In the first seven chapters, nearly all the documents are 'official', generated by  government agencies or officers. Colonial Office correspondence and papers, reports of Immigrations  Department officials and British agents in South China, reports and papers of the Colonial Land and  Emigration Commission in London, Parliamentary Papers   these are the main sources from which Look  Lai chooses his extracts . . . But in chapters 8 and 9, which deal with the post-indenture Chinese after  1870, and the free immigration starting around 1890, the type of documentation changes. The Chinese  were no longer the responsibility of any governmental agency and their arrival and subsequent activities  generated little official documentation. In these chapters, Look Lai relies on non-official sources . . .  Although the documentary extracts do not go beyond 1950, the family biographies have been updated to  the early 1990s. They are based on personal interviews with, or written accounts by, elderly family  members.

The Chinese in the West Indies, 1806-1995: A Documentary History PDF

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