Georgia State University Georgia State University

ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University

History Theses Department of History

Summer 7-13-2012

"White, Black, and Dusky": Girl Guiding in Malaya, Nigeria, India, "White, Black, and Dusky": Girl Guiding in Malaya, Nigeria, India,

and Australia from 1909-1960 and Australia from 1909-1960

Sally K. Stanhope Georgia State University

Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/history_theses

Recommended Citation Recommended Citation Stanhope, Sally K., ""White, Black, and Dusky": Girl Guiding in Malaya, Nigeria, India, and Australia from 1909-1960." Thesis, Georgia State University, 2012. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/history_theses/59

This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of History at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in History Theses by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact scholarworks@gsu.edu.

“WHITE, BLACK, AND DUSKY”: GIRL GUIDING IN MALAYA, NIGERIA, INDIA,

AND AUSTRALIA FROM 1909-1960

by

SALLY STANHOPE

Under the Direction of Christine Skwiot

ABSTRACT

This comparative study of Girl Guiding in Malaya, India, Nigeria, and Australia examines the

dynamics of engagement between Western and non-Western women participants. Originally a

program to promote feminine citizenship only to British girls, Guiding became tied up with ef-

forts to maintain, transform, or build different kinds of imagined communities—imperial states,

nationalists movements, and independent nation states. From the program’s origins in London in

1909 until 1960 the relationship of the metropole and colonies resembled a complex web of in-

fluence, adaptation, and agency. The interactions between Girl Guide officialdom headquartered

in London, Guide leaders of colonized girls, and the colonized girls who joined suggest that the

foundational ideology of Guiding, maternalism, became a common language that participants

used to work toward different ideas and practices of civic belonging initially as members of the

British Empire and later as members of independent nations.

INDEX WORDS: Girl Guides, Scouting, missionaries, Girl Scouts, imperialism, maternalism, decolonization, nationalism

“WHITE, BLACK, AND DUSKY”: GIRL GUIDING IN MALAYA, NIGERIA, INDIA,

AND AUSTRALIA FROM 1909-1960

by

SALLY STANHOPE

A Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Arts

in the College of Arts and Sciences

Georgia State University

2012

Copyright by Sally Keirsey Stanhope

2012

“WHITE, BLACK, AND DUSKY”: GIRL GUIDING IN MALAYA, NIGERIA, INDIA, AND

AUSTRALIA FROM 1909-1960

by

SALLY STANHOPE

Committee Chair: Christine Skwiot

Committee Member: Denis Gainty

Electronic Version Approved:

Office of Graduate Studies

College of Arts and Sciences

Georgia State University

August 2012

iv

DEDICATION

I dedicate this thesis to my family. They make me laugh about the very things I want to

cry about and provide the reality check I so often need before I implement my latest scheme.

They have provided the daily breaks I’ve needed to survive the writing process. On a daily basis

they demonstrate the perseverance, determination, and work ethic that carried me through this

project.

v

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

A tremendous number of people have helped me. My advisor, Christine Skwiot, pushed

me through the most difficult parts of the creative process and continues to provide a model of

scholarship and teaching I aspire to. Denis Gainty, the other member of my thesis “committee,”

has provided reassurance throughout the entire process and read my entire draft in less two days.

I am grateful to the Association of Historians at Georgia State University who funded my re-

search trip to New York and arranged conferences where my colleagues gave me suggestions

that revealed new aspects of my research I had overlooked. Yevgeniya Gribov, the archivist at

Girl Scouts of the USA, ensured that I had access to the international Guiding magazine. Most

of my research, however, was accomplished through the incredible feats of persuasion performed

by the Georgia State University Interlibrary Loan Department who somehow convinced even

libraries in Australia to loan me the materials I requested. Jill Anderson, the History Librarian at

GSU, encouraged me to pursue obscure sources directly and reach out to other scholars. Mike

Wilmott, the editor of Come on Eileen!, sent me this text weeks before I was able to pay for it.

Sarah Wisdom, a colleague, read all three chapters and let me know what stories were irrelevant

to my arguments.

Though my study relies on the work of many scholars, I want especially to thank four

scholars: Tammy Proctor, the first scholar inside the academy to write a global history of Guid-

ing; Kristine Alexander, a scholar of Guiding in interwar India, Britain, and Canada; Timothy

Parsons, whose research focuses predominately on Boy Scouting in Africa; and Anthony Watt,

occasionally referred to as “the historian on the boy scouts of India.”

vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS......................................................................................................v

INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................1

Girl Guides, Empire, and Nations as Imagined Communities ....................................5

Maternalism: A Manifestation of the Civilizing Mission.............................................6

The Colonial Spectrum of Guiding.............................................................................12

Chapters ......................................................................................................................16

Terminology ................................................................................................................19

CHAPTER 1: METROPOLITAN MOTHERS' INTERNATIONALISM: THE ORIGINS,

DISCOURSE, AND GOVERNANCE OF GIRL GUIDES, 1918-1960 ................................25

Imperial Origins..........................................................................................................26

World War I: The Reinvention of Girl Guiding, 1914-1918......................................32

The Baden-Powells: The Preservation of the Civilizing Agenda...............................36

The Mother of Guides and Her Family ......................................................................42

Western Illusions of Internationalism ........................................................................48

Western Leaders Question the Extent of Their International Principals .................51

Conclusion ...................................................................................................................61

CHAPTER 2: FUTURE MOTHERS OF EMPIRE: WHITE GUIDERS AND THEIR

MISSION TO MOTHER IMPERIAL CITIZENS, 1915-1945.............................................74

Opposition of Colonial Governments .........................................................................76

Partners in Empire......................................................................................................80

Mothering the Future Citizens of Empire ..................................................................97

Conclusion: Effects of White Guiders Work With the Colonized........................... 108

vii

CHAPTER 3: GIRL GUIDING: MATERNAL NATIONALISM AND THE

ABORIGINAL EXCEPTION, 1910-1960............................................................................ 122

India: Conflicting Ideas of Citizenship, 1911-1960 .................................................. 125

