The word coolie[1] was first popularized in the 16th century by European traders across Asia, and by the 18th century would refer to migrant Indian or Chinese laborers, and by the 19th century, would gain a new definition of the systematic shipping and hiring of Asian workers under contract on plantations that had been formerly worked by enslaved Africans. Because they … Narvaez, Benjamin N. "Chinese Coolies in Cuba and Peru: Race, Labor, and Immigration, 1839–1886." State legislation, such as California's Foreign Miners' Tax Act of 1850 and 1852, would target Chinese immigrants in the U.S. A malevolent spirit or ghost. The contrast in the female to male ratio between Indian and Chinese immigrants has been compared by historians. [21] The coolie trade was often compared to the earlier slave trade and they accomplished very similar things. Bonilla, Heraclio. 1 (2020). [11] The British were the first experiment with coolie labor—as early as 1806, 200 Chinese were sent to the colony of Trinidad; the very next year, in 1807 Britain outlawed the African slave trade with the Slave Trade Act of 1807. Despite these closures, the trade simply shifted to the more accommodating port within the Portuguese enclave of Macau. They were neither free nor slaves. Dippy, the Natural History Museum's iconic Diplodocus cast, is going on a natural history adventure across the UK. Yes, me friend, We deh a street again. The story, among many parallel story lines, involves an American Navy engineer (Steve McQueen) befriending a coolie working under his command (Mako) in the engine room. Since slave trade was illegal, the British bourgeoisie needed another group to perform the manual labor for the lucrative plantations. We understand! Discover releases, reviews, songs, credits, and more about Tighten Up! 30 September 2005. Mourners can’t eat the feast until midnight, when the duppy has passed through. In Spanish, colonos asiáticos was the for coolies. [14] As a consequence, a large-scale slavery-like trade in Asian (primarily Indian and Chinese) indentured labourers began in the 1820s to fill this vacuum. [24][59], The British began to transport Indians to Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, starting in 1829. This gave women a new sense of power when it came to choosing a partner. 1 (1995), and Coolie No. calling people names such as. Coolie is a pejorative term for people from Asia. Coolie is instead used to refer to people of fully blooded Indian descent whose ancestors migrated to the British former colonies of Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. After this trade was discovered, the French successfully negotiated with the British in 1860 for permission to transport over 6,000 workers annually, on condition that the trade would be suspended if abuses were discovered to be taking place. Taxis are known as kuli-ratha. It happens to many people as they age, but kids can be born with it. [76] Males made up the majority of the original Chinese community in Mexico and they married Mexican women. noun duppies. Yes, me friend, me good friend, Dem say we free again. This is particularly so in South Africa, East Africa, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, Suriname, Jamaica, Mauritius, Fiji, and the Malay Peninsula. The original meaning of the Germanic word would thus have been an animating principle of the mind, in particular capable of excitation and fury (compare óðr). WebMD tells you how you can treat it if it affects your vision. The planters turned to bringing in a large number of indentured labourers from India to work in the sugar cane fields. only vaguely associated with the dead. In 1844, the trade was expanded to the colonies in the West Indies, including Jamaica, Trinidad and Demerara, where the Asian population was soon a major component of the island demographic. In the information technology industry, offshore workers are sometimes referred to as 'coolies' because of their lower wages. Many coolie women saw the chance to leave for the Caribbean as a way to escape abusive husbands, to hide pregnancy, to escape shame, or to simply find a better life. In 2000, the parliament of South Africa enacted the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act, 2000. SUBSCRIBE: http://bit.ly/GRMsubscribe. [47] The Spanish colony of Cuba feared slavery uprisings such as those that took place in Haiti and used coolies as a transition between slaves and free labor. ), or William Lloyd Garrison, were highly critical of coolie labor as being no better than slavery. [30] As many as 500 were crammed into a single ship hold, leaving no room to move. In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act would bar the entry of any Chinese laborer to the U.S. Whole nation prayed for his life . By the 1820s, many Indians were voluntarily enlisting to go abroad for work, in the hopes of a better life. However, over a dollar would be taken from them every month in order to pay off their debts. Extract from : « Jamaican Song and Story » by Walter Jekyll Antonyms for baddest [29], The coolie-slave trade run by American captains and local agents and mainly consisting of debt slavery, was called the 'pig trade' as the living conditions were not dissimilar to that of livestock; on some vessels as many as 40 percent of the coolies died en route. Indentured Chinese servants also labored in the sugarcane fields of Cuba well after the 1884 abolition of slavery in the country. Those who did perform it were still seen as not as good as men.