Koopmanschaap: Rise and Fall of A Labor Contractor

The end of slavery in 1865 presented a major problem for Southern cotton planters. In 1869 at a Memphis meeting of planters, a plan was made to recruit Chinese laborers to replace the slaves in cotton fields.  Cornelius Koopmanschaap, a well-known labor contractor from the Netherlands, stated that he could bring 30,000 Chinese to the South. He testified that Chinese were hard workers at low costs who had worked out well in other parts of the country, a claim that had mixed support as one Texan reported the Chinese were less productive than Negro workers.

Koopmanschaap's contract to provide Chinese laborers detailed the costs for emigration fees and transportation costs for bringing Chinese laborers from China by ship to San Francisco and by rail as far as the Missouri River. It also spelled out the contractual terms for work hours and conditions, clothing, housing, and food..

The newspaper in Newberry, South Carolina, placed a derogatory header, Price of the Pigtails, above the printed contract.

Koopmanschaap met with a government official in Washington in 1869 to gain approval for his plans. He emphasized that he was not bringing coolies or indentured workers but Chinese who came freely and accepted his contractual terms.

In addition to providing Chinese to planters in the Mississippi delta, Koopmanschaap also contracted to supply 1500 Chinese for Tennessee and Alabama. 

Success in bringing Chinese labor to all parts of the U.S. was not an easy achievement as Chinese men were reluctant to go to work in the East and Chinese women hesitated to go work in domestic family employment in the East.

Although white labor had strongly opposed bringing Chinese to the U.S., welcoming views were sometimes voiced as in an 1872 commentary in the Hickman, Kentucky, newspaper that doubted the fears that the country would be overrun by cheap Chinese labor.

Despite all his efforts to provide Chinese laborers, Koopmanschaap went bankrupt in just 3 years with debts of $250,000 and only $100,000 in assets as reported by the Semi-Weekly Clarion newspaper of Jackson, Mississippi.

Evidence regarding how many Chinese he actually brought to the mid-South is lacking, but of those who came to Mississippi most, if not all, quit working in the fields and opened small grocery stores in black residential areas in small towns throughout the Mississippi Delta as well as in several towns in Arkansas across the Mississippi River.i