Models of the post-war Guiding Internationalism: India and Pakistan.................. 145

Malaya ....................................................................................................................... 147

Nigeria ....................................................................................................................... 153

Australia .................................................................................................................... 159

Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 163

CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................................... 180

BIBLIOGRAPHY: PRIMARY SOURCES......................................................................... 183

Collections ................................................................................................................. 183

Newspapers/ Journals ............................................................................................... 183

Published ................................................................................................................... 184

BIBLIOGRAPHY: SECONDARY SOURCES ................................................................... 189

1

INTRODUCTION

I Promise, on my Honor To do my duty to God and the King; To try and do daily good turns for other people; To obey the Law of the Guides.1

At the beginning of each weekly Girl Guide meeting, colonized girls in Malaya, Austra-

lia, Nigeria, and India pledged their loyalty to the King of England. Many wore the same uni-

form, learned the symbolism of the Union Jack and the words to God Save the Queen, and per-

formed the same rituals that Lord Robert Baden-Powell had invented for British girls during the

first two decades of the twentieth century. At their camps, they flew the Union Jack and the

World Flag of Guiding. Many colonized girls considered Princess Margaret and Elizabeth their

royal sisters and celebrated their birthdays and Guiding accomplishments, often in more elabo-

rate ways than their British counterparts. One company in a leprosy colony in southern Nigeria

went so far as to commission “a leper boy” to carve two life-size statues of the princesses in their

Guiding uniforms to stand in the central meeting place of the community.2 All of the colonized

companies of Guides spent months preparing extravagant performances for coronation celebra-

tions of 1937. Such practices, at first glance, suggest that the proliferation of Girl Guiding com-

panies across the British Empire in the early twentieth century was another manifestation of a

movement founded in the metropole driving change in the colonies.

My comparative study of Guiding in Malaya, India, Nigeria, and Australia uncovers a

more complex web of influence, adaptation, and agency. It argues that colonial Guide leaders,

known as Guiders, reworked Baden-Powell’s citizenship program so that it aligned with their

personal and political conceptions of the imagined community, be it nation or Empire, which

2

they hoped their Guides would one day join.3 In all four colonial contexts, Guiders and officers

justified active citizenship as an essential responsibility of women, a natural extension of their

maternal role as caretaker and their duty to improve the lives of benighted Others. From the pro-

gram’s origins in London in 1909, when confidence in the civilizing mission was at all time high,

until 1960, the “Year of Africa,” the evolving relationship between the metropole and colonies

affected the ways colonial participants used the Guiding program as well as the policies the

metropole adopted. The endpoint, 1960, stands as out as milestone in decolonization. It began

with Conservative Prime Minister Harold Macmillan publicly declaring Britain’s approval of the

decolonization of its African Empire in his Wind of Change speech and ended with Nigerian in-

dependence.4 Like all periodizations, however, the breaking point of 1960 is an artificial con-

struction. Though the relationship between the metropole and colonies changed as India, Paki-

stan, Malaya, and Nigeria gained independence and Britain left Australia to look to the United

States as its primary ally in Oceania, it did not end. This postcolonial relationship continues to

influence Guides and Guiders in India, Malaya, Australia, and Nigeria as well as those in metro-

pole and around the world.

The interactions between Girl Guide officialdom headquartered in London, Guide leaders

of colonized girls, and the colonized girls who joined suggest that the foundational ideology of

Guiding, maternalism, became a common language that participants used to work towards differ-

ent conceptions of civic belonging that included the world, the Empire, and the nation. These

ideas flowed in an unpredictable path that initially followed the traditional metropole to colony

model but after the First World War increasingly involved the transference of ideas and person-

nel from colony to metropole, within colonies, or among colonies. The Girl Guiding movement

reveals what C. A. Bayle calls the “multi-centric nature of change in world history.”5

3

Founded in 1909 as a way to keep British girls from joining Boy Scout troops, Girl

Guides initially represented another effort “in centuries-old campaigns” to bring working-class

British girls into the folds of modern civilization.6 Its emphasis on the development of competent

mothers addressed contemporary fears that ignorant mothers who failed to adequately raise their

children as loyal, healthy citizens would lead to the demise of white global domination. By the

beginning of World War One, Guiding had expanded outside of Britain to Europe, Asia, Africa,

and the Americas but remained a primarily an Anglo-American phenomenon with most members

concentrated in Britain, the United States, and the white Dominions.

Scholars agree that as the founder, Robert Baden-Powell, watched the accumulating car-

nage of World War I, he changed the tone of Guiding from that of defensive imperialism, which

emphasized the need to train white children of all classes to protect Anglo-American global

domination, to one of liberal imperialism that envisioned a multiracial movement dedicated to

international cooperation.7 Robert’s ideological shift reflected a general sense of uncertainty

among the colonized and colonizers in superiority of Western modernity. It also reflected the

influence of Western educators working in the colonies who had written Robert that the program

was the ideal tool to teach young girls the superior ways and values of the West. Desperate to

restore the legitimacy of the Anglo-American mission to guide other societies towards rational

self-government, Western educators, primarily missionaries, had begun unofficial guiding com-

panies among colonized girls in India and Malaya. Unlike the original program that promised

imperial citizenship only to Western women, these educators encouraged their colonized Guides

to work towards taking on the responsibilities of imperial citizenship. Their success stories

helped to persuade Robert to support Guiding among the colonized.8

4

Although Girl Guiding officially adopted a more international focus after WWI, in the

colonized world it retained its imperial focus. Primarily white American and British colonial

Guiders encouraged colonized girls to imagine belonging to a larger British world once they

mastered the skills the membership required. Between the start of the War in 1914 and the crea-

tion of the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts [WAGGGS], the international gov-

erning body of Guiding, in 1928, the percentage of British territories with nascent Guiding

movements that allowed colonized girls to join increased from none to over half.9 In comparison,

no French territories had established Guide movements before 1928, and though the Dutch Indies

had a growing movement, the first official historian of Guiding, Rose Gough Kerr, claimed,

