Kínai kulik behozatala az Osztrák-Magyar Monarchiába : Viták és esetek = Import of Chinese Coolies into the Habsburg Monarchy : Discourses and Cases

Wirleitner, Clemens (2025) Kínai kulik behozatala az Osztrák-Magyar Monarchiába : Viták és esetek = Import of Chinese Coolies into the Habsburg Monarchy : Discourses and Cases. VILÁGTÖRTÉNET, 15(47) (1). pp. 69-81. ISSN 0083-6265

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Abstract

At the end of 1906, Hungary was once again the scene of a dispute between large landowners and agricultural workers over the issue of higher wages. In order to avert a threatened strike, the land-owners association of Békés County made the strange decision to recruit 15,000 to 20,000 Chinese coolies and issued an ultimatum to the unions. The interpretation in both the contemporary press and in research that this was a mere threat to counter the wage demands can be called into question by inquiries to the Austro–Hungarian embassy in Beijing about the possibilities regarding the ‘coolie import’. Although the files examined do not provide any information as to whether the import materialized case studies show that some Hungarian and Galician aristocrats at least considered recruiting coolies, and forms of labor migration from China to Austria–Hungary actually did take place. When compared internationally, public discourse and media debate on the ‘coolie trade’ in Austria–Hungary only gained momentum very late at about the turn of the century. The analysis shows however that similar tropes such as a racist and culturally chauvinistic connotation in which the Chinese were generally perceived as a threat for western society, as well as a certain empathy for the dark side of global labor emigration from China in the late 19th and early 20th centuries dominated this conversation.

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