par Claire Lowrie
Chinese domestic servants, called amahs, were ubiquitous in British households in Hong Kong and Singapore, as well as in Shanghai and other Chinese treaty ports from the late nineteenth to the mid- twentieth century. While they served in a variety of domestic capacities, including as cooks and general servants, the highest status role was that of the baby amah. Some Chinese women that were employed as amahs travelled as part of the job. These travelling amahs were engaged to care for children on voyages from Singapore, Hong Kong and China to the United Kingdom and Europe.
An etymology of the word “amah”
Chinese women employed as paid domestic servants were known by the British, and by English-speaking Chinese, as “amahs” (阿媽; jyutping: aa3 maa1; pinyin: ā mā).[1] The origins of the term are not entirely clear. “Amah” may come from the Portuguese word ama (nurse). Alternatively, it could be an adaptation of the Chinese word “ma”(媽; jyutping: maa1; pinyin: mā) – a word associated with mother or grandmother (depending on dialect and tone), with “ah” (阿;jyutping: aa3; pinyin: ā) being a common name prefix. It is also possible that the term “amah” was derived from the Chinese word for wet nurse (奶媽; jyutping: naai5 maa1; pinyin nǎi mā).
The Rise and Decline of Chinese Amahs
Until the early twentieth century, Chinese men predominated in paid domestic service in Singapore and Hong Kong and were widely employed in elite households in mainland China, including in Shanghai. While bonded female servants called mui zai (妹仔; jyutping: mui1 zai2; pinyin mèi zǐ) were common in Chinese households, only small numbers of Chinese women were employed as free servants. Most were engaged as nursemaids or wet nurses for children in British and Chinese homes.
The composition of the servant workforce changed during the 1930s when substantial numbers of Chinese women left counties in Guangdong to seek work as domestic servants in Hong Kong, Macau and various locations throughout British Malaya, including Singapore. Their out-migration was driven by economic and political instability in China resulting from the Great Depression, the collapse of the silk industry, the Chinese Civil War and Japanese military occupation. A significant proportion of the women were ma zie (媽姐; jyutping: maa1 ze2; pinyin: mā jiě) – a distinct group of amahs that were members of spinster sisterhoods. Sisterhood organisations provided support during the migration process, assisted women in seeking work on arrival, and played a key role in negotiating pay and conditions.
Following the Second World War, the ranks of women working as amahs in Singapore and Malaysia expanded to include local-born Chinese, Malay and Indian women. These women were politically active and developed their own trade unions. By the 1970s, the numbers of local women willing work as amahs went into decline. They were replaced by Indonesian and Filipino foreign domestic workers who are still widely employed as live-in maids in Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong.
[1] For clarity and consistency, I have provided traditional characters for key terms and romanisation of these terms in Cantonese (jyutping) and Mandarin (pinyin) using the CC-Canto Dictionary. https://cantonese.org/#, visited 20 June 2025.
OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
Clyde Plumauzille (18 décembre 2025). Amah. Domesticités. Consulté le 18 avril 2026 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/15dvk