“Guiding in the Dutch East Indies has developed quite apart from the motherland, and along the

English lines.”10

Charged with a desire to transform Guiding into a global youth movement that promoted

peace, transnational cooperation, and Anglo-American ideals of femininity and democracy,

white women from Britain and America working in the metropole built the international struc-

ture of Guiding, while those in colonized regions started the first companies among non-Western

girls.11 To demonstrate that Guiding promoted an imagined global community of sister Guides,

the contingent of British and American women in London developed world conferences and

camps, international penpal programs, and similar handbooks and rituals.12 In the colonies, uni-

forms, shared literature and traditions, regional and national camps, and visits from prominent

British elites sought to give participants at the peripheries a sense of belonging to an imagined

community united under a common Promise and Laws. Despite the international emphasis that

Guiding adopted in reaction to the carnage of WWI, its foundational concept of maternalism,

which made it differ from the original Scouting program Baden-Powell developed in 1908 for

5

British boys, remained essential, driving the actions of its participants in the metropole and colo-

nies.13

Girl Guides, Empire, and Nations as Imagined Communities

Since Benedict Anderson published Imagined Communities, most scholars, according to

historians Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds, have assumed the nation “as the imagined com-

munity of modern times.”14 Anderson’s iconic text argues that the rise of print capitalism

allowed individuals to imagine that they shared a common heritage, political agenda, and value

system with people they had never met. These shared characteristics became the basis for citi-

zenship in a nation, where members share rights and responsibilities as well as values and expec-

tations. Yet, not all imagined communities were nations. During the first half of the twentieth

century a variety of imagined communities united people of different nationalities and ethnicities

across disparate regions with a sense of shared values.15 Transnational women’s organizations

like Girl Guiding and the British Empire imagined political communities of citizens that meet

Anderson’s distinguishing characteristics of a nation: limited in scope and sovereign in rule.16

Where most imagined political communities presumed citizens as male, Girl Guiding

provided women a platform to invent imagined communities inclusive of women and girls.17 At

the international level, Guide officers often described this imagined sisterhood of Guiders and

Guides as an international family where Western women mothered non-Western women. When

white and colonized Guiders in Malaya, Nigeria, Australia, and India started companies among

colonized girls, they used Guiding to imagine a community that placed them in the position as

mothers of both their Guides and other women who had yet to integrate Western practices and

values into their lives. Most white Guiders, both American and British, and many colonized

Guiders saw themselves as mothers of future imperial citizens.

6

Other Guiders in Malaya, Nigeria, and India wanted their charges to take up the mantle of

the future nation. The active national discourse in India led some Guiders to adopt the Baden-

Powell’s Scouting program to encourage girls to embody a multiracial citizenship of the future

Indian nation from the arrival of girls scouting in 1911. Though the first Guide leaders of Malaya

who were nearly all British or American firmly embraced imperial citizenship, after Indian inde-

pendence, Lady Templer, the wife of the High Commissioner, prompted white Guiders and colo-

nized Guiders to recruit Malayan leadership and encourage Guides to work towards a multiracial

Malayan citizenship that valued Chinese and Indian girls as equally important to the nation as

Malays. In contrast to India, where most government officials and Western Guiders objected to

nationalist manifestations of Guiding, in Malaya, a Western Guider initiated the transformation

of Guiding from a imperial import largely run by Western women into a multiracial nationalist

organization and the government sponsored the first nationalist Guiding projects. In Nigeria,

Lady Oyinkan Abayomi transformed of Guiding from a tool of imperialism into an organization

of multiethnic nationalism after the colonial government’s new policy of Nigerianization led the

all-white leadership to decide it politically expedient to appoint at least one Nigerian officer.

Rather than look to the West for models, officers and Guiders often modeled their policies and

projects on the programs the Guide associations of India and Pakistan had implemented.

Maternalism: A Manifestation of the Civilizing Mission

During the nineteenth century as Britain expanded its rule over Western Malaya, Nigeria,

India, and Australia, it legitimated its control of other peoples and lands with the ideology of the

civilizing mission. Westerners often described the civilizing mission in terms of childhood de-

velopment. Accordingly, they portrayed Western countries as the fully matured adult human be-

ings with the capability of rational thought and ingenuity and responsibility to defend “childlike”

7

peoples who had not yet developed their full capabilities.18 The more similar a colonized soci-

ety’s material culture and political organization (especially their understanding of private prop-

erty) to the West, the better its ranking in the eyes of Westerners and the sooner it would prove

fit enough for self-government. Because Westerners commonly conflated culture and race, the

civilizing mission asserted the superiority of white middle-class Western capitalist values. How-

ever, it implicitly promised peoples deemed colonized, nonwhite, or uncivilized the right to rep-

resentative government and social equality when they had attained the standards of civilization.19

The white settler colonies gained the right to responsible government over the late nine-

teenth and early twentieth centuries. Britain and Australia dismissed Aboriginal claims to the

land and governance and agreed that Aboriginals would never benefit from the civilizing mission

as within a few generations their race would be extinct.20 For the dependencies, colonizers ar-

gued it would be generations before the people would be ready to take on the full responsibilities

of governance – some more than others. In the imperial mind, Malaya, because of its aristocracy

and monarchy, and Northern Nigeria, because of its strong centralized rule, was generations

ahead of the more democratic, localized ‘pagan’ societies of Southern Nigeria.21

That Britain had granted settler colonies self-governance made British claims that in the

distant future the colonized peoples of Asia and Africa might also gain self-government appear

more authentic. Many colonized people, including Gandhi, initially favored the ideal of an impe-

rial citizenship as they interpreted it to include the right to vote and compete equally.22 Yet in

practice, the imperial civilizing mission and self-government in the Dominions promoted white

superiority, contributed to the racialization of the hierarchy of civilizations, and only rhetorically

acknowledged the colonized as imperial citizens. By the twentieth century, Westerners under-

