Coolie trade

The word coolie (also kuli, cooli, cooly, quli and koelie among other spellings), 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. It is similar, in many respects, to the Spanish term peon, although both terms area used in some countres, with slightly differing implications.

During the 19th and early 20th century, coolie was usually a term implying an indentured labourer from South Asia, South East Asia or China.

It is now a commonly-used and inoffensive word in South Asia for workers in unskilled manual labour, especially porters at railway stations.

However, coolie is now regarded as derogatory and/or a racial slur in the Caribbean, Africa, Oceania, North America, Southeast Asia and Europe – 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.

The origins of the word are uncertain but it is thought to have originated from the Tamil word for a payment for work, kuli (கூலி). An alternative etymological explanation is that the word came from Hindustani word qulī (क़ुली, قلی), which itself could be from the Turkish word for slave (or as a general name for imperial subjects regardless of other social status), . The word was used in this sense for labourers from India. In 1727, Dr. Engelbert Kämpfer described "coolies" as dock labourers who would unload Dutch merchant ships at Nagasaki in Japan.

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