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‘Do you own non-Chinese mui tsai?’ Re-examining Race and Female Servitude in Malaya and Hong Kong, 1919–1939*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2012

RACHEL LEOW
RACHEL LEOW*
Affiliation:
Harvard University Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

This paper considers the abolition of the mui tsai (young female bondservants) as it unfolded in British Malaya, and challenges the overemphasis on Hong Kong as the primary focus of mui tsai scholarship. While the mui tsai system was defended as a time-honoured Chinese tradition, this paper uses new material to show that trans-racial considerations figured prominently in mui tsai abolition in Malaya, particularly in helping to recast it as a wider problem of child welfare. It is argued that this neglected aspect of mui tsai abolition only comes clearly to light in the Malayan case; for only in the intensely multi-racial conditions of peninsular Malaya could the question be asked: ‘Do you own non-Chinese mui tsai?’

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 46 , Issue 6 , November 2012 , pp. 1736 - 1763
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

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Footnotes

*

Many discerning readers have contributed insights to this article, which began as an MPhil dissertation. I wish to thank in particular Tim Harper, Chris Bayly and Richard Drayton for their early supervision and feedback. I am also indebted to those who have generously given their time, encouragement and expertise, including John Carroll, Chua Ai Lin, Mark Frost, Philippa Levine, David Pomfret, and the anonymous reader from MAS. All remaining errors are my own responsibility.

References

1 See Jaschok, Maria, Concubines and Bondservants: A Social History (London: Zed Books, 1988)Google Scholar.

2 Lim, Janet, Sold for Silver: An Autobiography (London: Collins, 1958)Google Scholar, recently re-published by Monsoon Books in 2004.

3 Norman Miners has provided the authoritative narrative of the mui tsai controversy in Hong Kong, based on an exhaustive perusal of Hong Kong colonial records. See Miners, Norman, Hong Kong Under Imperial Rule (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987)Google Scholar, Chapters 8 and 9. For a thorough reappraisal of the subject recently, see Carroll, John, ‘A National Custom: Debating Female Servitude in Late Nineteenth-Century Hong Kong’, Modern Asian Studies 43:6 (2009), pp. 1463–1493CrossRefGoogle Scholar; also Pomfret, David M., ‘“Child Slavery” in British and French Far-Eastern Colonies 1880–1945’, Past and Present, No. 21 (November 2008), pp. 175–213CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 Pedersen, Susan, ‘The Maternalist Moment in British Colonial Policy: The Controversy over ‘Child Slavery’ in Hong Kong 1917–1941’, Past and Present, No. 171 (May, 2001), pp. 164–165CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 On labour history, see Eng, Lai Ah, Peasants, Pullers and Prostitutes: A Preliminary Investigation into the Work of Chinese Women in Colonial Malaya (Singapore: ISEAS, 1986)Google Scholar; for feminist accounts, see Manderson, Lenore, ‘Colonial Desires: Sexuality, Race and Gender in British Malaya’, Journal of the History of Sexuality, Vol. 7, No. 3 (1997), pp. 372–388Google Scholar; for history of health and medicine, see Manderson, Lenore, Sickness and the State: Health and Illness in Colonial Malaya, 1870–1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

6 Yuen, Karen, ‘Theorising the Chinese: The Mui Tsai Controversy and Constructions of Transnational Chineseness in Hong Kong and British Malaya’, New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 6, No. 2 (December 2004), pp. 95–110Google Scholar.

7 Account synthesized from Haslewood, Clara and Haslewood, Hugh, Child Slavery in Hong Kong: The Mui Tsai System (London: The Sheldon Press, 1930), p. 3ffGoogle Scholar.

8 For a much more detailed and recent recount of this story, see Carroll, ‘A National Custom’.

9 Ho Kom Tong, ‘Memorandum submitted for the consideration of the Mui Tsai Commission on 12 May 1936’, Mui Tsai Commission in Hong Kong and Malaya: Evidence heard by the Commission, Written Answers to Questionnaires and Memoranda submitted by Witnesses (1936, 2 vols.), hereafter Evidence, I. p. 167.