8

stood civilized and uncivilized, white and non-white, and Occidental and Oriental to be synony-

mous categories and used the terms interchangeably.23

At the end of the nineteenth century, middle-class Western women reshaped the rhetoric

of the civilizing mission to justify a greater role for women in politics, missionary work, educa-

tion, and medicine. Historians refer to the feminist version of the civilizing mission as maternal-

ism.24 Maternalism advanced motherhood as women’s natural occupation that included physi-

cally raising children as well as nurturing the community in their work as social workers, teach-

ers, nurses, and community activists. Because maternalism sought to challenge certain gender

inequities and reform society, historians consider it an early manifestation of what later activists

call “feminism.” One inequity that maternalists contested was the persistent belief among na-

tionbuilders that imperialism and nationalism were exclusively masculine endeavors. According

to maternalist discourse, women built the country’s citizenry through work with one’s own fam-

ily and work mothering the future citizens of the nation/empire. While maternalists believed bio-

logical motherhood the best way to contribute to the wellbeing of the nation, most committed

women maternalists pursued careers outside the home in education, medicine, and community.25

When the Guiding movement emerged in Britain, maternalism had become a mainstream

women’s rights ideology that interest groups across the politic spectrum appropriated to justify

diverging agendas. Although maternalists ranging from Indian male anti-imperialists to white

missionaries discursively advanced that all women were naturally endowed with maternal in-

stincts, they agreed that inadequate mothers threatened to undermine human progress. Maternal-

ists typically considered any woman that fit their idealized models of femininity as deficient.

Nearly every cultural tradition that did not fit within Western conceptions of femininity, mater-

nalists labeled as form of oppression of women.26 They added women’s rights as another quali-

9

fication necessary before the colonized peoples gained the right to self-government and asserted

that women, because of their maternal proclivities, were the most efficient agents of the colo-

nized mission. Maternalists imagined middle-class white women guiding colonized peoples, the

working class, and other groups at the periphery of ‘civilization’ to exchange their backwards,

superstitious traditions and irrational beliefs for the modern rationality of the Western bourgeoi-

sie.27

The First World War undermined the civilizing mission in minds of colonizer and colo-

nizer alike. Both adapted to survive through the interwar period and after. To revive what Mi-

chael Adas alliteratively names, “the badly battered civilizing mission,” Britain redeveloped

popular rituals and political discourses to project a more participatory, inclusive Empire and co-

lonial governments focused more on the welfare of the colonized. Indians gained more power in

colonial government. Likewise, Guiding adopted an international focus and a more democratic

system of governance that granted independent nations, the white Dominions, and India the right

send delegates to biannual World Conferences.28 Despite such reforms and widespread rejection

of essentialist conceptions of culture or race, the hierarchy of civilizations remained influential in

the minds of imperialists.

After World War I, a new model of feminine independence and public engagement

emerged that historians now refer to as the Modern Girl, yet at the time her names varied accord-

ing to country and region. The Modern Girl quickly became an international phenomenon that

challenged the selfless ethic of maternalism and offered girls and women a new avenue to inde-

pendence based on leisure and consumption rather than the sacrifice and duty maternalism de-

manded.29 Among colonized elites, the Modern Girl became emblematic of drawbacks of mod-

ernity and fed parents’ fears regarding Western educational imports like Guiding.30 In reaction to

10

such a threat, colonial Guiders expanded the civilizing mission not only to teach colonized girls

Western values and skills that they believed modern citizenship required, but also to protect them

from the temptations that modernity would bring.31 They also exploited the commercial medi-

ums that had popularized the modern girl, magazines, film, and radio to spread the ethic of Guid-

ing.32

With the blessing of government officials and colonial professionals, more white women

took up the civilizing mission after the War either as professionals or as wives with social expec-

tations to meet. These women understood that if properly instructed the colonized could be their

potential equals, fellow citizens of the British Empire, responsible enough to participate in a civil

society of women made up of charity organizations, lobby groups, and discussion circles and

contribute to the general welfare through volunteer work and careers oriented towards service.

Barbara Bush calls this shift in imperial politics “the feminization of the Empire.” During this

period of feminization, the government and international organizations working in the dependen-

cies gradually began to cooperate with colonized elites to generate greater consent among the

colonized for the civilizing mission.33

The white Dominions feminized very differently from the dependencies. Most Western-

ers in the Dominions embraced essentialist notions of citizenship and race and saw the civilizing

mission inapplicable to nonwhites. In Australia, policymakers, scientists, and white citizens

agreed that Aboriginal peoples lacked the intellectual capacity to take on the responsibilities of

self-government or the duties of citizenship.34 Driven by the votes and lobby organizations of

white men and women, the federal and state governments of Australia focused on the welfare of

white women. To deal with the Aboriginal problem, they created a separate welfare system,

which strove to eliminate the Aboriginal way of life through forced-segregation and coercive as-

11

similation. The Australian branches of international women’s organizations like Guiding and the

Pan-Pacific Women’s Association followed their lead.35 As a result, the Guiding movements in

the Dominions directed nearly all their resources towards white Guides and curtailed the official

participation of non-Western women. Guiding for Aboriginal girls only began in the thirties,

when all states had realized that the segregation of Aborigines would not lead to their elimination

and had adopted a policy of assimilation that required the institutionalization Aboriginal children

of mixed parentage. White Guiders who started companies of colonized girls in the Dominions

were primarily Christian missionaries working as state-funded institutions to teach Aboriginal

children how to act in “the white world.” They rarely had the means to participate in regional

council meetings or take their companies to rallies, camps, and other regional celebrations that

local Guiders arranged. By the time Australian Guiding movement began encourage Guiding

among Aboriginal Guides and allow Aboriginal women to join as Guiders in the late fifties,

Guiding had become firmly identified in the minds of former Aboriginal Guides as representa-

tive of a past they wanted their daughters to avoid.36

The maternalist purpose of Guiding helped it overcome conservative opposition not only

in Britain but also in Europe, the United States, the white Dominions, northern Nigeria, India,

and Malaya.37 Maternalism provided educated middle-class women, colonized and white, the

moral power they needed to bypass traditional boundaries between classes, races, and genders.

