Liberty, the Maria Luz Incident and the Liminal Legal Status of Chinese Indentured Labourers and Japanese Licensed Prostitutes
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: While covering the same ground as recent scholarship on the emancipatory potential of the Maria Luz incident, this article takes a radical departure, arguing that the background to the incident was British desire to disrupt the Macao trade in Chinese labour to Peru; that the legal focus of the ad hoc tribunals was not on any nascent human right to free the Chinese men and minors from being trafficked to Peru but on who owned and controlled their labour; and that the release of Japanese licensed prostitutes from their contracts was an unintended consequence of the legal fiction that the Japanese legal system was comparable with the principles of British common law.
Source: Past & Present
Author: Bill Mihalopoulos
Institution: SOAS University of London
Language: English
Subfield: Anthropology
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4401714244