La jeunesse en mouvement : Scouts et guides en Malaisie britannique (1910-1966)

Abstract

This thesis examines the paradoxical role of youth movements such as Scouting and Guiding in British Malaya. Initially conceived in England in 1907 and 1910 to toughen and to prepare British youths for their roles as ‘bricks in the wall of Empire’, Scouting and Guiding were thus instruments of colonialism. Yet both movements quickly expanded beyond the metropole and into the colonies, where they thrived and flourished on a global scale, enjoying immense popularity amongst indigenous parents and children alike. Indeed, in Malaya, both youth movements outlasted colonialism. Both continue to be popular in the post-colonial era, as the newly independent states of Malaysia and Singapore (former British Malaya) have also re-appropriated the movements for their own nationalistic agendas of ‘social engineering’ and ‘nation-building’. Why is this so? Is this an example of the effects of ‘soft power’, whereby Scouting and Guiding effectively served imperial agendas by being a cultural heavyweight in post-independent Southeast Asia? Or, conversely, have both movements actually facilitated decolonisation? For instance, as both movements advocated equality amongst all members (colonial/colonised), were the lines of established hierarchy between ‘European’ and ‘Native’ communities compromised as a result? More crucially, the Scout and Guide philosophy of ‘independence’ and emphasis on ‘good citizenship’ could have also been subverted against the colonial agenda by indigenous nationalists. As such, to what extent were the boundaries between ruler and ruled constantly (re)-defined by these organisations? How can we understand the impact of these global youth movements upon Malaya and British imperialism at large? In order to address these questions, this thematically-organised thesis argues that Scouting and Guiding played a key role in the political, social and cultural history of childhood and youth in British Malaya in four main ways. First, it illustrates how Scouting and Guiding served Malayan youths as a platform for social mobility, by allowing them to climb the imperial social ladder of Malaya’s highly stratified colonial society. Second, this thesis delves into the long-term impact of Scouting and Guiding upon the construction and conception of indigenous childhood in Malaya. In this chapter, it argues that Scouting and Guiding introduced alternative forms of boyhood and girlhood which promoted childhood as a ‘carefree’, playful, idyllic and leisurely period – as opposed to more ‘traditional’ forms of indigenous childhood, in which children were married at a young age and where economic realities obliged local children to work. The third section of this thesis adopts a wider, more global perspective of the impact of Scouting and Guiding upon Malaya by arguing that both movements – contrary to established or received assumptions – were organisations shaped by extra-European cultures with the active participation of indigenous elites acting with and alongside their European counterparts from its very inception. To illustrate this point, this chapter shows how European Scouting adapted African (Zulu) and Native American (e.g. Sioux) cultures – collectively labelled as ‘martial tribes’ – into their central pedagogical tool of role-playing to physically strengthen European boys. In return, elite indigenous Malayan Scouts played ‘Zulu’ or ‘Indian’ alongside their European counterparts, but in order to mimic ‘European’ masculinities. These multi-cultural exchanges and re-appropriations by European and extra-European actors illustrate their interdependency in power relations, and it is key to understanding the flexibility of both youth movements as tools for different communities. The fourth part of this thesis focuses on another example of the re-appropriations of Scouting and Guiding in Malaya by delving into the context of the Malayan Emergency (1948 – 1960). It illustrates how local nationalists, Malayan communists and British colonials each sought to use Scouting and Guiding as political instruments to win over indigenous youth in the tumultuous post-war era, thus showing how different political actors established, endorsed and set the stage for Scouting and Guiding as premier movements for Malayan youths in the post-colonial era. By drawing upon a wide range of archival sources such as colonial records and over 950 hours of oral accounts of Malayan Scouts and Guides, this thesis seeks to draw attention towards colonial histories of indigenous youth and childhood. Situated within current historical concerns of gender and childhood in colonialism, this thesis aims to contribute towards on-going debates on a relatively recent area of research in imperial history by emerging with a deeper understanding of youth movements as a historical and global phenomena in its colonial past and post-colonial present.