Children and Childhood in Colonial Nigerian Histories (African Histories and Modernities)

This book brings together the newest and the most innovative scholarship on Nigerian children--one of the least researched groups in African colonial history. It engages the changing conceptions of childhood, relating it to the broader themes about modernity, power, agency, and social transformation under imperial rule. Contributors detail everyday interaction of children with the socio-political and economic infrastructure of colonialism and demonstrate that they played a significant but rarely acknowledged role in molding core ideas about colonial modernity and civilization. Children and Childhood in Colonial Nigerian Histories fills a major gap in African studies by presenting the historical roots of some of the main issues about children' experience in postcolonial Nigeria. It argues that colonial history of children is important for understanding the challenges of childhood in contemporary Nigeria Front Matter....Pages i-xviii Introduction....Pages 1-18 Researching Colonial Childhoods: Images and Representations of Children in Nigerian Newspaper Press, 1925–1950....Pages 19-47 Processing Juvenile Delinquents at the Salvation Army’s Boys’ Industrial Home in Lagos, 1925–1944....Pages 49-76 Children’s Masquerade: Performance and Creativity in Benin City....Pages 77-95 “500 Children Missing in Lagos”: Child Kidnapping and Public Anxiety in Colonial Nigeria....Pages 97-121 “A World of Good to Our Boys”: Boy Scouts in Southern Nigeria, 1934–1951....Pages 123-146 The Colonial Office and the Employment of Children in the Nigerian Tin Mines in the 1950s....Pages 147-168 Framing the Colonial Child: Childhood Memory and Self-Representation in Autobiographical Writings....Pages 169-199 Within Salvation: Girl Hawkers and the Colonial State in Development Era Lagos....Pages 201-231 Back Matter....Pages 233-235 Cover 1 Title 4 Copyright 5 Dedication 6 Contents 8 List of Figures 10 List of Tables 12 Note on Contributors 14 Acknowledgments 18 INTRODUCTION Colonialism and the Invention of Modern Nigerian Childhood 20 CHAPTER 1 Researching Colonial Childhoods: 38 CHAPTER 2 Processing Juvenile Delinquents at the Salvation Army’s Boys’ Industrial Home in Lagos, 1925–1944 67 CHAPTER 3 Children’s Masquerade: Performance and Creativity in Benin City 95 CHAPTER 4 “500 Children Missing in Lagos”: 114 CHAPTER 5 “A World of Good to Our Boys”: 139 CHAPTER 6 The Colonial Office and the Employment of Children in the Nigerian Tin Mines in the 1950s 163 CHAPTER 7 Framing the Colonial Child: 185 CHAPTER 8 Within Salvation: Girl Hawkers and the Colonial State in Development Era Lagos 216 Index 247