Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-6bf8c574d5-nvqbz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-03-04T01:34:27.007Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

29 - Chinese Coolie Hats

Global Dialogues on a Sign of Servitude, c. 1840–1940

from Part V - Fashion, Colonialism, and Post-Colonialism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 August 2023

By
Miki Sugiura
Edited by
Christopher Breward ,
Beverly Lemire  and
Giorgio Riello
Christopher Breward
Affiliation:
National Museums Scotland
Beverly Lemire
Affiliation:
University of Alberta
Giorgio Riello
Affiliation:
European University Institute, Florence
Get access

Summary

Even the humblest item of clothing can be imbued with critical meanings. This is the case with the Chinese coolie hat, headwear linked to the mass migration of indentured labour, populations whose toil shaped colonial societies and cultures globally. Central to this chapter is understanding how indentured labourers’ clothing – the clothing of servitude – was created and disseminated beyond borders, how it interacted with production and consumption, and what agency and impact it had. This chapter is also an endeavour to see how the very essence of forced and bonded labour – the forcefulness and social segregation – interplayed with clothing.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Global History of Fashion
From the Nineteenth Century to the Present
 , pp. 1023 - 1051
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Select Bibliography

Saiichi, Benno, Kachū nōson Keizai to kindaika (Rural Villages of Central China and Modernization) (Tokyo: Kyūko shoin, 2004).Google Scholar
Lee, Chinyun, ‘The Entry into the World Market of Chinese Straw Braids’, Far East/Dálný východ, 6/1 (2016), 18–32.Google Scholar
Driscoll, Mark, Absolute Erotic, Absolute Grotesque: The Living, Dead, and Undead in Japan’s Imperialism, 1895–1945 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010).Google Scholar
Gibson-Hill, Carl Alexander, ‘The Chinese Laborers’ Hats Used in Malaya’, Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 25/1/158 (1952), 35–47.Google Scholar
Jung, Moon-Ho, Coolies and Cane: Race, Labor, and Sugar in the Age of Emancipation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kani, Hiroaki, Kindaichūgoku no Kūri to Choka (Coolie and ‘Zhu hua’ in Modern China) (Tokyo: Iwanamishoten, 1979).Google Scholar
Kawakami, Barbara F., Japanese Immigrant Clothing in Hawaii, 1885–1941 (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1995).Google Scholar
Ko, Dorothy, Cinderella’s Sisters: A Revisionist History of Footbinding (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, Peter, Sarong Kebaya: Peranakan Fashion in an Interconnected World, 1500–1950 (Singapore: Asian Civilisation Museum, 2014).Google Scholar
McKeown, Adam, Melancholy Order: Asian Migration and the Globalization of Borders (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011).Google Scholar
Warren, Jim, ‘The Singapore Rickshaw Pullers: The Social Organization of a Coolie Occupation, 1880–1940’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 16/1 (1985), 1–15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×