Children, Childhood and Youth in the British World by Shirleene Robinson Simon Sleight (review)

Abstract

Book Review: Children, Childhood and Youth in the British World 174 Children, Childhood and Youth in the British World Shirleene Robinson and Simon Sleight, editors (2016) Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 328 pages£85.00 (hardback); ISBN: 9781137489401 Children have been central to the British Empire’s mission to maintain and reproduce its present and assure its future. When the average global age was much younger than it is today, there were many more children in proportion to adults. There was also greater urgency in older adults’ sense of having to hand over responsibilities to younger generations who must be trained and prepared. Although the British Empire gradually turned into the Commonwealth during the mid-twentieth century, it still exerts a powerful legacy as Children, Childhood and Youth in the British World reveals. The book concentrates on the period 1750-1950 and illuminates vital aspects of childhood and youth within the imperial context. Interactions between structure and agency are highlighted by the overall class structure of the empire, with sharp divisions between British children of the elite who were educated to be future leaders, and middle-class children who were trained to join the civil service or the military, to become missionaries, or develop business and trade. Many travelled the world with their parents. A third tier, British working-class children, included those sent as “orphans” or criminals to the colonies. And there were also the indigenous children around the world, who were respected if their families were considered to be sufficiently grand and supportive of the Empire, but otherwise generally exploited and under-educated. Although they rarely chose their social conditions, all these children actively responded; some became Empire builders and others were protestors and resisters. Most coped with being disadvantaged and even dispossessed victims, and all were drawn into reinterpreting and reconstructing the British Empire in each diverse local context. The book is uniquely valuable in its global breadth, and its emphasis on how childhood and youth have been so variously understood, interpreted and experienced throughout the British Empire. The introduction reviews the major relevant texts for their contributions and shows how this collection covers new ground. The authors include specialists in history, archaeology, sociology, geography, cultural studies, art, literature, policy, education, play, religion, economics, race relations, sexuality and war. The introduction begins with the statue of Queen Victoria outside Buckingham Palace. Figures surround her, personifying Truth, Victory, Courage, Constancy and Motherhood, with military guards. Past some gates and water, child figures escorting animals represent Australia, Canada, South and West Africa. The editors note the rich symbolism of a benign maternal empress, distantly aware of her needy sub-civilized childish subjects. The symbolism appears to excuse, even glory in, inversions of reality, when the violent colonial plunderers are presented as the altruistic providers of civilization. Children as pre-social beings in need of wise parents are central to the allegory. Book Review: Children, Childhood and Youth in the British World 175 The 15 following chapters are arranged into six themes. The maternal section starts with Queen Victoria’s supposedly motherly concern for all children in her Empire, followed by the neglected viewpoint of the Ayahs, the Indian nannies to AngloIndian children, and the “scientific” care of white babies, to be discussed later. Theme 2 traces children’s migrations across the Empire and between radically different places and cultures. Theme 3, “indigenous experiences,” reports on Australian aborigine child workers, families in Bengal, and the international Girl Guide movement from 1908 to 1920. Literature is perhaps the richest resource on childhoods around the Empire, and Theme 4 examines narratives of colonial danger in Australia and New Zealand, and of the “willful” and wild colonial girls. Theme 5 on sexuality considers “boys and homosex: danger and possibility in Queensland, 1890-1914,” and sexuality and the “disorderly girl” in the music hall. Finally, Theme 6 analyzes British childhoods in relation to public parks and museums. Older readers, who remember their childhoods during the 1940s or earlier, will find that this book recasts our memories in a new political light. Much that we may have taken for granted can be re-understood as designed to assume and train us to be children of the Empire...