuente [...] pregunté a Calabaza que era el nombre del 2o interprete, por
que no había dado parte de la revolución sabiéndola, y me contesto delante de los
cabezas, sin figurar que uno de ellos entendía el español y portugués, que por que no
había avisado Rosario que lo sabía también, siendo el tal Rosario o 1o interprete, y
vigiando en la camera un momento después lo supo esto Rosario; y Calabaza una
hora después fue asesinado y botado a el agua.143
What it is certain in this case, is that as European interpreter Rosario was actually in a
very suitable position to organize and lead a coolie revolt: he would have left unscathed
had his plot failed, keeping the appearances of a victim. It is much less clear, instead, the
reward of such exposure; given the appeal of the goods and cash on the ship was limited,
especially compared to the remuneration of an interpreter, rather than that of a hired
worker or a peasant.144
The defection of the interpreter, had it been planned or forced by the circumstances, at
any rate, functioned as well as an obvious link between the mutinous coolies and those
members of the ship’s crews that sympathized with their efforts. The Teresa revolt
represents, so far, the best documented case of participation of Western sailors in a coolie
uprising. Other cases were sparingly reported by the contemporary press, but none has
left a comparable amount of sources, yet.145
142
Ibid.
143
Relación detallada de la revolución de los culíes que hubo lugar a bordo de la fragata italiana Teresa,
copy, enclosed in ACS, MM, DGMM, Miscellanea Uffici Diversi 1866-1869, b.475.
144
See Appendix IV.
145
To cite some examples: On the Lady Amherst, bound to Havana in 1852-1853, 15 Malay sailors were
found accomplices of a failed coolie revolt: Rowlatt to Edwardes, St. Helena, 9 March 1853, in CO
885/1/20, Correspondence relative to emigration of Chinese coolies, 1853; on the Dutch ship Henrietta
Marie, in 1857, 60 coolies and 4 sailors (3 Dutch and a British) seized the ship and forced the captain and
the other 240 coolies to land in Southeast Asia. Friend of China, 18 March 1857; On the Portuguese ship
Resolução, in 1856, the revolt broke out because one of the cook’s servants (of unmentioned nationality)
provided the emigrants with knifes and other improper weapons. “a gente que estava de quarto foi atacada
268
We can read in that light the fear expressed by Captain Bollo in his previous crossings
of the Pacific (1866), where after the discovery in Macao of a plot to take over the ship,
he had been forced to replace 12 sailors which he left in the custody of Cercal, fearing
they could otherwise conspire with the coolies.
il 10 giugno pronti alla partenza venne il capitano a bordo e trovò che dodici
individui dell'equipaggio come apparisce da ruolo, impauriti di quanto era accaduto
coi chinesi dissero non voler seguire il viaggio e da notarsi che avevano ricevuto
scudi forti 30 ognuno. il capitano tentò tutti i buoni modi per persuadergli ma
venutigli ostinati a sbarcargli andò in terra a farne rapporto al sig. console il quale
chiesta dal autorità di Macao forza armata furono condotti alla carcere. Poteva il
Signor Console inviargli a seguir viaggio ma considerato che per il bene della
spedizione era prudente sbarcargli disse al Capitano di prendere per conto di chi
spetta altri dodici, giacchè dai primi si poteva [a]spettare portandogli a forza di
formar partito di rivolta coi chinesi stessi.146
The four suspected traitors of the 1868 revolt were Brusacà Andrea, 21 years old, of
San Terenzio (La Spezia); Giorgio Massa, 20 years old, of Sorrento; Nazario Dobrigno,
29 years old, Dalmatian, of Capo D’Istria, and Giuseppe Olivari, 30 years old, of
Camogli.” According to Dublé, they had purposely withdrawn from the clashes on the 5
April; supporting the mutiny from the start:
Nel momento dell’allarme si trovava l’incaricato dei viveri Giuseppe Olivari, e

