Much of early modern Europe saw increasing numbers of abandoned children, and new institutions designed to care for them. Published notarial documents, such as the two excerpted here, allow a glimpse into the fortunes of individual orphaned children… [more]

In recent years, testimonies, diaries and memoirs of Holocaust victims (those who perished and those who survived) have gained belated recognition as essential (not auxiliary) data for historical reconstruction. Early postwar children's… [more]

In recent years, testimonies, diaries and memoirs of Holocaust victims have gained belated recognition as essential (not auxiliary) data for historical reconstruction. In spite of the sketchy nature of postwar children's testimonies, a critical… [more]

The pioneering collection of fairy tales published by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm in the first half of the 19th century reflects both the romantic interest in the national past—that is, in the cultural origins and "childhood" of the German people—and… [more]

Folktales and fairy tales are resources for dealing with historical topics related to children and youth, and because 19th-century European editors, writers, and pedagogues presented folktales and fairy tales for the moral and cultural education of children, they also reveal how children and childhood were perceived by the societies that produced them, helping to examine the construction of childhood and the experiences of children from a socio-historical perspective. echo [more]

This chart shows the official lines of authority in the imperial Boy Scout movement. In theory, the Imperial Scout Headquarters had direct control over local versions of scouting through its territorial associations. Scouting was like a secular… [more]

Like much of the public in turn-of-the-century Britain, Baden Powell was fascinated by "primitive" cultures. Although he claimed an expert knowledge of Africa from his service in colonial wars, Baden Powell was hardly an authority on Zulu customs.… [more]

This module examines the founding principles of Robert Baden-Powell's Boy Scout movement in terms of its vision for decreasing social tensions and fostering adherence to generationally transmitted values; the module illustrates the complexities of the Scouting movement among African youth living under European colonial rule.

Suggestion for handling orphans, devised in 1655 by Manoel Severim de Faria, an official for the bishop of Evora in Portugal. Here Severim de Faria speaks about the role orphaned children could and should play in the Portuguese empire. Students need… [more]

British colonialism in what became Kenya began officially in 1895 and lasted until 1963, but the Maasai themselves were not effectively under British rule until just before the First World War. These excerpts come from longer interviews conducted in… [more]