Colonial constructions of masculinity: Transforming aboriginal Australian men into 'houseboys'

Gender and History

Volumn 21, Issue 2, 2009, Pages 305-323

  Martínez, Julia ^a   Lowrie, Claire ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WOLLONGONG   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

COLONIALISM; DOMESTIC WORK; GENDER ROLE; HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY; INDIGENOUS POPULATION; MALE; RACE;

AUSTRALASIA; AUSTRALIA; DARWIN; NORTHERN TERRITORY;

EID: 67650663227     PISSN: 09535233     EISSN: 14680424     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0424.2009.01550.x     Document Type: Article

References (115)

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2. Estimated from a list of 87 employees in the Darwin region. 'Statement of Amounts due to date of four-weekly payment', 30 June 1938, F1, 1938/ 17, National Archives of Australia (NAA), Darwin.
3. Jacki Huggins, 'White Aprons, Black Hands: Aboriginal Women Domestic Servants in Queensland', in Kay Saunders and Ann McGrath (eds), Aboriginal Workers: Special Edition of Labour History 69 (1995), pp. 188-95, here p. 194.
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5. 'Domestic Service since 1750', pp. 187-245.
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7. Hamilton, 'Domestic Dilemmas', p. 75.
8. See Warwick Anderson, The Cultivation of Whiteness: Science, Health and Racial Destiny in Australia (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2005).
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10. Alan Powell, Far Country: A Short History of the Northern Territory (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1982), pp. 2, 6, 137.
11. Victoria Haskins, 'Domestic Service and Frontier Feminism: The Call for a Woman Visitor to 'Half- Caste' Girls and Women in Domestic Service, 1925-1928', Frontiers 28 (2007), pp. 124-64, esp. pp. 125-6.
12. Inara Walden notes the 'gender bias' in the removal of girls and their training as servants. Inara Walden, "'ThatWas Slavery Days": Aboriginal Domestic Servants in New SouthWales in the Twentieth Century', in Saunders and McGrath (eds), Aboriginal Workers, p. 196.
13. B. W. Higman, Domestic Service in Australia (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2002), p. 53.
14. Higman, Domestic Service, pp. 55, 61.
15. Ann McGrath, Born in the Cattle: Aborigines in Cattle Country (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1987), p. 33.
16. McGrath, Born in the Cattle, p. 53.
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23. Morrell, 'Of Boys and Men', p. 616
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25. Elsbeth Locher-Scholten, 'So Close and Yet So Far: The Ambivalence of Dutch Colonial Rhetoric of Javanese Servants in Indonesia, 1900-1942', in Julia Clancy-Smith and Frances Gouda (eds), Domesticating the Empire: Race, Gender and Family Life in French and Dutch Colonialism (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998), pp. 131-53, here p. 141.
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27. Raffaella Sarti, 'The True Servant: Self-Definition of Male Domestics in an Italian City', History of the Family 10 (2005), pp. 407-33, here p. 407.
28. Lai Ah Eng, Peasants, Proletarians and Prostitutes: A Preliminary Investigation into the Work of Chinese Women in Colonial Malaya (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1986), p. 77.
29. Locher-Scholten, 'So Close and Yet So Far', p. 135; Alison Blunt, 'Imperial Geographies of Home: British Domesticity in India, 1886-1925', Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 24 (1999), pp. 421-40, here p. 430.
30. Higman, Domestic Service in Australia, p. 45.
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32. 'Report of the Administrator of the Northern Territory', Commonwealth Parliamentary Papers, 1910, p. 7.
33. Gilruth to W.M. Hughes, PrimeMinister, regarding the report of the Royal Commissioner, Justice Ewing, on Gilruth's administration, 24 June 1920, A1/1, 30/6111, NAA, Canbe
34. Masson, An Untamed Territory, p. 44.
35. Powell, Far Country, p. 161.