l’interprete Rosario de la Cruz nel corridoio, e il marinaro Giorgio Musso al timone.
Ad eccezione di questi tre individui tutti quelli che si diressero alla Camera furono
gravemente feriti, mentre che questi giunsero, non solamente illesi, ma gli stessi Culi
li portarono e accompagnarono in Camera.147
The tribunal of Genoa, and the Corte di Cassazione of Turin in 1870 and 1872
however failed to provide hard evidence they had been anyhow in party with the “coolie
pirates” before the revolt. On the other hand, after the above act of pragmatism, they
became clearly active collaborators of the coolies in the return voyage to the Chinese
shore. 148 A malicious reason for this conduct was raised by Dublè; they were planning,
pelos chinas armados com as facas da cozinha, que lhes tinham tido subministradas, como depois se soube,
por um servente do cozinheiro.” BO, 3 May 1856.
146
1866 ACS, MM, DGMM, Miscellanea Uffici Diversi 1866-1869, b.271. Cf. Cercal to Scarnichia, Macao, 2
June 1866, in AGM, Núcleo 916, cx. 46, Avulsos. An year before, on the ship Clotilde, Bollo had used
similar means to deal with the mutiny of his crew, who refused to take part in the dangerous coolie trade:
AGM, Núcleo 916, cx. 45, Avulsos; ACS, MM, DGMM, Miscellanea Uffici Diversi 1866-1869, b.271. A
similar account can be read on Giglioli’s diary of the Arminjon expedition, although the name of the ship is
purposely omitted: Giglioli, Viaggio intorno al globo, 688–691.
147
148
“La correità dei marinai imputati risultava (così nell'atto di accusa) avanti la rivolta, perché non si
unirono agli altri dell'equipaggio per la difesa, rimasero inerti benché provvisti di armi, fornirono agli
insorti i mezzi per riuscire, durante la rivolta, radunandosi sovente in colloquii, concertando il modo come
269
he suggested, to incite the Chinese to murder the captain and the loyal sailors, to remain
afterwards in possess of the Teresa after their departure ashore:
dalla parte di prora del mio camerino era il luogo ove si riunivano i citati quattro
marinari per le sue criminali conversazioni e piani, e per poterli sentire, tutte le volte
che entravo lasciavo il lucchetto con la chiave di fuori, solo in un anello, di modo che
credevano ch’io fossi fuori. Da quello ch’io intesi dire da questi, e dalle minaccie che
fecero a qualcuno dei marinari che erano ai ferri, mi fu comunicata. 11 loro piano e
progetto era, che all'arrivo in China e sbarcatisi i chinesi pirati, se non potevano
ottenere che i chinesi ci uccidessero, assassinare tutti quei di poppa, e dirigersi a
questo porto o a quello di Hong-Kong ove pensavano e credevano vendere il
bastimento, secondo la loro ignoranza, e appropriarsene il valore. Dovevano essere
solo dieci, gli altri sarebbero stati uccisi. Non passava un giorno, un’ora che non
lavorassero a questo fine; il suo principale desiderio era la morte del Capitano e la
mia, e contavano con un marinaro Nord americano che trovavasi ai ferri, il quale
sapeva di navigazione, perchè questi conducesse il bastimento. Quasi non passava un
giorno che non facessero registrare la camera e il camerino del Capitano, dai chinesi
in cerca di denaro, assicurandogli che il Capitano aveva molte migliaia di scudi; i
chinesi dopo del registro gli dicevano che non avevano trovato nulla e quegli, il G.
Olivari principalmente gli assicurava esservi molto denaro, e che uccidendoci lo si
troverebbe.149
Dublè’s loaded prose transpires his frustration towards the differential treatment of the
four sailors against him and the other loyal crewmen. They, along with the coolies, “si
alimentavano delle migliori provvigioni; uova ed altre cose ne ebbero fino all’ ultimo
giorno che restarono a bordo a Chapò, quando che a noi non ci davano che riso.”
Particularly offensive were, in his view, the episodes of socialization between the four
sailors and the coolies:
Durante la mia guardia Dobrigno Nasario e Olivari Giuseppe fecero aprire la dispensa e
sortirono gran quantità di licori che portarono in corridoio, e vidi che lo incaricato dei viveri
Olivari percorreva il corridoio da tutte le parti con bottiglie in mano, facendo bere i chinesi e
chiedendo a questi la morte del Capitano e del Piloto […] continuano facendo i più grandi
eccessi: essendo di guardia al timone lo abbandonavano e se ne andavano a prora, quando gli
piaceva. – si facevano dare dai Culì i sigari del Capitano e fumavano, si facevano servire
liquori, mangiare ecc. e tenevano alla nostra presenza conversazioni con i chinesi le più
indecenti.150
aizzare i rivoltosi chinesi ad uccidere il capitano, gli ufficiali ed i marinai rimasti fedeli [...] Atteso che di
fronte a queste risultanze si è certissimi che l'accusa parla anche del complotto, è però non meno positivo
