The Servant Problem and the Colour Line: Race, Class, and Domestic Labour in the Transvaal Colony, 1902-1914

After the Second South African War, the Transvaal Colony subsidized the migration of British domestic workers. Sought for their perceived capacity to 'Anglicize' the colony as potential wives for settlers and for their cheap labor, migrant women were both protected and disciplined by the state and employers. But by positioning themselves against the Black domestic workers with whom they worked, white women in the colony resolved the contradictions of their race, class, and gender status in their own favour. They helped harden the racial boundaries of service not only within the Transvaal but in the English-speaking world more broadly.