When the transatlantic slave trade was abolished in the mid-19th century, British and other colonial powers turned to Indian indentureship as a replacement. From the 1830s to 1920s, around 2 million Indians were transported to colonies in the Caribbean, Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific, including Mauritius, Guyana, and Fiji.

Many were coerced into contracts, with recruiters exploiting poverty, language barriers, and illiteracy to secure signatures on multi-year agreements they could not fully understand. The term kuli/coolie, once applied not only to Indian indentured laborers but also to other migrant workers such as Chinese railroad laborers in North America, was derogatory, reducing people to their labor and erasing their identities. Today, many descendants seek to reclaim the word as part of honoring and preserving their history.