che ne parla di un solo, no di due che pone per costante, che questo complotto aveva per oggetto e per
iscopo e precedette la sollevazione e la pirateria consumata in aprile, allorquando si navigava alla volta del
Peru per Callao di Lima, che soltanto dopo che gli insorti si erano impadroniti della nave e dell'equipaggio
ed anzi per effetto di questo crimine si diede volta alla nave e si prese a navigare verso la costa della china,
tornando indietro e verso la terra donde essa era partita- e di conseguenza il complotto, che pure sia
apponeva agli accusati, era necessariamente il complotto avvenuto dal febbraio all'aprile 1868, nel mentre si
navigava in direzione a Callao di Lima, non mai allorquando si ritornava alla China” Sentenza del 17
luglio 1872, ASTO, Corte di Cassazione di Torino, Sezione Penale, Sentenze, b.671.
149
Bollo, Alle LL- EE. i Ministri...
150
Ibid., 24–25.
270
The peculiar story of these four Italian sailors, accepted by the coolies as allies,151 is
rather interesting. Alongside other examples, it cast doubts and adds some layer of
complexity on the traditional interpretation of the coolie ship as a “microcosm of the
clash of two proud civilizations, each regarding the other as inferior and each determined
to demonstrate its superiority whenever possible”, to quote Arnold Meagher,152 revealing
instead a more complex and nuanced world. There were clearly examples of brutality and
civilizational antagonism, which can not—and must not—be downplayed,153 but there are
evident clues the entangled interplay of class, racial and cultural relationships, and more
intimate emotional and personal motives, challenged several times the ordinary
hierarchies.154 The sources provided by the Teresa case also dispute commonly assumed
notions of the incommunicability between the Chinese coolies and the Western sailors,
conceding that at least two of the emigrants could speak some English, and others were
capable of understanding Portuguese and Spanish. Veteran sailors of the China Trade
could have learnt some Chinese, as well.155
151
“i primi giorni della rivoluzione mi fecero dormire in corridoio con i Culì, e per grande favore mi fu
concesso darmi un camerino che occupava il defunto cuciniere.” Ibid.
152
Meagher, The Coolie Trade, 82.
153
We do not deny that in many situations there were expressions of hatred and gratuitous violence between
the sailors and the coolies. An example is recounted by captain Landabaso, reporting his efforts to restrain
his sailors from killing too many coolies during an uprising, obviously thinking about the loss of revenue
that would entail: “Fu poi felice ventura che io riuscissi a trattenere l'equipaggio dal far fuoco ed uccidere
forse molti degli ammutinati se si riflette che una parte dei miei marinai avevano fatto parte dell'equipaggio
della nave Napoleon Canevaro che poco prima in quelle stesse acque era stata incendiata dai coloni cinesi
parimenti ammutinati, e che a stento si erano salvati dall'incendio e dal naufragio nel quale taluni dei loro
compagni erano periti” Interrogatorio del capitano Francesco de Landabaso, enclosed, Castelli to MM,
Lima, 12 October 1866 ACS, MM, DGMM, Miscellanea Uffici Diversi 1866-1869, b.271. A similar story
is told from Lima by a British journalist, Duffield, interviewing an Italian sailor: “It was once my lot to be
seated in a very small room filled for the most part with guano men, where I was compelled to listen to the
tale of an Italian who had served as chief mate on a ship freighted with Chinamen. He thought his life was
once in danger. ‘And what did you under the circumstances?’, enquired some one.’I shot two of them down,
sacramento!’ answered the villainous-looking wretch; on which there was a burst of laughter that did not
seem to me very appropriate. ‘And what was done with you?’ I enquired in no sympathising tone. ‘Señor’,
replied the assassin, ‘the Captain, Señor Venturini, accommodated me with a passage in his gig to the shore,
where I remained to make an extended acquaintance with the Celestial Empire.’” Duffield, Peru in the
Guano Age, 44.
154
Interesting parallels can be drawn with the recently rising scholarship on slave and convict sea revolts.
See, in particular, Clare Anderson and Markus Redker’s attempt to systhematize the concept of a global
maritime radicalism, in a recent issue of the International Review of Social History (IRSJ): Clare Anderson
et al., “Mutiny and Maritime Radicalism in the Age of Revolution: An Introduction,” International Review
of Social History 58, no. S21 (2013): 1–14; Clare Anderson, “The Age of Revolution in the Indian Ocean,
Bay of Bengal, and South China Sea: A Maritime Perspective,” International Review of Social History 58,
no. S21 (2013): 229–51; Marcus Rediker, “The African Origins of the Amistad Rebellion, 1839,”
