This volume has sought to rediscover the coolie, firstly through an exploration of the stereotypes which evolved about the Indian labour migrant in official documents and in the early literature, and secondly through an assessment of more recent writing which has explored Indian identities in diaspora. The purpose of this exploration has been to redefine and reappropriate the concept of the coolie. Through coolitude, an articulation and an evocation of the Indian labour diaspora, the coolie can effectively be revoiced. Contemporary texts which described – and often distorted – our image of the coolie, whether travellers' observations or accounts of colonists and residents of the territories to which Indians migrated, have been characterized by exoticism.