Description:

Speaker Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Brown University.

In mid to late 19th century Cuba, 125,000 Chinese workers under 8-year contracts (coolies) worked alongside a dwindling supply of African slaves on the sugar plantations. This unique situation in American and world history begs the question: if these coolies were an extension of slavery, how so? Or did these coolies constitute a transition to free labor? Using Cuban/Spanish, Chinese and US American documents and other primary sources, we will examine this question.

Evelyn Hu-DeHart is Professor of History, American Studies, Ethnic Studies, and Director of the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America until 2014, at Brown University. She joined Brown from the University of Colorado at Boulder where she was Chair of the Department of Ethnic Studies. She has also taught at the City University of New York system, New York University, Washington University in St. Louis, University of Arizona and University of Michigan, as well as lectured at universities and research institutes in Mexico, Peru, Cuba, France, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China.

Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program event series - Cuba in from the Cold? Co-sponsored by the Buffett Institute for Global Studies.