‘That unit of civilisation’ and ‘the talent peculiar to women’: British employers and their servants in the nineteenth-century Indian empire.
Domestic servants across the British Empire were instrumental in constructing colonial domesticity. In metropole and colony, they marked the physical boundaries of the house and family and the categorical boundaries of class, gender and racial difference. However, in colonial India, the gender and r...
| Published in: | Identities Vol. 22; no. 6; pp. 706 - 722 |
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| Format: | Article |
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Taylor & Francis Ltd
Dec2015
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ssf&AN=110203820&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ssf uiTerm: 110203820 longDbName: Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson) uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 1070289X IDT jtl: Identities issn: 1070289X maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Dec2015 vid: 22 iid: 6 pid: 377 pub: Taylor & Francis Ltd artinfo: ui: 110203820 10.1080/1070289X.2014.950971 ppf: 706 ppct: 16 formats: tig: atl: ‘That unit of civilisation’ and ‘the talent peculiar to women’: British employers and their servants in the nineteenth-century Indian empire. aug: au: Dussart, Fae Ceridwen su: India Race identity Imperialism Household employees Employers sug: subj: Race identity Imperialism India Private Households Household employees Employers keyword: colonialism domesticity gender race servants colonialism domesticity gender race servants ab: Domestic servants across the British Empire were instrumental in constructing colonial domesticity. In metropole and colony, they marked the physical boundaries of the house and family and the categorical boundaries of class, gender and racial difference. However, in colonial India, the gender and racial status of Indian servants, relative to both their colonial employers and their metropolitan counterparts, disrupted the dynamics of dependence that structured metropolitan employer/servant relations and identities. Despite efforts to dutifully ‘civilise’ households according to a ‘British’ standard, the day-to-day reality was one in which ambivalence and uncertainty towards servants were commonplace among colonisers and where servants participated in the creation of a way of life that was specifically colonial, even while it sought to preserve and proselytise ‘Britishness’. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: N holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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