Masters and servants explores the politics of colonial mastery and domestic servitude in the neighbouring British colonies of Singapore and Darwin. Like other port cities throughout Southeast Asia, these colonies acted as crossroads, where goods, ideas, cultures and people from the surrounding regions mixed and mingled via the steam ship lines. The focus of this book is on how these connections produced a common tropical colonial culture; a key element being the presence of a multiethnic entourage of domestic servants in colonial homes and a common preference for Chinese 'houseboys'.With meticulous original archive research and a focus on transcolonial connections, comparative analysis is provided of a settler colony in northern Australia and an exploitation colony in Southeast Asia, putting the book at the forefront of current postcolonial scholarship. The central argument of Masters and Servants is that 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. This book explores master-servant relationships within British, white Australian and Chinese homes. Such relationships had the potential not only to affirm but also destabilise the colonial hierarchy. The intimacies, antagonisms and anxieties of the encounters between masters and servants provide critical insights into the dynamics of colonial power with the British Empire. Masters and servants will be essential reading for academics and students of colonial history and the history of the British Empire.
