Rebecca Swartz – författare

Between 1830 and 1850 what it meant to be a child changed in fundamental ways across Britain’s expanding empire. This open access book presents a child-focused history of the period surrounding slave emancipation in the Cape colony and the British Empire. The status of children and childhood were central to discussions of the meaning of freedom in the Cape colony between 1820 and 1850. It proposes that Cape history can be reappraised by adding the category of ‘age’ to discussions of race, gender, class and colonialism. In debates regarding the shift from enslaved or coerced indigenous labour towards nominally free labour, a particular preoccupation was what this would mean for children in general, and for child labourers in particular. There was significant concern regarding who counted as a child, and the measure by which childhood could be differentiated from adulthood. This was raised primarily through debates about child labour and education, including reflections on chronological age. In this period, chronological age became a crucial marker of colonial subjecthood, and a way in which the colony’s population was managed. Drawing on diverse case studies from across the Cape colony and the British Empire, including archival material regarding apprenticeship for Khoe and formerly enslaved children, emigration and infant education, this book highlights the changing nature of childhood in the period 1820 to 1850. The book illustrates shows how children shaped, and were shaped by, both this colonial context and the changing nature of childhood across the British Empire.The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the Bloomsbury Open Collections Library Collective.

Empire and Education in Africa brings together a rich body of scholarship on the history of education in colonial Africa. It provides a unique contribution to the historiography of education in different African countries and a useful point of entry for scholars new to the field of African colonial education. The collection includes case studies from South Africa, Ethiopia, Madagascar, French West Africa (Afrique Occidentale Française) and Tanzania (then Tanganyika). It will therefore prove invaluable for scholars in the histories of French, British and German colonialism in Africa. The book examines similarities and differences in approaches to education across a broad geographical and chronological framework, with chapters focusing on the period between 1830 and 1950. The chapters highlight some central concerns in writing histories of education that transcend geographic or imperial boundaries. The text addresses the relationship between voluntary societies’ role in education provision and state education. The book also deals with ‘adapted’ education: what kind of education was appropriate to African people or African contexts, and how did this differ across and between colonial contexts? Finally, many of the chapters deal with issues of gender in colonial education, showing how issues of gender were central to education provision in Africa.

Empire and Education in Africa brings together a rich body of scholarship on the history of education in colonial Africa. It provides a unique contribution to the historiography of education in different African countries and a useful point of entry for scholars new to the field of African colonial education. The collection includes case studies from South Africa, Ethiopia, Madagascar, French West Africa (Afrique Occidentale Française) and Tanzania (then Tanganyika). It will therefore prove invaluable for scholars in the histories of French, British and German colonialism in Africa. The book examines similarities and differences in approaches to education across a broad geographical and chronological framework, with chapters focusing on the period between 1830 and 1950. The chapters highlight some central concerns in writing histories of education that transcend geographic or imperial boundaries. The text addresses the relationship between voluntary societies’ role in education provision and state education. The book also deals with ‘adapted’ education: what kind of education was appropriate to African people or African contexts, and how did this differ across and between colonial contexts? Finally, many of the chapters deal with issues of gender in colonial education, showing how issues of gender were central to education provision in Africa.

This book tracks the changes in government involvement in Indigneous children’s education over the nineteenth century, drawing on case studies from the Caribbean, Australia and South Africa. Schools were pivotal in the production and reproduction of racial difference in the colonies of settlement.  Between 1833 and 1880, there were remarkable changes in thinking about education in Britain and the Empire with it increasingly seen as a government responsibility. At the same time, children’s needs came to be seen as different to those of their parents, and childhood was approached as a time to make interventions into Indigenous people’s lives. This period also saw shifts in thinking about race. Members of the public, researchers, missionaries and governments discussed the function of education, considering whether it could be used to further humanitarian or settler colonial aims. Underlying these questions were anxieties regarding the status of Indigenous people in newly colonisedterritories: the successful education of their children could show their potential for equality.