Chinese Coolie Hats

doi:10.1017/9781108862349.011

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

Miki Sugiura

Edited by

Christopher Breward ,

Beverly Lemire and

Giorgio Riello

Show author details

Christopher Breward: Affiliation:
National Museums Scotland
Beverly Lemire: Affiliation:
University of Alberta
Giorgio Riello: Affiliation:
European University Institute, Florence

Book contents

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

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108862349.011 [Opens in a new window]

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.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

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).CrossRef Google 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).CrossRef Google 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.CrossRef Google Scholar