International Review of Social History 58, no. S21 (2013): 15–34.
155
According to reliable sources, a large percentage, about half of the South China population was
literate.“Sarebbe davvero difficile il trovare un cinese adulto che non sappia leggere e scrivere,” explains
Sallier de La Tour, “L’emigrazione cinese,” 12. The 1878 census, published on a separate supplement of the
BO showed indeed that almost the 49% of the male Chinese population of Macao was capable of reading
and writing; BO, Supplemento, 31 December 1880. Considering that the majority of Macao’s population
271
7.3.5 Coolies or pirates? Towards a multifaceted answer
Returning to our original question, how can we assess the links between piracy and the
coolie trade? The Teresa affair of 1868 provided hints that a revolt was actually planned
by the coolies, but most probably the plan was set up after the departure. Essential for it
to succeed was the surprise factor, and probably the complicity, at least passive, of some
members of the crew and of the ship’s interpreter. Captain Bollo’s claim he was victim of
a plot organized by professional pirates needs to be read through the lenses of the general
confusion with which Western commentators described Chinese piracy and other less-
specific phenomena of criminal behavior; there is a clear possibility some of the coolies
aboard had experience in the inter-ethnic fights that were unfolding in the most active
coolie recruitment areas of the Guangdong province, and disgraced pirates or members of
pirate crews but they showed no sign of clear discipline and organization. There were,
certainly, cases of more clear-cut involvement of such elements; the reason remains
tricky, because it was definitely a non-rational choice to try to take over a coolie ship by
embarking on it as emigrant.
As we pointed out before, however, the perceptions of the mutineers were not always
based on facts. There is space for speculating, for example, that in some cases pirates and
more likely regular bandits and so-called “desperadoes” were framed into boarding a
coolie ship to plunder it by mischievous double-playing corretores.
An incredibly rare and precious hint to this emerges from the records of the 1866
failed Teresa mutiny. According to Captain Bollo’s logbook, in that case a plot to rise up
had been indeed conceived and discovered by spies before the departure from Macao, and
some of the culpable were apprehended and left in the gaols of the Portuguese colony by
the intervention of the harbor master Scarnichia and the port police.156 This discovery
thwarted the plans of the remaining conspirators, who where put under heavy surveillance
and irons—ten of them brutally lashed—for the duration of the voyage; many committed
suicide in desperation.
Interrogated by the interpreters and spies, the presumed pirates vented their anger,
reporting that they had been framed and lied about the ease with which they could have
plundered the ship—although not explicitly stated—by the very corretores who profited
was made of first generation immigrants from Guangdong province (Chapter 3.1), the estimate can be
extended to the Pearl River Delta region, at least.
156
1866 ACS, MM, DGMM, Miscellanea Uffici Diversi 1866-1869, b.271.
272
from recruiting them:
Dal martedì 1 al mercoledì 22 [August 1866] oggi il capitano [...] chiamò a sè i due
interpreti, il medico e il colono n.515 e gli disse se sapevano la cagione del perchè i
chinesi morivano così improvvisamente essendo buoni e sani; questi risposero che
sentirono dire varie volte dai chinesi le stesse espressioni - noi ci siamo imbarcati
non con la idea di venire al Perù ma nella fiducia di far dopo pochi giorni dalla
partenza rivoluione che ci dissero l'esser facile l'effettuarla, [emphasis added] rubar
quanto potevamo e ritornar al nostro paese. Ora poi che vediamo sbarcati con ferri a
Macao i capi, incatenati nel viaggio altri, e rimasti in pochi per il numero che siamo a
bordo, sempre l'equipaggio fatta difesa con cannoni ed armi d'ogni parte ci vediamo
impossibilitati sortire il nostro progetto; in questo caso non essendo stata mai nostra
intenzione di emigrare al Perù preferiamo nel caso estremo morire suicidandoci.157
This seems another and maybe one of the most audacious and surprising of the
stratagems adopted by coolie brokers to fulfill their quotas to the shipping agencies; a
gambit that could easily backfire, as the frequent revolts endangered the continuation of
the traffic and indeed in the long run determined its prohibition. It is unclear how the
captain was informed of the impending revolt, and by whom; he limited to say that:
Effettivamente al giorno della partenza da Macao dissero al capitano che in Hong

