The Advantages of Empire
The Advantages of Empire
Chinese Servants and Conflicts over Settler Domesticity in the “White Pacific,” 1870–1900
This chapter discusses Aaron Sargent and Reverend Otis Gibson's dispute concerning Chinese domestic labor in the United States during the proceedings of United States Congress's Joint Special Committee to Investigate Chinese Immigration. Gibson and Sargent's impasse reflected a broader debate about domestic labor and to what extent white women workers had the right to establish sovereignty over the home as a workplace. Through their discourse the chapter shows that questions about whether servants deserved to socialize in their employers' homes and outside them, reject assignments that they had not specifically agreed to do, or implement their managerial prerogatives over how the labor was to be completed had become a national concern.
Keywords: Aaron Sargent, Otis Gibson, Chinese domestic labor, white women workers, managerial prerogatives
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