COOLIDGE, THOMAS JEFFERSON (1831—) . An American manufacturer and diplomat. He was born in Boston, Mass., and was educated at Harvard and in Europe. In 1892 he was sent as United States Minister to France, but was super seded by James B. Eustis in 1893. He was ap pointed member of the Joint High Commission to adjust disputes between the United States and Canada.
COOLIE Hind. pill, laborer, from Tamil kick. daily hire). A name applied to an unskilled laborer in India and Eastern Asia and to contract emigrant laborers sent from India and China to other coun tries. especially to the West Indies. In tropical countries where white labor is impossible, there arose with the abolition of slavery a need for cheap labor capable of doing the heavy tasks of plantations. factories, and shipping. For this purpose the acclimated cheap labor of the over populated Asiatic countries seemed especially adapted. The coolie trade began about 1834. It was accompanied by abuses which made it little better than a form of slavery. and Great Britain, which had been largely interested in the trade, undertook to put a stop to it in 1S55. This threw it largely into the hands of the Portuguese. The coolie trade from Macao to Cuba and Peru was little better than the slave trade so far as its conditions were concerned. The traffic was regu lated by the convention of 1S66 between China, France, and Great Britain. The requirement by China of a return passage at the end of five years practically stopped the trade with the West In. dies. The number of coolies in British Guiana in 1871 was estimated at 50,000. The advantages and evils of the coolie trade were made the sub ject of numerous reports, and protective enact ments were passed by the Chinese, British, and French governments. Under the Indian Emigra
tion Act of 1883, emigration under contract is allowed only to certain colonies, where good treatment is assured. These are the British colonies of British Guiana, Jamaica, Mauritius, Trinidad, Saint Lucia. Saint Kitts, Saint Vin cent, Grenada, Natal, and Fiji, and the French Guadeloupe and Martinique, as well as Dutch Guiana and the Danish Saint Croix.
Besides what may be called the legitimate traffic in Chinese coolies (stopped at present), an in famous counterfeit was long carried on at Macao (q.v.). Native crimps brought thousands of their countrymen to that Portuguese island, and shipped them for Cuba and Peru. This 'invol untary emigration,' as it has been called, began in 1818, and as many as 13,000 persons were shipped in the course of a year: but as in reality it was nothing more than an elaborate system of kidnapping, the Chinese and British governments, in 1872, prohibited any vessel suspected of being engaged in this trade from fitting out in any Chinese or British port, and the 'trade' was prac tically destroyed in consequence. At the close of 1873 the Portuguese Government formally declared the 'exportation' of coolies illegal, and the atrocious traffic may now he considered at an end. Consult, in addition to numerous British and French official papers and reports, Jenkins, The Coolie: His Rights and Wrongs (London, 1871) ; Hope, In Quest of Coolies (London, 1872).