Kong vi era già la voce che da un giorno all'altro si aspettava qualche notizia sinistra
dalla "Teresa" perché si erano imbarcati dei pirati con intento di far rivoluzione.158
Less clear was the claim of Bollo’s brother Giovanni in reporting the revolt occurred
on the first days of navigation of his ship Amalia, also departed in spring 1866 ( notably,
the peak year of the whole coolie traffic). He reported that the coolies were behaving
suspiciously well during the departure, but it was actually a well-coordinated plan to let
the crew down his guard on them. In their case, however, returning to China seemed
apparently the sole objective of the rebels, a sign several of them could have staged the
uprising after having been deceived or violently coerced into the emigration system; also,
even though the plan was executed still in the vicinities of the Chinese coast the coolies
admitted they were unable to navigate the ship, even in those familiar waters:
Dissero che tutti i capi erano morti, e che loro intenzione era stata d'ammazzare
capitano, piloto e tutti gli ufficiali e una parte dell'equipaggio e gli altri lasciarli
perché li conducessero in terra e poi ammazzarli anche loro, perdere il bastimento o
bruciarlo e loro restar liberi.159
157
Ibid.
158
Ibid.
159
Processo verbale e testimoniale della rivoluzione succeduta a bordo del brik barca italiana “Amalia”,
enclosed in Castelli to MM, Lima, 10 September 1866, ACS, MM, DGMM, Miscellanea Uffici Diversi
1866-1869, b.271.
273
Another delicate case is that of the Napoleone Canevaro we reported previously, on
which some coolies allegedly attempted to poison the captain and the officers of the ship
by putting concentrated opium and arsenic in their tea; It is not clear however how they
obtained and were allowed to smuggle aboard such poisons, nor we have any real proof
these reports were not based on false information. It can be well speculated that the
ensuing revolt was not the result of a previous scheme but instead of the abusive behavior
exhibited by the captain towards dozens of coolies after being reported about the ploy.
Even if somehow premeditated, in fact, the outcome of a coolie revolt would
definitely depend upon the willingness of a majority of the ship’s passengers, whether
deceived or involuntary emigrants, to join the fray rather than opposing it. In this sense,
then, high sea mutinies were a natural extension of the forms of passive and active
resistance the coolies routinely adopted before and during the embarkation processes in
Macao, and that will continue after the arrival in the Peruvia and Cuban plantations.160
It would be also a huge mistake to assess these event as the action of perfectly rational
actors. As Count La Tour emphasize, there was a strong emotional component to take in
account, and the willful signature of a contract one day would not guarantee a binding
will to emigrate for all the duration of a maritime voyage, especially a long and painful
one. The coexistence aboard of coolies openly deceived or forced by dire circumstances
and the harsh and abusive conditions of the passages created an explosive mixture ready
to ignite at their first chance:
Giunto il cinese a bordo, non tarda ad accorgersi dell’ inganno: ogni giorno di
navigazione che passa è una disillusione in più pel povero emigrante. Non si tratta
più di una gita di giorni, ma di un viaggio di mesi. I duri trattamenti che trova a
bordo, la reclusione rigorosa in cui è tenuto, lo stancano, e lo fanno già accorto che il
suo stato si muta in peggio. La nostalgia lo riassale. Egli si pente di esser partito, e
già pensa al ritorno. Che se molti sieno gl’imbarcati che si trovino in questo
medesimo pensiero, la più piccola scintilla basterà ad appiccare l’incendio. La più
lieve contesa fra uno dei passeggieri ed uno dell’equipaggio basterà allora a
provocare una sollevazione generale, il cui scopo è d’impadronirsi del bastimento e
tornare indietro.161
This way, therefore, the historian should bear in mind the possibility to change opinion
as one of the core components of one’s agency. As Enrico Giglioli wrote:
Una volta in mare, alla disposizione di un capitano rare volte accessibile agli
scrupoli, il quale un poco per voler economizzare sul vitto, un poco per la paura
generata dai tragici precedenti, li trattava alla meglio come animali pericolosi,
160
Chapter 4.3.
161
Ibid., 33.
274
l'orrida realtà appariva agli illusi, le sofferenze di fame e sete inferocivano i più
rassegnati ovvero una nostalgia maniaca prendeva i pochi partiti volontariamente.162
7.4 The views of the traffickers
The precious documentation of the Teresa revolt and its aftermath allows to analyze
from a privileged standpoint the opinions, mindset and views of the coolie traffic
expressed by its supporters and protagonists. This is essentially a new and unexplored
field of research. If the work of Lisa Yun The Coolie Speaks (2008), based on the Cuba
Commission testimonies, and other remarkable scholars have disclosed “from below” the
lost voices of the victims of the traffic, there is an increasingly urgent need to understand,
dissect and interpret the perspectives of its perpetrators. A notable exception is Luz
Mercedes Hincapie’s recent biographical study of the life and ideals of Nícolas Tanco
Armero, which seems to confirm our impressions of the existence of a common cultural
milieu shared by the people involved in the coolie traffic and similar borderline
enterprises of the predatory Western capitalism on the nineteenth-century China coast.163
The six petitions of Sebastiano and Gio. Andrea Bollo shows us the serious concerns
of two veteran coolie traffickers, seeing their vital economic interests threatened by the
international campaign for the abolition of the coolie trade, to propagate a rosy image of
the traffic. After the Annamese scandal of 1867 the road had been paved for what many
observers saw as the inevitable collapse of the Macao coolie recruiting industry, already
prohibited in its classic forms in the Chinese treaty ports and Hong Kong. They also show
their attempts to conceal and deny to the Italian public opinion those aspects of the trade
that had triggered international outrage: these efforts, however, were bound to fail as the
influential circles of the Italian diplomacy were able to obtain independent information
from their representatives on the spot, and from the European chancelleries.
Against this backdrop the only possible rhetorical strategy available was to cling on
the contested effectiveness of the Portuguese regulations on the traffic,164 and defend the
disputed honesty of its supervisors in Macao, Lima and Havana. A typical attempt on this
sense, aimed to refute what had evidently become the common view on the traffic—Bollo
162
Giglioli, Viaggio intorno al globo, 689–691.
163
Luz Mercedes Hincapie, “Pacific Transactions: Nicolás Tanco Armero and the Chinese Coolie Trade to
Cuba,” Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research 16, no. 1 (July 2010): 27–41; see also María del
Carmen Cózar Navarro, Ignacio Fernández de Castro y Cía., una empresa naviera gaditana (Cádiz:
Universidad de Cádiz, 1998).
164
Bollo, Ragioni e documenti..., 20–22.
275
calls it false philanthropy165—in most Western societies can be read for instance on the
fourth petition (1870), where Bollo categorically excludes the possibility of abuses and
violence in the recruitment of the coolies of the Teresa “poiché erano tutti muniti di
regolare contratto, ed erano state puntualmente eseguite le molteplici e rigorose formalità
166
prescritte dalle leggi portoghesi.” Repeating the arguments of the Portuguese
supporters of the traffic, he explained that early abuses had been successfully dealt with
since the late 1850s and Governor Guimarães’s decrees.
A pro-emigration agenda was set up by replicating the themes of the liberal pro-
emigration propaganda which had emerged in many European countries, additioned with
racist and orientalist considerations on the otherness of the Chinese people and its alleged
special characteristics. Chinese coolie emigration was, Bollo explained afterwards, a
natural consequence of the historical and geographical conditions of the Celestial Empire,
driven by its state of overpopulation and overcrowding, to which it provided a benign
counterbalance:
L’emigrazione è da tutti considerata come un rimedio all’eccessivo sviluppo della

