The negro slave trade once flourished as a means of developing the resources of Europe's colonial territories; with the worldwide abolition of slave trading in the middle nineteenth century, an alternative source of labor was identified in the Chinese.
歐洲各國為了開發殖民地獲取資源，曾驅使大批非洲黑奴到世界各地工作；在十九世紀中葉國際間禁止黑奴買賣後，為了尋求替代人工，而看上華人。