Coolie (/ ˈkuːli /) [a] is a term historically used for low-wage labourers, typically those of Indian or Chinese descent. [1][2][3] The term was first used in the 16th century by European traders …

The meaning of COOLIE is an unskilled laborer or porter usually in or from the Far East hired for low or subsistence wages.

During the Civil War, the Republican-controlled Congress sought to prevent southern plantation owners from replacing their enslaved African American workers with unfree contract or "coolie" …

Sep 27, 2011 · Significance: Chinese coolies came to the United States both as free immigrants looking for work and as contract workers hired to build America’s first transcontinental railroad. …

Jul 14, 2021 · Looking back at the way in which nineteenth-century Chinese coolies were constructed as victims can help us to recognize these same patterns in how migrants and their …

Apr 9, 2025 · Explore the dark legacy of the coolie trade and its lasting impact on Chinese laborers. Discover how this exploitative system reshaped global labor networks, forged …

Jan 13, 2022 · Sugar has deep links with slavery in the US, but Black workers weren’t the only ones affected. In post-Civil War Louisiana, Chinese workers also toiled cutting and processing …

Sep 13, 2022 · Most coolies were recruited by local Chinese agents (called “brokers” or “crimps”) hired by their colonial customers, with the indentured labourers held in barracoons, and then …

Ostensibly an improvement from the African slave trade, this system of contract labor differed little from slavery in practice and led to the mistreatment and abuse of hundreds of thousands of …

How did thousands of Chinese migrants end up working alongside African Americans in Louisiana after the Civil War? With the stories of these workers, Coolies and Cane advances an …