Shirleene Robinson and Simon Sleight’s book is a collection of essays that attempt to understand how notions around childhood were being constructed, lived and transmitted across the British world. The volume makes a significant contribution in expanding our understanding of the British world that comprised of wider imperial networks and was built on mass migration of people. Claire L. Halstead and Hillary Emmett’s article adds to this project by investigating the role of the Dominion of Canada and independent America respectively in the complex web of the British Empire. The book might not be a work of significant historiographical departure in the way it brings together two distinct strands of history – histories of childhood and histories of imperialism and colonialism. However, it is unique in the way it covers a vast geographical space and wonderfully weaves a variety of different threads together through a study of connections and networks of children and the youth in the ‘Anglosphere.’ The introduction of the volume is a successful endeavour in bringing together a conglomeration of articles in conversation with each other and the authors deserve praise for this. The book is divided into six parts and running across each part is an attempt to understand how living under colonialism and imperialism shaped the experiences of children and youth across continents.

In the first part titled “Children and Adults,” the focus is on understanding the child ‘rescue’ movements and the subsequent construction of childhood in a trans-national framework. Shurlee Swain opens the discussion by highlighting how Queen Victoria’s figure representing queenly, ‘motherly and womanly’ attributes, became a rallying point of child rescue discourses not only in the metropolis but also in the settler colonies, Australia and Canada. Children came to be viewed as independent subjects with the potential of being both a threat and a cure to the nation. Such a construction of childhood, argues Swain, had repercussions for child welfare policies across the Empire. In the post Rousseau period, the conception of the alleged malleability and innocence of the child dominated the educational and social landscape of the western world. Not least owing to this attitude, there was heightened racial anxiety around the potential ‘degeneration’ of European and ‘mixed-race’ children in colonies. The last two articles by Suzanne Conway and S. E. Duff in the section deal with this racial anxiety around white children and highlight various emerging perceptions of white childhood.

Moving on from the ideological to the experiential ground, the second and third part of the book looks at the diverse ways in which living in the empire shaped the experiences of children. The second part titled “Rites of Passage” assesses the experience of children and youth through their movements across the British world. ‘Saving’ the white race becomes a defining factor in shaping the experience of white children and is the subject of Ellen Filor and Claire L. Halstead’s articles. Timothy Nicholson’s article examines the experience of East African youth in their quest for knowledge in different parts of the ‘Anglo world’ in the post-imperial era. The article is a misfit in the section as it deals with the experiences of African youth in a part that mainly focuses on the experience of white children in the colonial era.

The third part brings the issues of agency and experiences of the ‘indigenous’ children to the forefront. Labour was an important component in shaping the experience of ‘native’ children in many of Britain’s colonies. Shirleen Robinson highlights the role of labour extraction and the colonial notion of producing servile bodies in shaping the experiences of aboriginal children’s childhood in early twentieth century Australia. She points out the similarity in the experiences of aboriginal children in the settler colonies of Australia, Canada and South Africa. The reader wonders if a similar corollary or difference in experience is possible in case of non-settler colonies. Mary Clare Martin, similarly, highlights the participation of ‘indigenous,’ visitor and settler girls in the Girl Guide movement in Australia, India, Africa, New Zealand and Asia. She argues that the inclusive nature of the movement foregrounded the development of a multi-racial commonwealth. Ignoring local specificities of class and caste, she seems to have overstated the role of guide movement in giving agency and independence to ‘native’ women.

There already exists a fair amount of scholarly literature on the role of literary texts as disciplining agents. The fourth section “Literary Childhoods” adds to this existing historiography. The set of articles in this part examines domestic novels and children’s literature in producing a desired female behaviour (Hillary Emmett) and images of ecological imperialism and environmental racism (Michelle J. Smith).

Children’s sexuality has been a contentious subject in the history of childhood. How notions around children’s sexuality contributed in a monolithic construction of childhood is the subject of the fifth part titled “Youth and Sexuality.” Yorick Smaal in his article on boys and homosexuality highlights the complex relationship between abuse and agency in age structured homosexual relationships. Using Queensland criminal justice records, Smaal argues that the relationship between men and boys was an “equivocal mix of coercion and participation” (p. 223). While Smaal highlights aspects of abuse in a scholarly narrative that is mainly concerned with sexual possibility, Melissa Bellanta looks for agency in a narrative overwhelmingly dominated by sexual oppression, violence and subjugation. While recognizing that the larrikin subculture (an urban youth subculture in colonial Australia) was highly oppressive for women she also points out the importance of acknowledging the ways in which these women appropriated and used the sexualized categories imposed upon them. Given the choices offered were limited and restricted by socio-cultural norms of the society; Bellanta seems to have gone too far in her search for female agency.

Moving on to a relatively less explored way of writing histories of children, the final part titled “Children’s Empires and Material Cultures” attempts to write children’s history by exploring material remains. Ruth Colton, through an archaeological and historical study of public parks in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras, shows how British imperialism shaped the childhood of British children who visited these public parks. From planting to architecture, everything in the park reflected Britain’s imperial identity and represented children as imperialists in making. Colton further highlights that children were not always passive agents of imperial projects and often through their own innovative games challenged the adult imposed identification of them as ‘savages’ and became ‘petty imperialist’ of their own. Kate Darian-Smith, similarly, through her analysis of museums, gravestones and other commemorative memorials shows how white settler children’s experiences have been publicly memorialised in white settler colonies of Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

The individual authors deserve praise for the way they have used an interesting and varied set of sources including archaeological, literary, official and unofficial sources. By making children agents of imperial connections, the anthology is an important addition to the new imperial history and global history. The book, however, gives a microscopic view of indigenous children limiting it to a section and fails to capture local specificities of caste and class. Nevertheless, it is an informative read and is replete with useful references for anyone who is interested in the history of children and youth.