With these new freedoms, female maternalists used Guiding as a rubric to train girls to reorgan-

ize society so that women could take on their natural role as nurturer in the home and commu-

nity. Many historians argue that the international tone of the interwar Guiding philosophy trig-

gered the exponential growth the movement achieved during the twenties and thirties.38 My

study indicates that movement’s commitment to maternalism played an equally influential role in

12

its expansion and in the cases of Nigeria, Australia, India, and Malaya ensured its popularity

among colonized girls and women. It gave colonial Guiders, the flexibility to train and promote

their Guides as future citizens of the Empire or the nation that male nationalist and imperialist

came to support.

Colonized women, mostly the Western-educated elite who sought greater influence in

their communities, found maternalism a far more palatable feminism than the sexual and domes-

tic liberation that the Modern Girl represented. Maternalism offered colonized women ideologies

to cast themselves as makers of future independent nation taking on the same maternal role as

colonizer women claimed. Yet, unlike their Western counterparts, they hoped practiced a more

inclusive civilizing mission. They worked around non-Western “barbaric” traditions such as pur-

dah, polygamy, and child marriage and chose certain “primitive” traditions to symbolize the a

cohesive national identity.

The Colonial Spectrum of Guiding

Western perceptions influenced not only when and if colonized peoples were deemed

ready for self-government, but also the development of Guiding among colonized girls and their

relationship to the worldwide movement.39 Through a comparative analysis of the evolution of

Guiding among colonized girls and women in India, Malaya, Australia, and Nigeria from the

1911 to 1960, I strive to capture the spectrum of relationships between metropole and colony and

colonizers and colonized that existed in the British imperial world. Their diversity reveals local

conditions that shaped the ways Guiding officials, Guides, and Guiders negotiated between the

international and imperial goals of the movement and defined citizenship.40 Their commonalities

demonstrate the influence of global processes.

13

The civilization hierarchy suggested that certain peoples would become capable of self-

government faster than others. In the cases of Malaya, Australia, India, and Nigeria, this in fact

played out. Britain gradually granted greater levels of self-governance according to how similar

they perceived the colony’s cultures to be to British culture. Thus, the metropole first loosened it

grip on Australia (1901), a white settler society; then agreed to independence for India and Paki-

stan, which had historical legacies of great civilizations (1947). Next, they pushed independence

on Malaya whom had a pro-British hierarchical society (1957). Nigeria, where racism intensified

white perceptions of difference, only gained independence in 1960, even though its people had

demanded it since the late thirties. Western perceptions of civilization affected not only inde-

pendence, but also the interactions between white and colonized Guiders, Guiding headquarters

and colonial Guiding associations, and colonized Guiders and colonized society.

Australia, a settler colony whose aim was the elimination of Aborigines, represents one

extreme. It seemingly had the closest cultural connections with Britain with the greatest political

independence secured in 1901 with Federation. Federation did not lead to decolonization. With

the powers to control domestic affairs and immigration policies, Australia intensified its effort to

define imperial citizenship as white. When predictions of Aboriginal extinction proved un-

founded, states forced Aborigines to assimilate to British society. No matter the degree Aborigi-

nal women assimilated, the federal government only began to legally insure Aborigines the civil

rights to participate in British society in the sixties and seventies.41 Guiding became a part of this

imperial project and has never overcome this legacy.

Nigeria, which Matthew Lange identifies as “the most extreme case of indirect rule,”

constitutes the opposite side of the colonial spectrum than Australia. In contrast to the settler co-

lonialism of Australia, Lord Lugard, the Governor General of Nigeria from 1914-1919, prohib-

14

ited expatriate land ownership. He set up a form of government that depended on the cooperation

of Nigerian rulers. After World War II, Western officials hesitantly began to institute constitu-

tional changes that would gradually transfer power to Nigerians. Because of their prejudices to-

wards Africans, colonial officials imagined independence in the distant future and resisted set-

ting a date until 1957. After they established later a date later that year for the regions in the

south and 1959 for the Northern Region, Western officials postponed the transfer of power a

long as they could without promoting violence. Though Nigeria gained independence and with it

the right to send a delegation to the World Conferences that the international governing body of

Guiding held tri-annually, Western leaders at the international level continued to exclude Nige-

rian women from governance.42

The British Raj represents the middle of the spectrum. Generally, Westerners perceived

Indians as better equipped to face the responsibilities of self-rule than Malays, Nigerians, or Aus-

tralian Aboriginals. By the inception of Guiding in 1909, historian Daniel Gorman explains, “In-

dia, the lynchpin of the Empire . . . occupied a halfway house between the settlement colonies,

which enjoyed self-government, and the dependencies, governed by British fiat, and deemed by

London unlikely to progress towards autonomy in the near or distant future.”43 It led the dé-

nouement of the British Empire with independence and partition in 1947 and served as the model

for other anti-colonial nationalisms.

Upon first glance, Malaya resembles India. Different sultanates had different degrees of

self-governance. In practice, however, all Malay sultans retained only their ceremonial roles and

social privileges. To expedite the modernization of Malaya’s economy and the exploitation of its

resources and maintain the consent of sultans, the government encouraged the immigration of

Chinese and Indian coolies rather that force Malays, who were primarily subsistent farmers, into

15

wage labor. Until British officials had begun to guide Malaya towards independence as a means

to perpetuate its economic influence in the face of Communist guerrillas, very few colonized

elites wanted independence. Ethnic tensions between Chinese and Malays made a unified Ma-

layan nation difficult to imagine until the Communist threat allied the Chinese and Malay elite

against a common enemy.44

In each case, the role of the Guiding offers not only an important window onto but occa-

sionally a corrective to the narrative of staggered independence. Nigeria, India, and Malaya

shared a common problem of uniting a diverse multifaith, multilingual, and multiethnic popula-

tion into a nation. When and how nationalists harnessed Guiding to this purpose varied. In India,

Westernized elites, white and colonized, quickly grasped on to the movement as tool of national-

ism as soon as it arrived in 1911. The Nigerian Girl Guide movement began its efforts to pro-

mote a united Nigerian identity in the late forties under the leadership of a colonized Guider who

had been involved in Nigerian nationalist movements since their inception in the late thirties.

