Claire Lowrie

Masters and servants

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Date: 05-2016

DOI: 10.7228/MANCHESTER/9780719095337.001.0001

‘A Frivolous Prosecution’: Allegations of Physical and Sexual Abuse of Domestic Servants and the Defence of Colonial Patriarchy in Darwin and Singapore, 1880s–1930s

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Date: 2018

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-76231-9_12

Chinese elites, hill stations and contested racial discrimination in interwar colonial Malaya and the Philippines

Publisher: Elsevier BV

Date: 2023

DOI: 10.1016/J.JHG.2022.10.002

Enduring Forms of Indenture Chinese Domestic Workers and the use of Penal Sanctions in Colonial Singapore, 1920s-1930s

Publisher: Amsterdam University Press

Date: 2022

DOI: 10.5117/9789048557820/ICAS.2022.048

Gender and Domestic Workers

Publisher: Wiley

Date: 24-01-2021

DOI: 10.1002/9781118924396.WBIEA2416

Abstract: The term “domestic servant” is often perceived to be synonymous with “woman.” However, in particular cultural contexts and time periods, paid domestic labor performed in private homes was a role associated with men. The “houseboy,” for ex le, was an integral part of colonial households in Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific. In the contemporary era, domestic service as an occupation is undergoing a resurgence and is overwhelmingly a feminized sector of work that includes a high proportion of migrant workers. The revival of the occupation has been attributed to the persistence of inequalities, particularly those stemming from the legacy of colonialism and those related to the economic forces of globalization. As their labor is performed behind closed doors, domestic workers are vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. In recent years, domestic workers have engaged in transnational labor activism with the goal of regulating wages and conditions across the sector.

Murder and the Working Lives of Chinese Male Servants in Colonial Singapore, 1910s–1930s

Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)

Date: 24-06-2020

DOI: 10.1017/S0020859020000358

Abstract: Chinese men working as servants in colonial Singapore were a largely unregulated group of workers and, as a result, few traces of their lives have been preserved in the colonial archive. Rare cases in which Chinese domestic workers were accused of murder compelled the colonial state to directly intervene in their lives. This article explores the experiences of Chinese migrant men who worked as domestic servants in Singapore by analysing three murders that occurred between the 1910s and the 1930s. Details of the crimes and the arrests, along with the processes of conviction and sentencing, were reported in detail in the local newspapers. In addition, testimonies of the accused and of witnesses were preserved in Coroner's Court records. This rich criminal archive is used to shed light upon aspects of domestic servants’ lives that would otherwise remain obscure.

‘What a Picture Can Do’: Contests of colonial mastery in photographs of Asian ‘houseboys’ from Southeast Asia and Northern Australia, 1880s–1920s

Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)

Date: 23-04-2018

DOI: 10.1017/S0026749X16000871

Abstract: The archives of colonial Southeast Asia and northern Australia contain hundreds of photographs of masterly white colonizers and their seemingly devoted Asian ‘houseboys’. This article analyses this rich photographic archive, drawing on ex les from the Netherlands Indies, Singapore, Hong Kong, the Philippines, and the Northern Territory of Australia. It explores how photographs of ‘houseboys’ worked as a ‘visual culture’ of empire that was intended to illustrate and immortalize white colonial power, but that also expressed anxieties about colonial projects. As well as a tool for understanding the assertions and insecurities of white colonizers, the article argues that photographs of servants can be used to illuminate the working lives of these Chinese, Malay, Javanese, and Filipino men. Drawing on a remarkable studio portrait that was commissioned by three Filipino servants and an oral history account from a Chinese servant, I conclude that both masters and servants used the photographic medium to assert their power in the home and the colony.

Australians in Shanghai: Race, Rights and Nation in Treaty Port China

Publisher: Informa UK Limited

Date: 02-01-2018

DOI: 10.1080/1031461X.2018.1415611

Transcolonial influences on everyday American imperialism: The politics of Chinese domestic servants in the Philippines

Publisher: University of California Press

Date: 11-2012

DOI: 10.1525/PHR.2012.81.4.511

Abstract: From the first years of the American occupation of the Philippines, the American colonial elite ran their households with the help of Chinese servants. The preference of government officials, including Governor William Howard Taft himself, for Chinese domestic labor was in flagrant disregard for the policy of Chinese exclusion as well as the principle of “benevolent assimilation,” according to which the Americans claimed to be “uplifting” the Filipino people by providing them with the opportunity to experience the dignity of labor. In opting for Chinese rather than Filipino domestic labor, elite Americans were replicating the traditions of the “Old World” colonizers, particularly the British in Asia.

Colonial constructions of masculinity: Transforming Aboriginal Australian men into 'houseboys'

Publisher: Wiley

Date: 07-07-2009

DOI: 10.1111/J.1468-0424.2009.01550.X

Imperial dreams and nightmares

Publisher: Informa UK Limited

Date: 03-04-2017

DOI: 10.1080/14490854.2017.1321086

The Transcolonial Politics of Chinese Domestic Mastery in Singapore and Darwin 1910s-1930s

Publisher: Project MUSE

Date: 2011

DOI: 10.1353/CCH.2011.0035

White ‘men’ and their Chinese ‘boys’

Publisher: Informa UK Limited

Date: 2013

DOI: 10.1080/14490854.2013.11668445

University Of Wollongong

Location: Australia

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The University Of Auckland

Location: New Zealand

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The University Of Newcastle

Location: Australia

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University Of Sydney

Location: Australia

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Organisation

Location: Australia

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Ayahs And Amahs: Transcolonial Servants In Australia And Britain

Start Date: 2020

End Date: 2023

Funder: Australian Research Council

Chinese Indentured Labour In The Colonial Asia Pacific Region, 1919–1966

Start Date: 2018

End Date: 2020

Funder: Australian Research Council

A Transcolonial History Of Domestic Service In The Asia-Pacific

Start Date: 2011

End Date: 2013

Funder: Australian Research Council

Discovery Projects - Grant ID: DP110100490

Start Date: 2011

End Date: 12-2014

Amount: $125,000.00

Funder: Australian Research Council

Discovery Projects - Grant ID: DP180100695

Start Date: 2018

End Date: 12-2023

Amount: $171,456.00

Funder: Australian Research Council

Discovery Projects - Grant ID: DP200100375

Start Date: 07-2020

End Date: 12-2024

Amount: $191,437.00

Funder: Australian Research Council