Investigations into 19th century Chinese indentured migration — the nominally paid procurement of peasants for export labour — tend to leave women and children inadequately represented. Inclusive of all those displaced, this presentation focuses on the integral components of various trafficking networks, from profit-driven traders to state institutionalisation. By putting into dialogue various networks of Chinese mobility usually studied separately, this study will problematize current conceptualizations about the "coolie trade" and Chinese indentured migration, and shed new light onto the place of Chinese labour migration in global dynamics related to the configuration and decline of the colonial world.