Boy Scouts and the British World: Autonomy within an Imperial Institution, 1908–1936

Abstract

This article argues that the Boy Scout movement, despite its British provenance, was not a monolithic pillar of imperial sentiment during the interwar years. In fact, the Boy Scout movement in Canada acted less like an imperial imposition than it did as an outlet for Canadian autonomy. Using three moments of transatlantic contention within the organization as case studies, this article demonstrates the existence and shape of competing understandings of Britishness, especially those held by the movement's founder, Robert Baden-Powell, and Canadian administrator James Robertson. For Baden-Powell, Britishness leant itself to conformity; for Robertson, it justified independent action. These varying notions of Britishness never undermined the axiomatic belief in the benefit of the British World system, but did compete for prominence within that system. Robertson's Canadian Boy Scout administration resisted centralization by Baden-Powell's Imperial Headquarters, emphasizing the autonomy of the dominion in place of a central authority.