36. Aboriginals Ordinance, No. 16 of 1911, Commonwealth of Australia Gazette 2, Melbourne, 8 January 1912.
37. Baldwin Spencer to Atlee Hunt, 15 April 1912, Atlee Hunt Papers, MS 52/ 1042, National Library of Australia, Canberra.
38. Cited in Anderson, The Cultivation of Whiteness, p. 58.
39. J. T. Beckett to Dr H. Basedow, Chief Protector and Chief Medical Inspector, 29 July 1911, A1/1 1912/10964, NAA, Canberra.
40. 'Statement of Amounts due to date of four-weekly payment', 30 June 1938.
41. No. 9 of 1918. An Ordinance Relating to Aboriginals, The Northern Territory of Australia, Part IV - Employment of Aboriginals, Government Gazette, 26 October 1918.
42. Chinese storekeepers to Justice Mitchell, Government Resident, 22March 1911, A1/1 1912/10547, NAA, Canberra.
43. 1918 Aboriginals Ordinance.
44. 'Annual Report of the Northern Territory', Commonwealth Parliamentary Papers, 1917.
45. Bleakley's policy is discussed in C. D. Rowley, The Destruction of Aboriginal Society: Aboriginal Policy and Practice (Canberra: ANU Press, 1970), pp. 255-73.
46. 'Report of the Chief Protector to Government Resident of the Northern Territory', Commonwealth Parliamentary Papers, 1936.
47. Tony Austin, I Can Picture the Old Home So Clearly: The Commonwealth and Half-Caste Youth, 1911- 1939 (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 1993), p. 67.
48. C. L. A. Abbott, 'Report on the Administration of the Northern Territory', Commonwealth Parliamentary Papers, 1937.
49. Cecil Cook, Chief Protector of Aboriginals Report, 8 July 1936, A1/1, 37/ 70, NAA, Canberra.
50. Anderson, Cultivation of Whiteness, p. 218.
51. Xavier Herbert, Capricornia (Sydney: Pacific Books, 1937), p. 10. The term lubra refers to an Aboriginal women and in this period usually implies 'wife'.
52. Robert MacDonald, Superintendent of Kahlin Compound in 'Annual Report of the Northern Territory', Commonwealth Parliamentary Papers, 1917-18, p. 45
53. Curfew imposed by Protector Macdonald. Northern Territory Times, 14 October 1920.
54. Northern Standard, 3 January 1936.
55. Regulations under the Aboriginals Ordinance 1918-1933', Section 30, Commonwealth Gazette 40, 29 June 1933, p. 941.
56. Julia Martinez, 'Ethnic Policy and Practice in Darwin', in Regina Ganter with Julia Martinez and Gary Lee, Mixed Relations: Asian Aboriginal Contact in North Australia (Crawley: University of Western Australia Press, 2006), pp. 122-39, here p. 127.
57. John Smolenski, 'Hearing Voices: Microhistory, Dialogicality and the Recovery of Popular Culture on an Eighteenth-Century Virginia Plantation', Slavery and Abolition 24 (2003), pp. 1-23, here p. 9.
58. Transcript of Interview with Hazel Mackey (1990), NTRS 226, Ref. TS 625, tape 2, p. 7, Northern Territory Archives Service (NTAS), Darwin.
59. C. Price Conigrave, North Australia (London: Jonathan Cape, 1936), pp. 120-21.
60. Sophie White, "'Wearing Three or Four Handkerchiefs around his Collar, and Elsewhere about Him": Slaves' Constructions of Masculinity and Femininity in French Colonial New Orleans', Gender & History 15 (2003), pp. 528-49, here p. 535.
61. 'Regulations under the Aboriginals Ordinance 1918-1933', Part II, 13a., Commonwealth Gazette 40, 29 June 1933, p. 936.
62. NAWU, 'Constitution and General Rules', Rule 6, cited in Andrew Markus, 'Talka Longa Mouth: Aborigines and the Labour Movement 1890-1970', in Ann Curthoys and Andrew Markus (eds), Who Are Our Enemies? Racism and the Australian Working Class (Sydney: Hale and Iremonger with the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, 1978), pp. 138-57, here p. 149.
63. Workers' Weekly, 30 May 1930, p. 2.
64. Northern Standard, 2 September 1930; Workers' Weekly, 6 November 1931.
65. Transcript of Interview with Sheila Hansen, NTRS 226, Ref. TS 640, tape 1, p. 7, NTAS.
66. Transcript of Interview with Thomas O'Connor (Con) Scott (1990), NTRS 226, Ref. TS 616, tape 1, p. 14, NTAS.
67. McGrath, Born in the Cattle, p. 55.
68. Transcript of Interview with James Watts, NTRS 226, Ref. TS 605, tape 1, p. 15, NTAS.
69. Interview with Hansen, tape 1, p. 6.
70. McGrath, Born in the Cattle, p. 55.
71. Interview with Hansen, tape 1, p. 6.
