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The servant/ employer relationship in Nineteenth Century England and India

Dussart, FC; (2005) The servant/ employer relationship in Nineteenth Century England and India. Doctoral thesis , University of London. Green open access

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Abstract

This thesis juxtaposes the relationship between domestic servants and their employers in metropole (England) and colony (India) between 1850 and 1914. It considers the master/servant relationship as a site for the formation, maintenance and contestation of class, gender, race and national identities. As well as exploring the significance of the relationship in terms of the construction of social identities, this thesis also argues that in certain circumstances the servant/employer relationship could take on an unexpected political significance. For Britain this is considered in relation to the labour and women’s movements. For India, the connection between service and notions o f ‘the Indian’ is linked to the perceived purpose of the imperial project and fear amongst colonizers of nascent Indian nationalism. The structure of service engendered certain ‘the tensions of intimacy’, which could spill into violence. These are explored in both contexts, with reference to the effects of the employment of a primarily female service workforce in Britain, and a male workforce in India.

Type: Thesis (Doctoral)
Title: The servant/ employer relationship in Nineteenth Century England and India
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
Language: English
Additional information: Thesis digitised by ProQuest
UCL classification: UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL SLASH > Faculty of S&HS > Dept of History
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1425876
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