popolazione. E qual popolo ha più del chinese bisogno d’un tale rimedio? Secondo le
Memorie storiche, che si scrivono con tanta diligenza in China, la popolazione di
quel vasto Impero ascendeva nelle epoche più remote a 13 milioni di abitanti; al
principio dell’era volgare a 60 milioni […] e finalmente nel 1860 toccava la cifra
prodigiosa di 530 milioni di abitanti.167
Malthusian considerations came in handy to identify in the extraordinary density of the

Chinese population in the southern districts the cause of what was represented in terms of
widespread misery and a desperate push to emigrate for ensuring conditions of mere
survival:
Non si violano impunemente le leggi di equilibrio stabilite dalla natura tra la

popolazione e i mezzi di sussistenza. E quindi in China l’eccessivo aumento degli
abitanti trova un correttivo nella miseria, nella moria, nell’esposizione degli infanti, e
nell’emigrazione.168
There was here a full display of orientalist tropes, which compounds from a positive
side the anti-chinese stereotypes portrayed in various other sections of his petitions. They
contrast, starkily, with the relatively positive light still casted by several Italian travelers
and missionaries in China, including the aforementioned La Tour and Saverio Rondina,
165
166
167
Ibid., 12.
168
Ibid.
276
who showed instead deep respect to several cultural and historical aspects of the Chinese
civilization and a sympathetic view of its rulers, especially those associated with the self-
strengthening faction.169
The missionary propaganda, particularly the debate on child exposure, became also a
tool for the traffickers;
L’esposizione dei bambini è diventata quasi una istituzione sociale in China […] la
Missione Francese a Canton, con un reddito di L. 14,534 e con un personale di 4
suore francesi, 15 suore chinesi, 30 orfanelle e 7 domestici nel 1866 raccolse 4883
bambini [ma] se si aumentasse il reddito della Missione e quindi il personale della
stessa, si potrebbero raccogliere centinaia di bambini al giorno nella sola città di
Canton!170
As a result, the traffic in Chinese coolies was a “humanitarian” service rendered by