10 See Khor, Neil and Siew, Khoo Keat, The Penang Po Leung Kuk: Chinese Women, Prostitution and a Welfare Organisation (Kuala Lumpur: Malayasian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 2003)Google Scholar.

11 See Lethbridge, Henry, Hong Kong: Stability and Change (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. 78–79Google Scholar; and Sinn, Elizabeth, ‘Chinese Patriarchy and the Protection of Women in Nineteenth Century Hong Kong’, in Jaschok, Maria and Miers, Suzanne (eds), Women and Chinese Patriarchy: Submission, Servitude and Escape (London: Zed Books, 1994), pp. 142–143Google Scholar.

12 See Jaschok, ‘Concubines and Bondservants’, p. 76.

13 Per Yuen, ‘Theorising the Chinese’.

14 Pedersen, ‘Maternalist Moment’, pp. 172–173.

15 See Midgley, Clare, Women Against Slavery: The British Campaigns 1780–1870 (Routledge, 1995)Google Scholar.

16 Haslewood and Haslewood, ‘Child Slavery in Hong Kong’.

17 Sir Edward Stubbs to Viscount Milner, 10 July 1920, The National Archives (hereafter TNA), CO 129/461.

18 Winston Churchill to Masterton Smith, 21 February 1922, TNA, CO 129/478; Winston Churchill to Sir Edward Stubbs, 22 February 1922, ‘Hong Kong Papers Relative to the Mui Tsai Question’, Parliamentary Papers, 1929–1930 (Cmd 3424), xxiii, pp. 3–4.

19 Alabaster, C. G., ‘Review of Legislation, 1923’, Journal of Comparative Legislation and International Law, 3rd series, Vol. 7, No. 3 (1925), pp. 161–162Google Scholar.

20 De Mello, A., ‘Review of Legislation, 1923: Hong Kong’, Journal of Comparative Legislation and International Law, Third Series, Vol. 7, No. 3 (1925), pp. 161–162Google Scholar.

21 Report by Secretary for Chinese Affairs enclosed in Clementi to Colonial Office, 22 February 1929, TNA, CO 129/514/2.

22 These included the Anti-Mui Tsai Society, various Christian groups and many Hong Kong labour guilds. See Miners, Hong Kong Under Imperial Rule, especially Chapter 8.

23 Lai, ‘Peasants, Pullers and Prostitutes’, p. 50.

24 Annual Report for the Secretary of Chinese Affairs, 1936, TNA, CO 825/23/2.

25 Woods, W. W., Mui Tsai in Hong Kong and Malaya: Report of Commission (London: His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1937), p. 103Google Scholar.

26 Ibid., p. 226.

27 Note by William Ormsby-Gore, 12 March 1927, TNA, CO 825/22/8.

28 Also variously spelt mui jai, mooi jai, mooi zai, mei zai. I have chosen to use the term mui tsai because it is the one most commonly employed by officials, agitators, defenders and scholars alike.

29 The colonial state had arguably become more sensitive to slavery, particularly in the Malayan context, for slavery had a longer history specific to the peninsula, in the form of debt bondage between Malay chiefs and their subjects. See Lasker, Bruno, Human Bondage in Southeast Asia (Chapel Hill, 1950)Google Scholar.

30 Pedersen, ‘Maternalist Moment’, p. 178.

31 Kopytoff, Igor and Miers, Suzanne (eds), Slavery in Africa: Historical and Anthropological Perspectives (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1977), pp. 7–11Google Scholar.

32 Watson, James L., ‘The Chinese Market in Slaves, Servants and Heirs’, in Watson, (ed.), Asian and African Forms of Slavery (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980), pp. 223–250Google Scholar.

33 Mrs Law Kung Mo, ‘Statement’, 4 July 1936, Evidence, II, p. 471.

34 Reverend A. H. Bray, ‘Statement’, 25 May 1935, Evidence, I, p. 174.

35 Also spelt sampozai, sum poh chai.

36 Lee Kong Chian, ‘Statement’, 12 June 1936, Evidence, II, p. 310.

37 A. W. Brewin, ‘Slavery, Marriage and Adoption in China’, Rhodes House Library, Oxford (hereafter RHL), Anti-Slavery Papers.