[80]. [63] In response to this pressure, the labour export was temporarily stopped in 1839 by the authorities when the scale of the abuses became known, but it was soon renewed due to its growing economic importance. [36] Indians had faced a great number of social and economic disasters, causing them to be more eager than other groups to leave India. Until the trade was finally abolished in 1875, over 150,000 coolies had been sold to Cuba alone, the majority having been shipped from Macau. In the early 1870s increased media exposure of the trade led to a public outcry, and the British, as well as the Qing government, put pressure on the Portuguese authorities to bring the trade at Macau to an end; this was ultimately achieved in 1874. Duppy definition at Dictionary.com, a free online dictionary with pronunciation, synonyms and translation. [74], Chinese women were scarce in every place where Chinese indentured laborers were brought, the migration was dominated by Chinese men. Jamaican Indian or someone who is of East Indian descent. [79] Though the lack of women became a problem in later years, initially women were not high on the priority list when it came to coolie recruitment. It is both singular and plural. 1978. Check out J Styles - Daily Duppy. White Coolies by Betty Jeffrey (1954) is a non-fiction account of a group of Australian nurses held captive and used as slave labour by the Japanese in WWII. Proponents of coolie labor as free labor often pointed out the existence of a labor contract—between the coolie and the employer, the contract would define the obligations of both parties. A more rigorous regulatory framework was put into place and severe penalties were imposed for infractions in 1842. The recruited labourers were required to pay for their ship fares from meager earnings which were frequently below living expenses, forcing them into virtual slavery. View credits, reviews, tracks and shop for the 1982 Vinyl release of Duppy Or Gunman on Discogs. The trade began largely after the establishment of colonial German Samoa in 1900 and lasted until the arrival of New Zealand forces in 1914. Coolie is instead used to refer to people of fully blooded Indian descent whose ancestors migrated to the British former colonies of Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. Indian coolies, on the other hand, were viewed as dirty and were treated as children who required constant supervision. The 1879 Constitution of the State of California declared that "Asiatic coolieism is a form of human slavery, and is forever prohibited in this State, and all contracts for coolie labour shall be void. Seventy-five percent of the Chinese coolies in Cuba died before fulfilling their contracts. It is similar, in many respects, to the Spanish term peón, although both terms are used in some countries with different implications. Much of Caribbean folklore revolves around duppy. The celebration is attended by hundreds of people. The Pangasinan Filipino phrase "makuli," also owes its meaning to qulī, evidence of the Indian influence in insular South East Asia before the arrival of the Spanish. -~-~~-~~~-~~-~-. Lowkey is back with a fresh new Daily Duppy freestyle and as usual, the artist delivered an enviable performance. (patois) Yu see that coolie ova deh so? Jamaican Patwah Editors review uploaded pictures before publication. Portuguese Macao was the center of this trade: coolie slavery was described as "the only real business" in Macao from 1848 to 1873, generating enormous profits for the Portuguese until it was banned due to pressure from the British government.[31]. Though there were crimes against women and women being murdered, these incidents were nowhere near as frequent as with Indian coolies. Alternative spelling of duppy. Between 1858 and 1859, laws were put into place stating that the ratio of men to women could not exceed 2:1, whereas before it was 3:1. Even with punishments in place, on ship and land, men who assaulted women and children were rarely punished, leaving women in an even more vulnerable position. [32][33][34][35] Australia began importing workers in 1848, and the United States began using them in 1865 on the First Transcontinental Railroad construction. Add all … Petitions from Sturge, the Society of Friends, various other humanitarian groups, and from citizens of entire cities were routinely sent to the Colonial Offices. In 1875, Congress would pass the Page Act, which prohibited the bringing of any Chinese subjects without their consent in order to hold them for a term of service. Starting in 1879, many Indians were transported to Fiji to work on the sugar cane plantations. The Chinese phono-semantic matching Chinese: 苦力; pinyin: kǔlì literally translates as "bitter strength" but is more commonly understood as "hard labour". In Sri Lanka (sinhala), "kuliwada" is the term for manual labor. Verve definition, enthusiasm or vigor, as in literary or artistic work; spirit: Her latest novel lacks verve. [36] By that time, a total of up to half a million Chinese workers had been exported.