Malayan nationalism only emerged in the fifties. Before, all colonial Guiders, colonized and

colonizers, used the program to promote an imperial community united through language, loyalty

to the King, and shared goals and values. Because nationalist organizations that emerged in the

late forties were racially exclusive, Malayan nationalism initially seemed a divisive movement. It

took the white wife of the British High Commissioner to persuade colonial Guiders to integrate a

multiracial Malayan nationalism into their Guiding program. Nonetheless, because Britain

judged Malayan independence as politically and economically expedient and understood Asian

societies as more advanced, Malaya achieved independence three years before Nigeria in 1957.45

To colonizers, old racial tropes of civilization held greater influence over the timing of inde-

pendence than the desires and nationalist activities of the colonized.

16

Chapters

The first chapter, “Western Foundations: The Origins, Discourse, and Governance of

Guiding, 1909-1960,” outlines the evolution of Girl Guides from an institution of prideful An-

glo-American imperialism into the world’s largest international youth movement that clothed its

imperial roots under the rhetoric of international sisterhood. With evidence I culled from organi-

zational records and articles in the international Guiding magazine, The Council Fire, I argue

that the governing organization of the international movement, WAGGGS, institutionalized atti-

tudes of Western superiority. In response to the destruction of World War II, the emergence of

modernization theory, and Indian Independence in 1947, the Western leadership of WAGGGS

implemented changes that allowed more non-Westerners to participate in the international

movement. They formally recognized the expertise of Asian Guiders as trainers and policymak-

ers and incorporated them into the corps of international leaders. In regards to Nigeria and other

recently independent nations of Africa that had joined WAGGGS as members, Western leaders

continued to marginalize African Guiders and delegates to World Conferences from the interna-

tional movement until the seventies. As a small minority of the Australian movement, Aboriginal

Guides and their Guiders, who were predominantly white missionaries, remained on the periph-

eries of the international movement.

Chapter 2, “Future Mothers of Empire: White Guiders and their Mission to Mother Impe-

rial Citizens, 1915-1945,” examines the tensions between white Guiders despite their shared faith

in the civilizing missions. The missionaries, who founded Guiding companies despite opposition

from colonial governments and ambivalence from the Guiding Headquarters in the metropole,

understood Guiding as effective program that transformed colonized girls into the first genera-

tion of colonized citizens of the Empire. 46 They hoped that through performances of imperial

17

pride, service projects targeted at mothers and children, “traditional” crafts and games, and

physical culture and adventure Guiding would prepare colonized girls for the responsibilities of

imperial citizenship. British wives of colonial bureaucrats, who became Guiders of colonized

girls when the colonial governments of Malaya, Nigeria, and India became advocates for the

Guiding in the twenties, viewed their work and their Guides achievements as progress towards a

distant future when colonized people may reach the level of civility needed to take on the re-

sponsibilities of imperial citizenship. The activities of white Guiders also show that the colonies

impacted the actions of the metropole. Successful reports from missionary Guiders convinced

Robert Baden-Powell to reconsider his ambivalence towards non-Western Guides. After World

War I, Robert agreed to internationalize the movement and the colonial governments of Malaya,

Nigeria, and India took up the cause of colonized Girl Guides. As Headquarters abandoned their

pre-war rhetoric of Empire-building and flaunted Guiding as an international sisterhood, white

Guiders hoped that through performances of imperial pride, service projects that targeted at

mothers and children, “traditional” crafts and games, and physical culture and adventure Guiding

would prepare colonized girls for the responsibilities of imperial citizenship. By the Coronation

of George IV, colonized Girl Guides had become the quintessential symbol of the benevolence

of British imperialism a feature of imperial ceremonies and celebrations in Malaya, Nigeria, and

India.

The split among white colonial Guiders over when the colonized would take on the re-

sponsibilities of citizenship helps to account why the Guiding movements in Malaya, Nigeria,

and India became expressions of belonging to nations independent of the British community.

Colonized Guiders began to imagine a nation when they had lost faith that they could ever be-

long to an imperial community as citizens. Australia differed as it treated the colonized as prob-

18

lem to be rid of rather than a resource to be developed. Government officials and nearly all

white women treated Aboriginal Guides as a potential threat that required tight control. Because

of such reluctance, missionaries in Australia took much longer to exploit Guiding as a tool to

civilize girls to Western standards of femininity. They only began to found companies in the

1930s when the government decided to eliminate Aboriginal society through assimilation. The

first Coronation Aboriginal Guides celebrated was Elizabeth’s in 1953; they celebrated with

color guards and renditions of God Save the Queen at mission stations miles away from the

larger rallies and camps held across Australia in honor of the event.47 Aboriginal Guides like

their colonized counterparts eventually dismissed the idea of belonging to a larger British world

yet never imagined a pan-Aboriginal nation.

Chapter 3, “Girl Guiding: Maternal Nationalism and the Aboriginal Exception,” exam-

ines how women in India, Malaya, and Nigeria manipulated the imperial maternalism that the

original metropolitan version offered and most white colonial Guiders propagated into a national

maternalism. Because these movements became champions of nationalism before independence,

Guiding became a sign of national pride among the citizenry despite its imperial origin. Women

found Guiding a way to envision citizenship to the nation in feminine terms and prepare the next

generation of girls as mothers of the nation. In Australia, neither Aborigines nor their white mis-

sionary Guiders ever considered maternal nationalism as a plausible foundation for Aboriginal

citizenship. The concept of an independent Aboriginal nation only emerged in the seventies and

never gained traction among a significant number of a Aborigines or non-Aborigines.48 Before

the late sixties, Aboriginal nationalism did not seek out a nation state or even equality for Abo-

rigines; it merely hoped to achieve the civil rights that imperial citizenship promised for Abo-

rigines who assimilated. Aboriginal women, even those who had participated in movement as

19

girls, found the program useless as white Australia set the requirements of imperial citizenship so

that no Aboriginal woman could attain it no matter how white she acted.

