Introduction

This chapter concerns to map out the significance of colonization for shaping the patterns of domestic service. In the modern period, one of the earliest historical references to colonial domestic labor is found in the anecdotes of a seventeenth-century traveler in the Caribbean, Richard Ligon. Hansen described not only how 'class condescension and racism' combined in colonial servant-keeping practices but also how domestic service had fulfilled a critical function in maintaining colonial rule: In domestic service, Africans were to become domesticated. In 2011, the editors of this collection, Victoria Haskins and Claire Lowrie, together with Pamela Nilan, invited proposals for an interdisciplinary edited collection of original research papers on the topic of colonization and domestic service. This chapter discusses the importance of a new agenda for re-conceptualizing both colonization and domestic service, as each critically and crucially informs and shapes the other.