38 Kopytoff and Miers, Slavery in Africa, pp. 11–12.

39 Ibid., pp. 23–24.

40 Hansard, Parliamentary Debates, 5th series, CXXVII, cols. 1345–8 (31 March 1920).

41 Questions in the House of Commons Regarding Alleged Child Slavery in Hong Kong, 4 November 1920, Women's Library (henceforth WL), 3AMS/D/03.

42 Report by the League of Nations Committee of Experts on Slavery, 25 September 1931, TNA, CO 531/24/17.

43 Mrs Law Kung Mo, ‘Statement’, Evidence, II, p. 472.

44 A. Brewin, ‘Slavery, Marriage and Adoption in China’, n.d.

45 A Chinese euphemism for a non-principal marriage.

46 A. B. Jordan, ‘Report of Interview at Colonial Office’, 14 April 1935, Evidence, I, pp. 37–57.

47 George Maxwell, ‘Some Observations on the Report of the Mui Tsai Commission’, WL, 3AMS/D/04.

48 Lim, Shirley, Among the White Moonfaces: Memoirs of a Nyonya Feminist (Singapore: Times Books International, 1996)Google Scholar.

49 Chin, Koh Choo, ‘Implementing Government Policy for the Protection of Women and Girls in Singapore, 1948–1966’, in Jaschok, Maria and Miers, Suzanne (eds), Women and Chinese Patriarchy: Submission, Servitude and Escape (London: Zed Books, 1994), pp. 122–140Google Scholar.

50 Jaschok, ‘Concubines and Bondservants’, p. 75.

51 M. Brodie, ‘Statement’, Evidence, II, p. 325.

52 Jaschok, ‘Concubines and Bondservants’, p. 75.

53 But see Pomfret, ‘Child Slavery’, op. cit., whose comparative approach to child slavery in Hong Kong and Saigon suggests a marked awareness among French colonials from at least the 1930s of an ‘Annamite’ (Vietnamese) counterpart to Hong Kong's mui tsai problem (p. 180). Other parallels can be found in the French Indochinese context, including similar elite defenses of the mui tsai system as ‘customary’, and the growing influence on mui tsai debates of changing popular views of childhood and youth. Pomfret's work is to be commended for these insights.

54 Report of Interview at the Colonial Office, 3 April 1936, Evidence, I. pp. 16–24.

55 Letter from F. Wackrill to Alison Neilans, 18 May 1937, WL, 3AMS/D/04.

56 Report of Interview with a Deputation from the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society to the Mui Tsai Commission, 12 November 1936, Evidence, I, p. 65.

57 Report of Interview at Colonial Office, 14 April 1936, Evidence, I, pp. 37–57.

58 Andaya, Barbara and Andaya, Leonard, A History of Malaysia (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2001), pp. 180–181Google Scholar.

59 Yuen, ‘Theorising the Chinese’, p. 96.

60 Report of Interview at Colonial Office, 14 April 1936, Evidence, I, p. 37.

61 Straits Settlements, Memorandum, A. Caldecott to the Secretary of State, 20 November 1934, TNA, CO 882/16 No. 15; George Maxwell to the Colonial Office, 1 December 1934, TNA, CO 882/16, No. 7.

62 O. R. Howitt, ‘Statement’, 21 June 1936, Evidence, II, p. 355.

63 These questionnaires are included with the volumes of Evidence obtained by the Commission.

64 The following analysis uses the terms ‘Chinese’ and ‘non-Chinese’ only as they are employed in the Mui Tsai Commission's questionnaires and reports; they reflect the instinctively racial distinctions made in the official mind with regard to the mui tsai, rather than distinctions which historians ought to use or read uncritically. Indeed a central contention of this paper is that these distinctions eventually proved inadequate even to officials. My thanks to Philippa Levine for her clarity and insight in this matter.

