HKU Bulletin May 2009 (Vol. 10 No. 2)

RESEARCH The Role of Youth in Colonial Empire A HKU historian is providing a new perspective on empire by exploring how age shaped power relations. D avid Pomfret, Associate Professor in the School of Humanities, and Associate Dean in the Faculty of Arts is comparing British and French colonial contexts from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century. And he has unearthed some intriguing connections between age and empire. For example, in the nineteenth century Europeans would have been considered too old to go out to the tropics at the age of 30. “The dominant view was that the tropical climate would degenerate white bodies,” says Pomfret. “And going out to the colonies too old meant that one would not be able to live for too long in that environment.” Hence, metropolitan governments made youthfulness a pre-requisite in selecting candidates to staff colonial administrations. The making of empire became, in effect, a pursuit of youth. And it was not uncommon to find, as in Hong Kong, that 50% or more of European residents were under the age of thirty. Children and youth have rarely been discussed in histories of empire because “they were often seen as transient, unimportant and inconvenient elements of the colonial presence.” Nevertheless, according to Pomfret, childhood was important to white communities’ hopes that empire could endure. From the 1880s “as empire was invested with higher ‘moral’ purpose, the idea of br inging one’s family out became more acceptable and more closely linked to demonstrations of racial authority,” Pomfret says. Such was the importance of childhood that Hong Kong, for example, by the end of the nineteenth century came to be seen as a ‘fairyland’ for children. “There weren’t many white children here ever, but children were critical to the achievement of the ideal of ‘home’ in an environment considered to produce spiritual and racial degeneration.” Bourgeois ideals of childhood lay at the heart of a series of controversial shifts in colonial policy. “For example, the creation of the Peak reservation proceeded from direct appeals to the idea that white children needed a separate living space. This was linked to the idea of creating a home. And this home was based upon an ideal of childhood that could not be achieved if white children were playing with non-white children. “In the first decade of the twentieth century successive governors pursued policies segregating white and non-white children. Governor Matthew Nathan sponsored a whirl of child- centric sociability at the Peak, which led parents to refer to him as their children’s ‘fairy godfather’. The Peak, and sometimes even Hong Kong itself, was dubbed ‘fairyland.’ Tellingly, the first mention of Hong Kong as a kind of fairyland appeared in 1889, the year after the Peak Tram was set up, allowing wealthier European residents to relocate to higher altitudes, but the term remained in use until the Second World War. “The children themselves contributed to this mythology in important ways. The daughters of Sir Francis Henry May, for example, governor from 1912-1919, were enthusiastic participants in ‘fairy plays’ and dubbed one part of the Peak, ‘the fairy dell’. upon their offspring, and more wi l l ing to countenance the extension of modern European ideas of childhood across race. “What happened when these ideas were extended to Chinese children, Vietnamese children? Could these ‘other’ children achieve ‘true childhood’? And if they were admitted to that category did that not imply that all sorts of other privileges should be accorded them? There was a constant battle to deal with this tension. Missionaries denounced the use of child labour. “Questions were raised about whether mui-tsai ( 妹仔 ) were child slaves. Reformers contrasted ideals of childhood with what they saw as child slavery to advance imperial reform. “There was a feeling, in Europe, that the improvement of the condition of children, irrespective of race, was critical to the building of a better world. In Europe, this became a cause célèbre. But it jeopardized carefully established racial hierarchies upon which colonial authority rested.” The working title of Pomfret’s book is: Youth and Empire: Childhood, Race and the Colonial Contest, c1880-1945 . In spite of the fact that early childhood was, statistically, a riskier period of life it was considered most important that British children be removed from the tropics when they got older. If they were not sent to school in Europe before adolescence they ran the risk of being perceived as ‘degenerate’. “These assumptions were closely connected to particular British ways of thinking about race and age.” However, the challenge, for Pomfret, is to consider how ideas of childhood and youth more generally connected with empire. In other outposts of European empires, notably those of France, colonialists were somewhat more optimistic about the impact of the environment 4 5 Such was the importance of childhood that Hong Kong... came to be seen as a ‘fairyland’ for children. Professor David Pomfret