No Day Without a Deed to Crown It: Ministering Children in Colonial Asia

Abstract

Extending the focus beyond micromanagement in domestic environments and top-down colonial policy this paper argues that children came to embody and symbolise norms central to British authority in empire as active participants in performances of ideal transnational ‘imperial childhoods.’ It explains the growing importance of celebrations of childhood, from the spectacles centring upon a culturally ‘hybrid’ Christmas in the late nineteenth century to the social and cultural production of colonial cities as ‘fairylands,’ beyond the constraints of festival time in the early twentieth century, and under the auspices of the ‘Ministering Children’s League.’ The paper examines the comparative, trans-regional dimensions of child-centric cultures in different but interconnected centres of the British Empire in the ‘Far East’ – including Hong Kong to Singapore, Penang and Shanghai. It looks at their institutional underpinnings and the quite different outcomes – in effect distinct ‘colonial childhoods’ – that resulted from negotiations for admission to ‘fairyland.’ It examines the challenges and opportunities that such performances of childhood produced, the multicultural encounters they engendered, and the consequences these had for both individual children and colonial governance to the end of the interwar period.