Coolie

Definition

A Coolie (word of origin English E which comes from the Hindî - Kulî, Caste of the India) is an Indian worker or Chinese, in the Far East.

However, according to the writer Khal Torabully, Kuli is also the inhabitant of Kula, the area gangetic, resulting semi-nomadiques people accustomed to the agricultural work from indigotiers, which made of him a candidate very designated for the exodus the shortly after the Abolition of slavery.

The word also returns to the Tamil meaning " salaire".

In Chinese, it refers to a brutal way to use labor. In Dutch, koeli returns to a deserving person carrying out a difficult labor, direction which retained the Malayan - Indonésien kuli .

Colonial and modern universe

The coolie is, in the colonial literature, the carry-burden or carrier, generally in the stations or the ports, trade still in force in countries of Asia and Persian Gulf. This word also appoints the Indian workers and Chinese who massively left the India and the China, especially of 1838 at 1917 and joined Maurice, the Réunion, the East Africa and southern, Fiji, the the Antilles, Cuba, Peru, the the United States and the Guyana.

In South Africa, gold and diamond layers are discovered at the end of the XIXe century: one makes come some: 64000 Chinese between 1904 and 1907 to work in the mines. Between 1866 and 1911 South Africa accommodates: 150000 Indian workers under contract of which the 2/3 remain on the spot after the end of their contract. The majority work in agriculture.

The Martinique and the Guadeloupe celebrated the 150e birthday of the beginning of Indian immigration in 2004.

In the past, Maurice especially sheltered the Coolie ghat, which accommodated the first coolies, following the abolition of slavery. This place of unloading was then famous Aapravasi Ghat (ghat of the immigrant), and was classified by UNESCO in 2006. It celebrates all the immigrants who unloaded here, coming from various places and country.

Imaginary

The modern derivative of the word Coolie is the coolitude , Néologisme born in 1992 in the text Cale of stars, coolitude . It indicates a concept of Cultural diversity born from the comparison from the the Indies with other spaces cuturels and the imaginary ones from Various, following the Abolition of slavery. In the spirit of the World heritage of UNESCO, which has just classified the ex- Coolie ghat - famous Aapravasi ghat - with the list of the monuments belonging to humanity, it opens the experiment of the coolie or the Engagé to the Cultural diversity and operates the conjunction of the road of the slave and of the road of the coolie or the volunteer, among other comparisons with the " accounts with partager" (Paul Ricoeur).

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