65 M. Brodie, ‘Statement’, 15 June 1936, Evidence, II, p. 323.

66 J. M. Black, ‘Statement’, Evidence, II, p. 526.

67 J. M. Barron, ‘Statement’, 24 June 1936, Evidence, II, pp. 361–362.

68 A milestone in this process of tightening immigration restrictions was the Aliens Ordinance in 1933. On this matter of Chinese immigration, see Hock, Saw Swee, The Population of Peninsular Malaysia (Singapore: Singapore University Press, 1998), pp. 11–22Google Scholar.

69 J. M. Barron, ‘Statement’, 24 June 1936, Evidence, II, pp. 361–62.

70 See statements by A. Bingham, Ding Liong Di and the Protector of Chinese in Kedah, F. L. Williams, in Evidence, II, respectively pp. 320, 342, 430.

71 See statements by Cheah Toon Lock, Foo Choong Yit, Chee Wor Lock and Seah Eng Tong, in Evidence, II, respectively pp. 315, 337, 352, 418.

72 Chang Chong Siew, ‘Statement’, 25 June 1936, Evidence, II, p. 416.

73 Strictly speaking this is an erroneous statement; adoption had no legal basis in Malaya until the gazetting of the Children's Ordinance in 1938.

74 M. Dodsworth, ‘Statement’, 24 June 1936, Evidence, II, p. 365.

75 Cheah Toon Lok, ‘Statement’, 21 June 1936, Evidence, II, p. 354.

76 J. A. Black, ‘Statement’, 10 July 1936, Evidence, II, p. 526.

77 Choo Kia Peng, ‘Memorandum on Mui Tsai and Adoption in Relation to Slave Trade’, Evidence, pp. 456–459.

78 J. T. N. Handy, ‘Statement’, 11 July 1936, Evidence, II, p. 532.

79 Djamour uses the term ‘Malaysian’, which seems anachronistic in the light of present conventions. According to her footnotes, ‘Malaysian’ signifies Malays as well as ‘Other Malaysians’, which are, according to her, Javanese, Bugis, Sumatrans, Banjarese etc.. For these, the term ‘Malay’ is now used.

80 Djamour, Judith, ‘Adoption among Singaporean Malaysians’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 82, No. 2 (July–December, 1952), p. 166CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

81 Maxwell, ‘Observations’, p. 22.

82 There was a great deal of difference in opinion on this matter between the Attorney-General and the Legal Advisor of the Federated Malay States. See Black, Evidence, II, p. 526.

83 Vaughan, J. D., The Manners and Customs of the Chinese of the Straits Settlements (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 88Google Scholar.

84 Firth, Rosemary, Housekeeping Among Malay Peasants (London: London School of Economics Monographs on Social Anthropology, No. 7, 1943), p. 4Google Scholar.

85 Djamour, ‘Adoption among Singaporean Malaysians’, p. 166.

86 Pomfret, ‘Child Slavery’, pp. 188–190.

87 See Suzanne Miers’ account of George Maxwell's service on the Advisory Committee of Experts on Slavery, in her Slavery in the Twentieth Century: The Evolution of a Global Pattern (California: AltaMira Press, 2003) Chapter 14, especially p. 222.

88 Pomfret, ‘Child Slavery’, p. 195; Miners, Hong Kong Under Imperial Rule, p. 185.

89 For contemporary records of these administrative developments, see Colonial Office Conference, 1927: Summary of Proceedings (London: HMSO, 1927).

90 For these, see Pomfret, ‘Child Slaves’, pp. 194–195; Pomfret suggests that the outbreak of war between China and Japan in 1937 precipitated an influx of women and children refugees into Hong Kong, which helped sharpen the exigencies of action in matters of child exploitation.

91 Letter from George Maxwell to G. E. J. Gent, 13 November 1937, TNA, CO 882/16, No. 31.

92 Sir Shenton Thomas to William Ormsby Gore, 27 September 1937, TNA, CO 825/22/9.