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Empire's daughters traces the interconnected histories of girlhood, whiteness, and British colonialism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through the study of the Girls’ Friendly Society. The society functioned as both a youth organisation and emigration society, making it especially valuable in examining girls’ multifaceted participation with the empire. The book charts the emergence of the organisation during the late Victorian era through its height in the first decade of the twentieth century to its decline in the interwar years. Employing a multi-sited approach and using a range of sources, including correspondences, newsletters, and scrapbooks, the book uncovers the ways in which girls participated in the empire as migrants, settlers, laborers, and creators of colonial knowledge and also how they resisted these prescribed roles and challenged systems of colonial power.
An electronic edition of this book is freely available under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND) licence.
Introduction: Constructing and contesting girlhood and whiteness in the British empire
1 Purity and the origins of the Girls’ Friendly Society
2 Imperial education programmes and the construction of colonial knowledge and racial difference
3 Class, race, and competing objectives within girls’ emigration programmes
4 Contested ideas of whiteness and race in the Girls’ Friendly Society
5 Shifting colonial relations and ideas of girlhood and the decline of the Girls’ Friendly Society
Conclusion
Appendix: List of key figures in the Girls’ Friendly Society