[53]. Cognate with Scots ghaist (“ghost”), Saterland Frisian Gäist (“spirit”), West Frisian geast (“spirit”), Dutch geest (“spirit, mind, ghost”), German Geist (“spirit, mind, intellect”), Swedish gast (“ghost”), Sanskrit हेड (héḍa, “anger, hatred”), Persian زشت (zešt, “ugly, hateful, disgusting”). The rules provided for each labourer to be personally authorised for transportation by an officer designated by the Government, limited the length of service to five years subject to voluntary renewal, made the contractor responsible for returning the worker after the contract elapsed and required the vessels to conform to basic health standards. Please help integrate this content into the body of the article using, 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution, Timeline of abolition of slavery and serfdom, the abolition of slavery in Britain in 1833, signed a treaty with the United Kingdom on the recruitment of contract workers, Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Unfair Discrimination Act, 2000, "Press Statement: Public awareness campaign on Equality Courts", "Chronology of Filipinos in America Pre-1989", "A Study of the Africans and African Americans on Jamestown Island and at Green Spring, 1619–1803", "History of Indian and Chinese Coolies and their Descendants", "Influência da aculturação na autopercepção dos idosos quanto à saúde bucal em uma população de origem japonesa", "Identity, Rebellion, and Social Justice Among Chinese Contract Workers in Nineteenth-Century Cuba", "Strong maternal Khoisan contribution to the South African coloured population: a case of gender-biased admixture", "The Long, Long Trail – Researching soldiers of the British Army in the Great War of 1914-1919", http://guyanachronicle.com/2009/05/05/the-coolie-ships, https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2013/nov/19/journey-coolie-women-history-british-empire-indentured-labourers, "Hum Coolie - dedicated to the "coolies" of India". [37][38] Mortality was very high; it is estimated that from 1847 to 1859, the average mortality rate for coolies aboard ships to Cuba was 15.2 percent, and losses among those aboard ships to Peru were as high as 40 percent in the 1850s, and 30.44 percent from 1860 to 1863. The main objectives of the Act were: In the 1957 P.O.W. Coolie definition, pronunciation, and example sentences on Jamaican Patwah. About Press Copyright Contact us Creators Advertise Developers Terms Privacy Policy & Safety How YouTube works Test new features [26][27][28] The first shipment of Chinese labourers was to the British colony of Trinidad in 1806 "in an attempt to establish The documentary film directed by Yung Chang called Up the Yangtze (2007) follows the life of a family in China that is relocated due to the flooding of the Yangtze. The 1883 Indian Immigration Act aimed to stop women from escaping their abusive husbands, which in turn made it much more difficult for women to emigrate. Trojan Reggae Classics 1968-74 at Discogs. Torabully reclaims and revoices the term to refer to migrants travelling with a labour contract, for example, engaging in cultural, linguistic and identity negotiations. [36], This system prevailed until the early twentieth century. In the last part of the nineteenth century alone, there were 24 famines. Survivors were often forced to remain in servitude beyond the contracted period. Look it up now! "Duppy Know Who Fi Frighten". We understand! [73] Unfortunately, this also put women in a very vulnerable position, especially when alone. The Dutch shipped workers to labor on the plantations on Dutch Surinam the Netherlands Antilles, and the Dutch East Indies. [38], They were sold and were taken to work in plantations or mines with very bad living and working conditions. ", In the racially controversial film The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932) Sir Denis Nayland Smith mentions his team's temporarily-hired Chinese workers, saying of Dr. Fu Manchu that "... his spies are all around us. In the 1934 film Mandalay, the character Tanya (Kay Francis) calls Nick, the club owner, "coolie", causing him to slap her across the face. With an onslaught of wordplay, constant bars and references to popular culture and politics, Lowkey has once ag... 1.11.2020 519,782 views. An etymological explanation is that the word came from Hindustani word qulī (क़ुली, قلی), which itself could be from the common Turkic word for slave (or as a general name for imperial subjects regardless of other