page_title: Coolie
section_title: Indian coolies
hierarchical_section_title: Coolie / History of the coolie trade / Indian coolies
context_page_description: The word coolie, meaning a labourer, has a variety of other implications and is sometimes regarded as offensive or a pejorative, depending upon the historical and geographical context; in India, its country of origin, it is still considered a derogatory slur. It is similar, in many respects, to the Spanish term peón, although both terms are used in some countries with different implications.
  The word originated in South Asia in the 17th century and meant day labourer, but since the 20th century the word has been used in that region to refer to porters at railway stations. During the 19th and early 20th centuries, the term coolie was most often used regarding indentured labourers originating from East Asia, South Asia or Southeast Asia.
  Coolie is now regarded as derogatory and/or a racial slur in the Caribbean, Africa, Oceania, North America, South America and Southeast Asia – in reference to people from Asia. This is particularly so in South Africa, East Africa, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Suriname, Jamaica, Mauritius, Fiji, and the Malay Peninsula.
  In modern Indian popular culture, coolies have often been portrayed as working-class heroes or anti-heroes.
context_section_description: By the 1820s, many Indians were voluntarily enlisting to go abroad for work, in the hopes of a better life. European merchants and businessmen quickly took advantage of this and began recruiting them for work as a cheap source of labour. The British began shipping Indians to colonies around the world, including British Mauritius, British Fiji, New South Wales, British Natal, British East Africa, British Tanganyika, British Somaliland, British Bechuanaland, British Seychelles, British Uganda, British Northern Rhodesia, British Rhodesia, British Nyasaland, British Guiana, British Trinidad and Tobago, British Jamaica, British Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Grenada, British Honduras, Saint Kitts and Nevis, British Barbados, the rest of the British West Indies, and British Malaya. The Dutch shipped workers to labor on the plantations on Dutch Surinam the Netherlands Antilles, and the Dutch East Indies. The French shipped laborers to Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana, the rest of the French West Indies, and Réunion.
  A system of agents was used to infiltrate the rural villages of India and recruit labourers. They would often deceive the credulous workers about the great opportunities that awaited them for their own material betterment abroad. The Indians primarily came from the Indo-Gangetic Plain, but also from Tamil Nadu and other areas to the south of the country. Indians had faced a great number of social and economic disasters, causing them to be more eager than other groups to leave India. In the last part of the nineteenth century alone, there were 24 famines.
  Without permission from the British authorities, the French transported Indian workers to their sugar producing colony, Reunion Island, from as early as 1826. By 1830, over 3,000 labourers had been transported. After this trade was discovered, the French successfully negotiated with the British in 1860 for permission to transport over 6,000 workers annually, on condition that the trade would be suspended if abuses were discovered to be taking place.
  The British began to transport Indians to Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, starting in 1829. Slavery had been abolished, with the planters receiving two million pounds sterling in compensation for the loss of their slaves. The planters turned to bringing in a large number of indentured labourers from India to work in the sugar cane fields. Between 1834 and 1921, around half a million indentured labourers were present on the island. They worked on sugar estates, factories, in transport and on construction sites.
  In 1837, the Raj issued a set of regulations for the trade. The rules provided for each labourer to be personally authorised for transportation by an officer designated by the Government, limited the length of service to five years subject to voluntary renewal, made the contractor responsible for returning the worker after the contract elapsed and required the vessels to conform to basic health standards.
  Despite this, conditions on the ships were often extremely crowded, with rampant disease and malnutrition. Coolies were also not informed about the length of the trip or about the island that they would be going to. The workers were paid a pittance for their labour, and were expected to work in often awful and harsh conditions. Although there were no large scale scandals involving coolie abuse in British colonies, workers often ended up being forced to work, and manipulated in such a way that they became dependent on the plantation owners so that in practice they remained there long after their contracts expired; possibly as little as 10% of the coolies actually returned to their original country of origin. Colonial legislation was also passed to severely limit their freedoms; in Mauritius a compulsory pass system was instituted to enable their movements to be easily tracked. Conditions were much worse in the French colonies of Reunion and Guadeloupe and Martinique, where workers were 'systematically overworked' and abnormally high mortality rates were recorded for those working in the mines. G
caption: Newly arrived Indian coolies in Trinidad.
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