Constructing and Contesting “the Girlhood of Our Empire”: Girls’ Culture, Labor, and Mobility in Britain, South Africa, and New Zealand, c. 1830-1930

Abstract

This dissertation studies girls’ complex, often paradoxical roles in the British Empire and analyzes how discussions about the education, employment, and emigration of girls both reflected and shaped broader political, economic, and social debates. Although girls are marginalized in studies of colonialism, concerted efforts to educate and emigrate girls reveal how the project of empire building depended on the mobility and labor of girls and young women. This dissertation begins by considering the ways in which youth organizations sought to transform girls into “empire builders” and girls’ roles as migrants, settlers, laborers, and creators and transmitters of colonial knowledge. Girls supported the empire, but they also challenged systems of colonial power and resisted prescribed roles in various ways, from penning criticisms of false imperial propaganda to absconding from exploitative situations. While most histories of childhood focus on one region, “Constructing and Contesting ‘the Girlhood of Our Empire’” employs a multi-sited framework that examines girlhood in different areas of the empire—concentrating specifically on Britain, New Zealand, and South Africa—to elucidate variations within broader colonial processes. As explored in the second part of the dissertation, emigration programs for British girls to New Zealand and South Africa faced innumerable obstacles, and their limited success exposed fault lines within the colonial project. The third part of the dissertation focuses debates over the employment of African and Māori girls as domestic servants in British colonial households and how these debates reveal the ways in which ideas of girlhood and girls’ lives were intertwined with conceptualizations of the nation, empire, and race. The nature of the colonial archive means that girls’ experiences rarely appear in the traditional sources, but their voices do emerge in letters they wrote to family and friends, articles they composed for children’s periodicals, scrapbooks they crafted, and photographs and artwork they created. Utilizing these myriad sources, “Constructing and Contesting ‘the Girlhood of Our Empire’” provides new insights into girls’ roles in the empire and more nuanced understandings of how class, race, and geography mediated girls’ experiences of and engagement with colonialism.