social status), قول (qul). Section 10 covers the prohibition of hate speech terms, such as coolie (koelie). [2] The word has had a variety of other implications and is sometimes regarded as offensive or a pejorative, depending upon the historical and geographical context; in India, its country of origin, it is still considered a derogatory slur. (english) Do you see that Indian over there? It also reminds you of the typical Jamaican English accent. In the 1899 novelette Typhoon by Joseph Conrad, the captain is transporting a group of coolies in the South China Sea. The Star Online. [18][19] For those who did sign on voluntarily, they generally signed on for a period of two to five years. Plain and simple, “duppy” is a Jamaican Patois word (with Central African origins) that [49] Once they had fulfilled their contracts the colonos asiáticos integrated into the countries of Peru, The Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Cuba. With a shortage of women, it became the responsibility of the male suitor to provide a hefty dowry to a woman's father, regardless of what caste she came from. [22][23][24] Similarly to slave plantations, one Caribbean estate could have over six hundred coolies, with Indians making up over half. [20] Indian coolies were viewed as lower in status. 1 (1991), Coolie No. [16] The state also regulated the various stages of recruitment, transportation, and employment. [47] Before the Cuban Revolution in 1959, Havana had Latin America's largest Chinatown. hyperurl.co/f3gkct. However, many Chinese laborers worked in British colonies such as Singapore, New South Wales, Jamaica, British Guiana (now Guyana), British Malaya, Trinidad and Tobago, British Honduras (now Belize) – as well as in the Dutch colonies within the Dutch East Indies, and Suriname. Some of these were Chinese women kidnapped to be sex slaves under the demand of American and Caribbean plantation owners. Just as many believed that Africans had an affinity for hard outdoor labor, Distant believed that Indian, Chinese, and Japanese coolies were different in their ability to perform certain jobs. form; (2) the soul of the dead manifest in a variety of fabulous beasts, and also in. [71] Polyandry was a common practice amongst Indian coolies. As the British government had political and legal responsibility for many of the ports involved – including Amoy – such ports were immediately closed. The following are some commonly used Jamaican slang terms and their meanings. Deewaar: the fiction of film and the fact of politics. The coolies were put in the same neighbourhoods as Africans and, since most were unable to return to their homeland or have their wives come to the New World, many married African women. More than 2000 Chinese "coolies" were present in the islands in 1914 and most were eventually repatriated by the New Zealand administration. V.P. [62], However, there were also attempts by the British authorities to regulate and mitigate the worst abuses. [48] Denise Helly is one researcher who believes that despite their slave-like treatment, the free and legal status of the Asian laborers in Cuba separated them from slaves. Bad man , Within a decade significant levels of anti-Chinese sentiment had built up, stoked by populists such as Denis Kearney with racist slogans – "To an American, death is preferable to life on a par with the Chinese. It is both singular and plural. Others were sent by Chileans to work in the newly conquered nitrate fields. [INTRO:] Yeah (yeah) demarco, ah wha happen to dem (wha happen to dem) Even we ah pree fi da area, mi nuh si nobody out deh mi fear of boom. After 10 years of imprisonment, he flooded her village (injuring her new husband) and causing her to awaken with amnesia. [70] In Cuba men made up the vast majority of Chinese indentured servants on sugar plantations and in Peru non-Chinese women married the mostly male Chinese coolies. [11] Regulations were put in place as early as 1837 by the British authorities in India to safeguard these principles of voluntary, contractual work and safe and sanitary transportation. The French shipped laborers to Guadeloupe, Martinique, French Guiana, the rest of the French West Indies, and Réunion. In 1727, Engelbert Kämpfer described "coolies" as dock labourers who would unload Dutch merchant ships at Nagasaki in Japan.