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Sold And Stolen: Domestic 'Slaves' And The Rhetoric Of 'Protection' In Darwin And Singapore During The 1920s And 1930s, Claire Lowrie
Sold And Stolen: Domestic 'Slaves' And The Rhetoric Of 'Protection' In Darwin And Singapore During The 1920s And 1930s, Claire Lowrie
Faculty of Arts - Papers (Archive)
Introduction: This paper contemplates the similarities in the working lives of two very different girls.1 It focuses on part descent Aboriginal girls of Darwin working as domestic servants in European homes, and the mui tsai or girl slaves2 of Singapore working for Chinese families. These girls share the common experience of being removed from their families, trafficked a great distance from their homes and forced into domestic service. This paper will consider the common governmental responses to these girls in terms of “protection”. For the mui tsai protection involved potential rescue from forced domestic service. For part-Aboriginal girls, protection resulted …