Masters and Servants

Claire Lowrie is Lecturer in History at the University of Wollongong, Australia

• Introduction: Domestic service and colonial mastery in the tropics 1. A 'second Singapore'? The connected histories of Darwin and Singapore, 1860s-1930s2. Historicising 'houseboys': cultures of male servitude in the tropics, 1880s-1910s3. White masters and their Chinese 'houseboys': masculinity, sexuality and racial anxiety in the home, 1880s-1930s4. White women and the case of the disappearing Chinese 'houseboys', 1910s-30s5. Idle mems, weary wives and 'red hot revolutionaries': domestic tension and political antagonism in the home, 1910s-30s6. Masters and colonisers: the politics of Chinese domestic mastery, 1920s-30sConclusion: Domestic service at the end of empireSelect bibliography of secondary sourcesIndex

‘Based on her PhD thesis, the author draws on a very wide array of sources to explore a subject seldom found in official documentation to paint a vivid picture of class, race and gender relations amongst both male and female masters and their domestic servants.’Michael Quinlan, University of New South Wales‘Lowrie has brought to light a fascinating, hitherto neglected aspect of the ‘cultures of empire in the tropics’, as her subtitle puts it. Her study iscrisply written, carefully researched, and clearly argued.’DaneKennedy, George Washington University, Australian Historical Studies, 48,2017