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‘Industrious’ Chinese and British ‘Scoundrels’: Stereotypes of Asian and British Seamen in the 1908 Issues of The Seaman

Introduction: Competition on the Labour Market

‘A Carnival of Calumny’1—that was how The Seaman, the journal of the National Sailors’ and Firemen’s Union, described the situation facing its readers in the early twentieth century. The journal was dominated by a campaign claiming that Chinese seamen, who earned lower wages than European seafarers, were the main reason why British seamen were being ‘driven to the workhouse’ (Fig. 1). At the same time, officials of the Shipping Federation, the union’s antagonist, pitted the ‘industrious’2 Chinese against British ‘drunkard[s] and scoundrel[s]’,3 arguing that British seamen were at a disadvantage because of their alleged poor work ethic.

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  1. ‘A Carnival of Calumny: The Refuse of Labour’, The Seaman, 7/1 (May 1908), 2. []
  2. ‘Checking the Chinese: Some Consideration for British Sailors’, The Seaman, 4/1 (Feb. 1908), 3. []
  3. ‘A Carnival of Calumny’, 2. []