Rosemary Wall, King's College London

Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing, University of Pennsylvania

Friday, December 3, 2010, 3:00 am EST

Please note change in day and time.

Time: 4:00 p.m.

Place: 2U Conference Room, Room 2019, Claire Fagin Hall

Information: ehweiss@nursing.upenn.edu or 215-898-4502


Abstract. Malaya and Singapore employed the largest proportion of British colonial nurses in the British Empire, and during the 1930s, Shanghai and Hong Kong hosted the second largest concentration of these nurses. This paper will investigate how British nurses came to work in Asia, for religious, economic, political and social reasons. In order to give a flavour of the working relationships between British and Asian nurses, three time periods will be focused on: the initial encounters of British colonial nurses with Asia at the turn of the 20th century; World War Two; and decolonisation and independence of Malaysia and Singapore in the 1950s when British nurses were required for training, but were increasingly subordinate to Asian nurses.