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male servants were referred to as ‘houseboy’ or ‘boy’ in spite of the fact that in many cases they were adult men. The preference for indoor male servants was a peculiarity of the tropical colonial world. In Britain and Europe by the late nineteenth century, as well as in temperate British settler colonies and former colonies, women dominated the servant class. In Singapore and Darwin, as with Hong
‘When a woman starts to boss about the house the servants leave’. 1 (Lucia Bach recalling her father’s explanation of the decline in Chinese house-boys in Penang, British Malaya, in the late 1920s) The 1910s to the 1920s marked a period of social, demographic
) Across the tropics, male servants were referred to by their European employers as ‘boy’ or ‘houseboy’ despite the fact that in many cases they were fully grown men. 2 As historians of colonial domestic service have noted, by infantilising male servants European colonists sought to warn of and mediate against the sexual threat which these servants supposedly presented to their
Masters and servants explores the politics of colonial mastery and domestic servitude in the neighbouring British tropical colonies of Singapore and Darwin. Like other port cities throughout Southeast Asia, Darwin and Singapore were crossroads where goods, ideas, cultures and people from the surrounding regions mixed and mingled via the steam ships lines. The focus of this book is on how these connections produced a common tropical colonial culture in these sites. A key element of this shared culture was the presence of a multiethnic entourage of domestic servants in colonial homes and a common preference for Chinese ‘houseboys’. Through an exploration of master-servant relationships within British, white Australian and Chinese homes, this book illustrates the centrality of the domestic realm to the colonial project. The colonial home was a contact zone which brought together European colonists, non-white migrants and Indigenous people, most often through the domestic service relationship. Rather than a case of unquestioned mastery and devoted servitude, relationships between masters and servants had the potential not only to affirm but also destabilise the colonial hierarchy. The intimacies, antagonisms and anxieties of the relationships between masters and servants provide critical insights into the dynamics of colonial power with the British empire.
Chinese cooks and house-boys who were available when I first went to Darwin for £2 a month can now command £20 a month for their services, and you must be careful to give your cook courteous notification if you desire to bring a guest home to dinner. 1 (Mrs Finnis, a member of the white Australian
’ servants was intended to mark their status as colonists and to protect themselves against the (perceived) debilitating effects of the tropical sun. In Singapore and Darwin, Chinese ‘houseboys’ were considered to make the best servants. They were widely employed within the homes of the colonial elite. This chapter draws on shipping records, newspaper articles, trade figures
white plantation suits and solar topees and recruiting Chinese labourers to work as ‘houseboys’ and cooks in their homes. These two colonies were linked by a flow of products, people and ideas between them. Yet, the dream of making Darwin ‘the Singapore of Australia’ was not to be. By the 1890s Darwin was a frontier town in decline whose existence was barely acknowledged by the residents of its far more
this shared culture was the presence of a multiethnic entourage of domestic servants in the homes of British, white Australian and Asian colonial elites, and a common preference for Chinese ‘houseboys’. The ‘considerable luxury’ of being tended to by a retinue of servants, headed by a ‘houseboy’, was a symbol and an expression of coloniser status in the tropics and was part of a pattern of domestic
the equal of the black man if she is on the same level as the black man’s chattel, his wife?’ 6 No white woman could feel secure if, in the eyes of her houseboy, she were no better than his enslaved wives. Her prestige as a special being dissipated, she would be subject to greater and still greater indignities. Just as a white vagrant or criminal injured white prestige, so too did public displays of
. Do not allow natives other than your own servants to sleep on the premises. Dismiss the adult houseboy if possible and engage picaninies or native women. Never permit male natives in the bedrooms. Stop supplying natives with special passes allowing them to remain at large after hours.41 The Vigilance Society took to staging raids on nearby African quarters in search of “known criminals.” These raids, however, alarmed the local police who “warned these people to behave themselves” because “any transgressions of the law on their part will lead them into serious