[8][9]. [58], Without permission from the British authorities, the French transported Indian workers to their sugar producing colony, Reunion Island, from as early as 1826. [77] One stark difference between Indian and Chinese coolies was the treatment of women, despite both groups having a severe shortage. For example, proponents of African slavery argued that coolie labor was far more brutal and violent than African slavery, and so African slavery was the more humane option, and that the British Empire, in condemning African slavery but employing coolie labor, was hypocritical. Duppy is a word of African origin commonly used in various Caribbean islands, including Barbados and Jamaica, meaning ghost or spirit. Copyright © 2021, All rights reserved. Many of them chose to stay after their term of indenture elapsed and today they number about 40% of the total population. a settlement of free peasant cultivators and labourers". The daughter is sent directly from finishing middle school to work on a cruise ship for western tourists, to earn money for her family. It is used in a derogatory/in-jest manner to signify biased action/support (e.g. How to use wight in a sentence. Recent Examples on the Web: Noun In the footage, Sansa and Tyrion are hiding out in the crypts, and are forced to help Gilly and Missandei when they are attacked by wights. DOWNLOAD THE GRM DAILY APP FOR iOS & ANDROID NOW! Premiere: Lowkey steps up for a hard new Daily Duppy freestyle. (noun) An urban professional suffering from depression, especially one who has lost a high-paying job and been forced to take up lower-paying work. They adopted cultural traditions from the natives and also welcomed in non-Chinese to experience and participate into their own traditions. Rape was a common occurrence, and there were accounts of women being bound and gagged in their own homes by men. [69] The number of Chinese women as coolies was "very small" while Chinese men were easily taken into the coolie trade. Record Dist. Ptosis is a condition where you have drooping eyes. From Middle English gost, gast, from Old English gāst (“breath, soul, spirit, ghost, being”), from Proto-West Germanic *gaist, from Proto-Germanic *gaistaz (“ghost, spirit”), from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰéysd-os, from *ǵʰéysd- (“anger, agitation”). | Coolie - Jamaican Indian or someone who is of East Indian descent. Those who ran estates believed that Chinese and Japanese coolies were harder working, united, and clean. However, there continued to be a severe shortage of women. Patricia Mohammd, "Gender Negotiations Among Indians in Trinidad, 917-1947," in. Children under the age of 15 were not allowed to be transported from their parents under any circumstances. Baby madda , meaning: As long as someone is alive, don't dismiss their potentials. [13] Other nations, especially imperial powers such as France, Spain, and Portugal, soon followed suit, especially as Britain, through several treaties such as Anglo-Portuguese Treaty of 1810 and the 1814 Treaty of Paris, also pressured other nations to abolish the African slave trade. [citation needed]. His lover's father once murdered a girl's father in an attempt to force her to marry him, but she did not give in. In the 1982 fiction novel A Nomad of the Time Streams by Michael Moorcock the word 'coolie' is used repeatedly about varying kinds of Asian laborers. By 1830, over 3,000 labourers had been transported. noh call 'im duppy. In places such as Cuba, however, African slavery would not end until 1886, about forty years after coolies were introduced. More than two-thirds of the Chinese coolies who arrived in Peru between 1849 and 1874 died within the contract period. Web. A system of agents was used to infiltrate the rural villages of India and recruit labourers. [52], In 1866, the British, French and Chinese governments agreed to mitigate the abuse by requiring all traders to pay for the return of all workers after their contract ended. Kuliyata andanawa = Crying for a fee [in colonial times people would be paid to cry at funerals]). [78], In the early 1900s, the Chinese communities in Manila, Singapore, Mauritius, New Zealand, Victoria in Australia, the United States, and Victoria in British Columbia in Canada were all male dominated. [CHORUS:] Duppy know ah who fi frighten mek dem try. Although Chinese workers contributed to the building of the first First Transcontinental Railroad in the United States and of the Canadian Pacific Railway in western Canada, Chinese settlement was discouraged after completion of the construction. Coolie (1983) is an Indian Bollywood film about a coolie, Iqbal Aslam Khan (Amitabh Bachchan), who works at a railway station and has a lover. [36], The first campaign against the 'coolie' trade in England likened the system of indentured labour to the slavery of the past. [75] Up to the 1940s men made up the vast majority of the Costa Rican Chinese community. The importation of Asian migrant laborers into European colonies was not new, occurring as early as the 17th century. The word was used in this sense for labourers from India. They participated in the War of the Pacific, looting and burning down the haciendas where they worked, after the capture of Lima by the invading Chilean army in January 1880. The coolies' interracial relationships and marriages with Africans, Europeans and Indigenous peoples, formed some of the modern world's Afro-Asian and Asian Latin American populations.