Guiding offers a method to delve into the ways women interpreted maternalism to envi-

sion and pursue their conceptions of imagined communities. Western leaders of WAGGGs

worked towards an international community of member states where Western delegates decided

on behalf or instead of the colonized counterparts. Yet, colonial Guiders did not passively accept

the vision that the metropole projected. They created their own conceptions of community occa-

sionally in ways that affected the metropole. The stories and ambitions of Guiders complicate

neat narratives of imperialism and contribute to the historiographies of the new imperialism,

British World, and colonial women. As a transnational organization run by women, Guiding un-

earths feminine conceptions of citizenship and imagined community and highlights the tensions

of Empire that provoked women to become involved with the program.

Terminology

This thesis employs multiple terms with imprecise meanings and charged connotations.

Colonized refers to the nonwhite people who lived in Australia, Malaya, Nigeria, and India and

does not include white Australian settlers of European descent. In Malaya, the colonized popula-

tion includes the daughters of Indian and Chinese immigrants as well as indigenous Malay girls.

Colonial describes both whites and colonized people who live in the colonies.

I define Australia as the Australian Continent, the island of Tasmania and the Torres

Strait Islands. I will only consider Guiding activity in what today is known as West Malaysia or

Peninsular Malaysia as the former British North Borneo colonies of Sarawak and Sabah did not

gain independence or unite with “West Malaysia” until 1963. During the period of colonization

the British governed Singapore and Malacca separately from Malaya. Because Malacca became

20

part of Malaya in 1948, I have included Guides and Guiders from this region in my study. I have

chosen not examine Guiding in Singapore as the British continued to govern it separately until

1963 when it briefly attempted to unite with the Federated States of Malaya. However, up to

1953 the Girl Guide Association of Malaya included Singapore Girl Guides in its organization

and thus, the experiences of Guides and Guiders in Singapore and the rest of colonial Malaya run

parallel. I will consider Pakistan and India in my analysis of postcolonial British India.49

For Scouting terminology, I have adopted much of the language from organizational

sources. Because three Baden-Powells contributed to the founding of the movement, for the sake

of clarity, I refer to Olave Baden-Powell, Agnes Baden-Powell, and Robert Baden-Powell by

their first names. I use the plural, Baden-Powells, to indicate the husband-wife team of Olave and

Robert. Scouting refers to the movement that Robert Baden-Powell founded for boys and girls.50

Guiding refers to Scouting for girls. I use guiding or scouting as common nouns to distinguish

between unofficial manifestations of Baden-Powell’s program and officially sanctioned pro-

grams. Because Baden-Powell specified that he preferred to address all Guide leaders as Guiders

rather than with the title they had earned and sources reflect his preference, I call all leaders,

Deputies, Captains and Lieutenants, commissioned or non-commissioned, Guiders. When

speaking of women who became officers at the regional, national, or international levels I only

include their specific title if I deem it significant. Lastly, I often label all girl participants as

Guides rather than categorize them the age groups that Baden-Powell invented after 1915

1 Agnes Baden-Powell and Robert Baden-Powell, The Handbook for Girl Guides or How Girls Can Help

Build the Empire (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1912), 25-26, 38-41. 2 Eileen Sandford, Come On, Eileen! (Shrewsbury: Shrewsbury Words, 2010), 49; “Thinking Day in Af-

rica and Asia,” The Council Fire 35, no. 2 (April-June 1960): 88-90; “The British Empire,” The Council Fire 7, no. 2 (April 1932): 21; Sheila Bridges “Guiding in Nigeria,” The Council Fire 16, no. 2 (April 1941): 24-25. Most likely the white Guider who described the statues of the Leper Colony of the Church of Scotland referred to the sculptor as a boy because of his race rather than his age.

3 Lakshmi Mazumdar, “The Girl Guide Movement in India,” in Social Welfare in India, edited by Dur-gabai Deshmukh (New Delhi: The Planning Commission of the Government of India, 1955), 121; India Planning

21

Commission, Social Welfare in India (New Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, 1960), 351; WAGGGS, Ninth Biennial Report, 1944-1946, 73.

4 Brian Lapping, End of Empire (London: Granada, 1985), 168-190. 5 C. A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914: Global Connections and Comparisons

(Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub, 2004), 451. 6 Michael Adas, Machines As the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Domi-

nance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), 208-209; Anna Davin, “Imperialism and Motherhood,” History Workshop no. 5 (Spring 1978): 9-65; Margaret Jolly, “Other Mothers: Maternal ‘Insouciance’ and the Depopulation Debate in Fiji and Vanuatu, 1890-1930,” in Maternities and Modernities: Colonial and Postcolonial Experiences in Asia and the Pacific, edited by Kalpana Ram and Margaret Jolly (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 177-182.

7 Tammy Proctor, On My Honour Guides and Scouts in Interwar Britain (Philadelphia: American Philoso-phical Society, 2002),4, 7, 73, 107, 113, 131; Allen Warren, “Citizens of the Empire: Baden-Powell, Scouts and Guides, and an Imperial Ideal,” in Imperialism and Popular Culture, ed. by John M. MacKenzie (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1986), 242-256.