72. Transcript of Interview with Percy Fong (1981), OH463, p. 11, Battye Library Oral History Collection, Perth.
73. Transcript of Interview with Patrick McDonald (1990), NTRS 226, Ref. TS 655, tape 2, p. 8, NTAS.
74. Transcript of Interview with Beryl Cashman (1984), NTRS 226, Ref. TS 25, tape 1, p. 10, NTAS.
75. Interview with Cashman, p. 11.
76. Lockwood, Australia's Pearl Harbour, p. 108.
77. 'Lure of the South', Northern Standard, 4 February 1927.
78. Jeremy Martens, 'Settler Homes, Manhood and "Houseboys": An Analysis of Natal's Rape Scare of 1886', Journal of Southern African Studies 28 (2002), pp. 379-400, here p. 393.
79. Karen Hansen, 'Household Work as a Man's Job: Sex and Gender in Domestic Service in Zambia', Anthropology Today 2 (1986), pp. 18-23, here p. 18.
80. Morrell, 'Of Boys and Men', p. 623; Kam Louie, Theorising Chinese Masculinity: Society and Gender in China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 8-9.
81. Martens, 'Settler Homes', pp. 379, 381.
82. Dorothy Hodgson, "'Once Intrepid Warriors": Modernity and the Production of Maasai Masculinities', Ethnology 38 (1999), pp. 121-50, here p. 125.
83. 'The Commission of Crown Lands, cited in Henry Reynolds, With the White People (Ringwood: Penguin, 1990), p. 90.
84. Northern Standard, 26 May 1936.
85. Reynolds, With the White People, p. 91.
86. 'Round About', Northern Standard, 12 May 1936.
87. Masson, An Untamed Territory, p. 47
88. C. L. A. Abbott, Australia's Frontier Province (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1950), p. 150.
89. Interview with Mackey, tape 2, p. 5.
90. Elizabeth Vibert, "Real Men Hunt Buffalo": Masculinity, Race and Class in British Fur Trader's Narratives', Gender & History 8 (1996), pp. 4-21, here p. 5.
91. Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), pp. 17-19.
92. Interview with Mackey, tape 2, p. 5.
93. Interview with Mackey, tape 2, p. 5.
94. Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Conquest (New York: Routledge, 1995), p. 143.
95. McClintock, Imperial Leather, p. 145.
96. Masson, An Untamed Territory, p. 46.
97. Victoria Haskins and John Maynard, 'Sex, Race and Power: Aboriginal Men and White Women in Australian History', Australian Historical Studies 126 (2005), pp. 191-216, here p. 206.
98. Abbott, Australia's Frontier Province, pp. 139-40.
99. Cecil Cook, cited in McGrath, Born in the Cattle, p. 73.
100. Fiona Paisley, 'Race Hysteria, Darwin 1938', Australian Feminist Studies 16 (2001), pp. 43-60, here p. 43.
101. Martens, 'Settler Homes', pp. 381, 396.
102. Mrinalini Sinha, 'Giving Masculinity a History: Some Contributions from the Historiography of Colonial India', Gender & History 11 (1999), pp. 445-60, here p. 447.
103. Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power. Stoler makes the point, however, that the 'proliferation of discourse about sexual assault and the measures used to prevent it had virtually no correlation with actual incidences of rape of European women', p. 58.
104. Paisley, 'Race Hysteria', p. 53.
105. Rowley, The Destruction of Aboriginal Society, pp. 203-4.
106. 1918 Aboriginals Ordinance.
107. Herbert, Capricornia, pp. 10, 13.
108. Baldwin Spencer, Wanderings in Wild Australia, vol. 2 (London: Macmillan, 1928), p. 617.
109. Transcript of Interview with Les and Kay Lampe (1984), NTRS 226, Ref. TS 699, tape 1, p. 2, NTAS.
110. Masson, Untamed Territory, pp. 47-50.
111. On earlier British conceptions of men as independent protectors of the family, and the idea, for abolitionists, that the end of slavery would mean the start of adulthood, and that a black man would no longer be 'a chattel' but a man, see Catherine Hall, White, Male and Middle Class: Explorations in Feminism and History (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992), p. 32.
112. Beckett to Basedow, 29 July 1911.
113. 'The Larrakeyah Tribe, Deputation to Visit Col. Weddell', Northern Standard, 24 March 1938.
114. Marilyn Lake, 'Translating Needs into Rights: Race, Manhood and the FamilyWage', Tasmanian Historical Studies 9 (2004), pp. 34-42, here p. 34.
115. Northern Standard, 23 August 1938.