Western speculators in favor of the Chinese people; in Cuba and Peru, far from being
exploited in slave-like forms, he continues, coolies could pursue personal enrichment and
greatly improve their condition:
il commercio, che ha per divisa: “Fare il vantaggio proprio facendo il vantaggio

altrui”, approfittò di questo fenomeno sociale, ch’esso non avea creato, e che sarebbe
stato impotente a distruggere. Accanto all’emigrazione degli individui si organizzò
l’emigrazione per masse e per arruolamento. Si costituirono Società Commerciali,
collo scopo di raccogliere nei paesi e nelle classi più povere della China dei coloni
per spedirli poi in varii punti del globo e specialmente alle Antille, alla Guaina, al
Perù e alla Nuova Granata [...] È dunque evidente che l’emigrazione è un beneficio
per la nazione chinese in genere, e che la condizione dell’emigrato al Perù è migliore
assai di quello del proletario in China. Adunque le declamazioni sulla tratta dei
Gialli, sulla vendita dei Chinesi, o sono frutto di un’ingenua ignoranza o sono il
prodotto di una raffinata ipocrisia, che sotto l’apparenza di mentita filantropia, mira
ad arrestare l’emigrazione chinese in regioni ove essa può nuocere ad altri
interessi.171
In support of his words he quoted a sentence from Carlo Cattaneo, “un vero
filantropo”, who praised “il temperamento, la sobrietà, la indefessa diligenza, la sagacia”
of Chinese emigrants, “i soli uomini del mondo” he argues, “che possano fondar colonie
d’agricoltori liberi nella zona torrida” as an appropriate replacement for slave labor.172
169
Particularly curious is, in comparison with the deeply racist view of the Anglo-Saxons circles, Rondina’s
fascination for the reactionary aspects of the Chinese judicial and educational systems, which he
interestingly exploits as rhetoric artifice to denounce, from a traditionalist Catholic perspective the
deficiencies and evils of the Italian liberalism: Rondina, Viaggio nell’India e nella Cina, chap. LXXXVII
and XC.
170
171
Ibid., 14..
172
“la concorrenza loro farà sì che l’infame schiavitù dei negri rimanga abolita in forza di quel medesimo
interesse che l’ha fin qui promossa.” Carlo Cattaneo, “La China Antica e moderna”, Politecnico, vol. X,
(1864), 218, quoted in Ibid., 15.
277
Analogous considerations were shared by the Italian consul in Peru Ippolito Garrou in
a document dated 8 December 1868 attached to the 1871 petition. In that piece, written
right after reports of the Teresa revolt (and the false reports of the Providencia) had
reached his office in Lima, Garrou (mistakenly reported as Garron) explicated his positive
judgment of the coolie trade. 173 According to Garrou, the coolie trade was victim of a
“sleale quanto virulenta propaganda” of the press “di una certa parte del mondo” 174—that
is the English-speaking world—in other words “coloro cui nuoce l’immigrazione asiatica
in questa parte d’America, e per arrestarne il corso, con mentita filantropia sfigurano i
fatti e calunniano chi ne trae vantaggio.”175 The reality of the trade, he observed, was that
of a heavily regulated and ordered migration, notwithstanding some incidents, and
outbreaks of mortalities he tends to play down as “typical” and full responsibility of the
coolies’ health conditions at departure:
Non intendo asserire che non vi siano inconvenienti a deplorare, ed a volte

gravissimi. Rarissimamente vanno alle proporzioni di quello che ha dato materia al
presente; più spesso importano morte di coloni e talvolta numerosissime. Intendo dir
solo, e posso assicurarlo de visu, che le condizioni igieniche di qualsiasi natura non
lasciano nulla a desiderare a bordo dei legni italiani, e che se talvolta perdono nella
traversata molti passeggeri, il più spesso la proporzione delle morti non supera quella
ch’è normale ne’loro paesi.176
The contract system, continues, ensured the respect of the coolie broker’s interests,
but at the same time was the epitome of the coolies’ free choice:
Questo traffico s’è stigmatizzato col nome di ‘tratta de’ Chinesi’ e la loro cessione
col nome di ‘vendita’, - sono però vocaboli adoperati a comodo di dimostrazione e lo
prova solo il fatto che arrivando qui ogni asiatico è latore d’un contratto scritto nel
suo idioma e mediante il quale contro l’obbligo di lavorare per conto dell’altra parte
per 8 anni, gli è assicurato non pure il bisogno per vivere, ma un determinato corredo
ed una mercede settimanale; il che, checché se ne voglia dire, suppone la certa
scienza e il libero arbitrio di colui che lo segna.177
He went on describing his personal involvement in the management of the traffic in its
Peruvian end. This allowed him to certify, with a touch of pride, the nationality of the
Italian coolie ships like the Teresa, “a bordo del quale tutto era Italiano, salvo qualche
173
It was a review in contrast to Italian diplomacy in China, as well as with respect to the Italian Vice
Consul at Callao, g. Bensamoni, author of a short account of the phenomenon for the Consular Bulletin
(1872) Giorgio Bensamoni, “Cenni sull’importanza del Callao (Perù),” Bollettino Consolare, 1872, 85–94.
174
Bollo, Alle LL- EE. i Ministri..., 37–39.
175
Ibid., 38–39.
176
Ibid.
177
Ibid.
278
persona dell’equipaggio.”178
l’autorità territoriale esercita un’attenta vigilanza su tutti: per mezzo dell’ufficio

