Claire Lowrie

White ‘men’ and their Chinese ‘boys’: Sexuality, Masculinity and Colonial Power in Singapore and Darwin, 1880s-1930s

This paper explores the tense and intimate encounters between white men and their Chinese ‘houseboys’ in the neighbouring British colonies of Darwin and Singapore from the late nineteenth century to the early 1930s. In spite of the fact that Darwin was part of a white settler colony and Singapore was a British exploitation colony, the tropical colonial culture which developed in these sites shared marked similarities. In Darwin and Singapore, white colonists employed a multiethnic and male dominated entourage of domestic servants. In both sites Chinese ‘houseboys’ were the favoured servants, reflecting transcolonial and racialised conceptions of Chinese servants as efficient, loyal and reliable. By studying the relationships between British and white Australian masters and their Chinese servants in these distinct yet connected tropical colonies, this paper shows how concerns about masculinity, homosexuality and power played out in the colonial home and were manifested in different ways in different colonial contexts. This article has been peer-reviewed.

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

This chapter explores the relationship between domestic service, violence, and colonial masculinities in the settler colony of Darwin and the exploitation colony of Singapore. The chapter analyses representations of assault and abuse of domestic servants by their British, white Australian, and Chinese masters in order to illuminate the ways in which violence could challenge or sustain colonial patriarchy. The central argument is that the ways in which violence towards Chinese and Aboriginal servants was either justified or ignored by the press, colonial officials, and ordinary colonists reflected an underlying agenda to protect the reputation of ruling-class men and the colonial venture as a whole. By comparing Darwin and Singapore, this chapter aims to illuminate the shared and particular preoccupations that underpinned settler and non-settler colonial projects.

Imperial dreams and nightmares

This collection of chapters edited by Andrekos Varnava critically evaluates the underlying aims and justifications of a range of colonial projects from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. T...