Chapter COOLIN to COOLY of C by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

ed. ii. 160; also see i. 146].

1817.—“These (Chinese) emigrants are usually employed as coolees or labourers on their first arrival (in Java).”—Raffles, H. of Jaca, i. 205.

*1820.—“In the profession of thieving the Koolees may be said to act con amore. A Koolee of this order, meeting a defenceless person in a lane about dusk, would no more think of allowing him to pass unplundered than a Frenchman would a woman without bowing to her; it may be considered a point of honour of the caste.”—Tr. Lit. Soc. Bo. iii. 335.

*1825.—“The head man of the village said he was a Kholee, the name of a degenerate race of Rajpoots in Guzerat, who from the low occupations in which they are generally employed have (under the corrupt name of Coolie) given a name, probably through the medium of the Portuguese, to bearers of burdens all over India.”—Heber, ed. 1844, ii. 92.

1867.—“Bien que de race différente les Coolies et les Chinois sont comportés à peu-près de même.”—Quatrefages, Rapport sur le Progrès de l’Anthropologie, 219.

1871.—“I have hopes for the Coolies in British Guiana, but it will be more sure and certain when the immigration system is based on better laws.”—Jenkins, The Coolie.

1873.—“The appellant, the Hon. Julian Pauncefote, is the Attorney-General for the Colony (Hong Kong) and the respondent Hwoka-Sing is a Coolie or labourer, and a native of China.”—Report of Case before Jud. Com. of Privy Council.

“A man (Col. Gordon) who had wrought such wonders with means so modest as a levy of Coolies…needed, we may be sure, only to be put to the highest test to show how just those were who had marked him out in his Crimean days as a youth whose extraordinary genius for war could not be surpassed in the army that lay before Sebastopol.”—Sat. Review, Aug. 16, 203.

1875.—“A long row of cottages, evidently pattern-built…announced the presence of Coolies, Indian or Chinese.”—Palgrave, Dutch Guiana, ch. i.

The word Cooly has passed into English thieves’ jargon in the sense of ‘a soldier’ (v. Slang Dict.).