Consolare in Callao si fa lo stesso per parte nostra; gli ammiragli delle flotte straniere
sotto colore di visita personale scrutano attentamente ogni dettaglio interessante la
sicurezza e l’igiene, e non ho ancora incontrato chi, agendo per mandato d’autorità,
con conoscenza di causa abbia riportato da questi esami impressioni più sfavorevoli
di quelle che vi ho attinto io e sotto l’impressione delle quali scrivo.179
178
“Dicendo che tutto era Italiano in quell’armamento mi sono espresso con rigorosa esattezza, poiché il
bastimento (stando almeno al passavanti di cui è munito) appartiene in totalità al Sig. Sebastiano Bollo di
Andrea Gio. da Genova, che n’è parimente il Capitano; ed i Cinesi ch’erano a bordo erano contrattati e
condotti a conto della Casa Bianchi e Prefumo, ora Bianchi e Fratelli di Lima, a cui appartenevano pure le
merci.” Ibid., 37.
179
Ibid.
279

Trafico de Chinos 7

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

You might also like

Trafico de Chinos 7

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Trafico de Chinos 7

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

CHAPTER 7:

COOLIES, SAILORS, AND PIRATES: A CASE STUDY OF THE

7.1 The 1868 Teresa revolt

7.1.1 The uprising on the high sea

Nell’atto si senti in tutta la Nave il grido di Tà Fanquai;9 altri attaccarono le guardie

La serenità del Capitano in cosi terribile momento produsse un istante di calma

7.2.1 The reports of Captain Racchia

A canhoneira resgatou algumas malas com roupa, jóias e prataria da senhora do

He repeated the same concept in another instance, adding:

Come, l'equipaggio possedeva armi da fuoco e da taglio e i miserabili coolie nulla!

Addressing the military capabilities of Zhepo’s mandarin, which according to Bollo

Racchia was also astonished by Bollo’s pretension to include in his requests of

If concrete steps could not be taken, he continued, a policy of non-support had to be

7.2.2 The parliamentary debate

These public pronouncements, although a fact by themselves, need to be taken in

7.2.3 The verdicts of the Consiglio del Contenzioso Diplomatico

Secondo la narrazione del Bollo il principale Mandarino di Chapò e i mandarini sotto

Rispetto poi al punto di vista politico al quale si riferisce in secondo luogo la

Sull'applicazione dell'art. 20 del trattato al caso in specie si osserva che le sue

Per inoltrare una domanda d'indennità al governo Chinese, sempre sarebbe da

7.3 Chinese piracy and the coolie trade

7.3.1 Pirates and corretores in the nineteenth-century Chinese “water world”

If the connection between Macanese corretores and Chinese pirates—despite needing

vi sono dei malvagi, e dei pirati di professione i quali espressamente cercano un

On the contrary, he adds, episodes of revolt had increased—apparently—

Ed invero, se può concedersi che qualche volta debbano le sollevazioni imputarsi a

7.3.3 Insights from the Teresa revolt

Estas precauções foram tomadas desde 23 de Fevereiro de 1857 em que 20 piratas

Boarding a coastal passage boat entailed, however, a completely different order of

Francisco do Rosario (somewhere called Rosario de la Cruz), 139 the Sino-Portuguese

Nel momento dell’allarme si trovava l’incaricato dei viveri Giuseppe Olivari, e

Effettivamente al giorno della partenza da Macao dissero al capitano che in Hong

7.4 The views of the traffickers

L’emigrazione è da tutti considerata come un rimedio all’eccessivo sviluppo della

Malthusian considerations came in handy to identify in the extraordinary density of the

Non si violano impunemente le leggi di equilibrio stabilite dalla natura tra la

As a result, the traffic in Chinese coolies was a “humanitarian” service rendered by

il commercio, che ha per divisa: “Fare il vantaggio proprio facendo il vantaggio

Non intendo asserire che non vi siano inconvenienti a deplorare, ed a volte

l’autorità territoriale esercita un’attenta vigilanza su tutti: per mezzo dell’ufficio

You might also like