8 Mabel Marsh, Service Suspended (New York: Carlton Press, 1968), 16, 21, 24, 75; A Wagon That Was Hitched to a Star (1917), 108; Allen Warren, “Citizens of the Empire: Baden-Powell, Scouts and Guides, and an Imperial Ideal,” in Imperialism and Popular Culture, edited by John M. MacKenzie, (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1986), 242-246; Carey Watt, “The Promise of ‘Character’ and the Spectre of Sedition: The Boy Scout Movement and Colonial Consternation in India, 1908-1921,” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 22, no. 2 (1999): 37-62.

9 Proctor, Scouting for Girls: A Century of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2009), 62; On My Honour, 144; Trefoil Round the World (The World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, 1999); Lee Switzer and Donna Switzer, The Black Press in South Africa and Lesotho: A Descriptive Bibliographic Guide (Bos-ton: G.K. Hall and Company, 1979), 209; World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, “Our World,” http://www.wagggs.org/en/world (accessed April 22, 2012). The British territories that excluded colonized girls included South Africa, Lesotho, Kenya, Southern Rhodesia, the Bahamas, and Malta.

10 Jean-Jacques Gauthé, Les scouts (Paris: Le Cavalier bleu, 2007), 62; The Story of a Million Girls; Guid-ing and Girl Scouting Round the World, 99; Trefoil Round the World (1999); World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, “Our World.”

11 Proctor, On My Honour, 132; World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, Trefoil Round the World (1999). The brief histories that Trefoil Round the World provides on each member nation imply that French colonies looked to the French model of Guiding. In all the cases, I have examined, girls and women from Britain or America brought Guiding; I have not found any examples French, German, or Dutch women starting the program in their colonized regions.

12 Rose Gough Kerr, “Story of the Girl Guides, 1908-1938: Official History of the Girl Guides Associa-tion,” in The Story of the Girl Guides, ed. Alex Liddell (London: Girl Guides Association, 1976), 173; Rose Gough Kerr, The Story of a Million Girls; Guiding and Girl Scouting Round the World (London: The Girl Guides Associa-tion, 1937); “But perhaps the greatest achievement of the Guides, and the one that holds out the greatest possibilities for the future, is the growth of the movement all over the world, and the consequent development of friendship and sisterhood among the girls of different nations,” proclaimed Rose Kerr, one of the founders of the World Associa-tion of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS) in her 1937 official history, The Story of a Million Girls: Guiding and Girl Scouting Round the World.

13 Allen Warren, “‘Mothers for the Empire?’: The Girl Guides Association in Britain, 1909-1939,” in Mak-ing Imperial Mentalities: Socialisation And British Imperialism, ed. J. A. Mangan (Manchester: Manchester Uni-versity Press, 1990), 96-109; Proctor, On My Honour Guides, 11-65; Scouting for Girls,1-23; “‘A Separate Path:’ Scouting and Guiding in Interwar South Africa,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 42, no. 3 (July 2000): 606-612; Carol Dyhouse, Girls Growing Up In Late Victorian And Edwardian England (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981), 113-114; Kristin Alexander, “Girl Guide Movement, Internationalism, and Imperialism in In-terwar England, Canada, and India,” (PhD diss., York University, 2010); “The Girl Guide Movement and Imperial Internationalism: During the 1920s and 1930s,” The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 2, no. 1 (Winter 2009): 37-63; “Similarity and Difference at Girl Guide Camps in England, Canada, and India,” in Scouting Fron-tiers: Youth and the Scout Movement's First Century, edited by Tammy M. Proctor and Nelson R. Block (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009), 106-120.

22

14 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Lon-

don and New York: Verso, 1991), 5-7; Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men's Countries and the International Challenge of Racial Equality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 6.

15 Sukanya Banerjee, Becoming Imperial Citizens: Indians in the Late-Victorian Empire (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010); Lake and Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line; Eiichiro Azuma, Between Two Em-pires: Race, History, and Transnationalism in Japanese America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005); Dan-iel Gorman, Imperial Citizenship: Empire and the Question of Belonging (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2006), 41.

16 Leila J. Rupp, “Constructing Internationalism: The Case of Transnational Women's Organizations, 1888-1945,” The American Historical Review 99, no. 5 (1994): 1571-1600; Anderson, Imagined Communities, 224.

17 Anderson, Imagined Communities, 7; Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (London: Routledge, 1995), 353; Tramer Mayer, “Gender Ironies of Nationalism: Setting the Stage,” in Gender Ironies of Nationalism: Sexing The Nation, edited by Tramer Mayer (London: Routledge, 2002), 6; Cynthia H. Enloe, Bananas, Beaches & Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (Berkeley: Uni-versity of California Press, 1990), 44.

18 Mary Montgomerie Bennett, The Australian Aboriginal As a Human Being (London: Alston Rivers, 1930) 112-113; Margaret Jacobs, White Mother to a Dark Race: Settler Colonialism, Maternalism, and the Removal of Indigenous Children in the American West and Australia, 1880-1940 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009), 305-314; Mary Kingsley, Travels in West Africa (Washington, D.C.: Adventure Classics/National Geo-graphic, 2002), 439-440; Michael Adas, “Contested Hegemony: The Great War and the Afro-Asian Assault on the Civilizing Mission Ideology,” Journal of World History 15, no. 1 (2004): 172, 302-307.

19 Gorman, Imperial Citizenship, 9, 50-51, 149-150; Jacobs, White Mother to a Dark Race, 32, 67-68; Pat-rick Wolfe, “Land, Labor, and Difference: Elementary Structures of Race,” The American Historical Review 106, no. 3 (June 2001): 866; Michael Adas, “Contested Hegemony,” 33; Machines As the Measure of Men, 65-67. Adas explains, “For even the best-intentioned Western social theorists and colonial administrators, difference meant infe-riority.”

20 Patrick Wolfe, “Land, Labor, and Difference: Elementary Structures of Race,” The American Historical Review 106, no. 3 (June 2001): 868-870; Barbara McMahon, “Scientist Debunks Nomadic Aborigine ‘Myth,’” The Guardian, Tuesday October 9, 2007 guardian.co.uk (accessed June 22, 2012); Russell McGregor, