Construction of a lost childhood : the 'rehabilitation' of Mui Tsai in the Straits Settlement by the colonial government and the Po Leung Kuk committee

• Main Author: Chan, Evelyn Ju Ying
• Other Authors: Jessica Bridgette Hinchy
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2021
• Subjects: Humanities::History
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/147293
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Debates between colonial administrators and anti-slavery British reformers during the interwar years about the nature of slavery within the mui tsai system in the British colonies of Hong Kong, Malaya and the Straits Settlements feature strongly in academic work. However, few scholarly articles consider the 1932 Mui Tsai Ordinance’s impact on former mui tsai’s lives, or analyse the Po Leung Kuk’s (PLK) rehabilitation of abused mui tsai in the context of the Straits Settlements. While the ordinance regulated and managed the mui tsai’s labour, its shortcomings were highlighted in the Mui Tsai Commission’s Minority Report in 1937, the report stated that the ordinance failed to protect the welfare of colonized children, regardless of their race. This thesis paints a fuller picture of the ordinance by arguing it provided mui tsai with various forms of agency and offered them a degree of protection. As an institution of refuge for marginalized girls, the PLK’s role in rehabilitating the mui tsai was integral towards knowledge formation of how the colonial state perceived them. This thesis argues the colonial state’s control over the mui tsai through the PLK provided them a smoother path to becoming a dutiful wife and domestic servant.