[40][41][42][43][44][45][46]. These workers were deceived about their terms of employment to a much greater extent than their Indian counterparts, and consequently, there was a much higher level of Chinese emigration during this period. Duppy has. [73], The scarcity of Indian women in the Caribbean may not have been completely due to the women's inability to perform the work required of them. VISIT: http://grmdaily.com/. The Chinese government also made efforts to secure the well-being of their nation's workers, with representations being made to relevant governments around the world. 1 (2019), and Coolie No. [13] Social and political pressure led to the abolition of the slave trade throughout the British Empire in 1833, with other European nations following suit. Jamaica instantly reminds you of the blue sea; silver sand beaches; a green, black, yellow flag; dreadlocks; and of course Bob Marley and his reggae music. [15], Given the close association of the beginning of coolie labor with African slavery, many contemporaries, including plantation owners, abolitionists, and government officials, struggled over whether coolie labor was just yet another form of slavery or a form of free labor. the forms of real animals like lizards and snakes; (3) an order of supernatural beings. Wight definition is - a living being : creature; especially : a human being. The Oscar-nominated 1966 film The Sand Pebbles depicts coolies working as laborers assisting American sailors aboard an American gun boat in 1926 civil war era China. [2] Coolie labor, unlike slavery, was under contract, consensual, paid, and temporary, with the coolie to regain complete freedom after their term of service. Despite attempts to restrict the influx of cheap labour from China, beginning in the 1870s Chinese workers helped construct a vast network of levees in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. What does duppie mean? [64], A major difference between the Chinese and the Indian coolie trades was that women and children were brought from India, along with men, while Chinese coolies were 99% male. End of African Slavery and the Beginning of the Coolie Trade, Debates over coolie labor as a form of slavery or free labor, Sex ratios and intermarriage among coolies, Some current dictionaries do not record any offensive meaning ("an unskilled laborer or porter usually in or from the Far East hired for low or subsistence wages", CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (, harvnb error: no target: CITEREFRobinson2010 (. ), To prevent hate speech (e.g. It also stars Rishi Kapoor, Kader Khan, and Waheeda Rehman, among others. In Cuba, for example, all coolies were issued a contract before leaving for Cuba—the contract would be printed in both Chinese and Spanish, and legalized by government officials. 29 January 2011. meaning have a safe trip COOLIE : the traditional Jamaican pithet for East Indians. it’s often said when one feels as if they are the best like no one can challenge them. The duration of a contract was typically five to eight years, but many coolies did not live out their term of service due to hard labour and mistreatment. Helly, "Idéologie et ethnicité"; Rodríguez Pastor, "Hijos del Celeste Imperio"; Trazegnies Granda, "En el país de las colinas de arena", Tomo II. It is a word used to mean a 'ghost' in Jamaican English. The word is sometimes spelled duffy. Workers were regularly checked up on by health inspectors, and they were vetted before transportation to ensure that they were suitably healthy and fit to be able to endure the rigours of labour. Some of these laborers signed contracts based on misleading promises, some were kidnapped and sold into the trade, some were victims of clan violence whose captors sold them to coolie brokers, while others sold themselves to pay off gambling debts. [10] However, in the 19th century, a far more robust system of the coolie trade emerged, in direct response to the end of the African slave trade and the end of slavery as the preferred mode of labor in many plantations across European colonies. Cargohold of Stars-Coolitude, Khal Torabully, translated by Nancy Carlson, Seagull, USA, 2021, This page was last edited on 9 March 2021, at 19:56. "[55], The term coolie was also applied to Chinese workers recruited for contracts on cacao plantations in German Samoa. Deewaar (1975) is an Indian crime drama written by Salim–Javed about a dockyard coolie, Vijay Verma (Amitabh Bachchan), who turns to a life of crime and becomes a Bombay underworld smuggler, inspired by the real-life Indian mafia don Haji Mastan.[85][86]. Words are tricky that way. Duppy synonyms. The National and Colonial Problem in Peru. meaning: Things are not always what they seem. Duppy are generally regarded as malevolent spirits. Duppy is a patois word meaning ghost or spirit. In 1938, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt used the term in one of his "Fireside Chats" (Number 13, 24 July 1938) while telling a story about "two Chinese coolies" arguing in a crowd. [a] The term differs from the word Dougla which refers to people of mixed African and Indian ancestry. Duppy is a word of African origin commonly used in various Caribbean islands, including Barbados and Jamaica, meaning ghost or spirit.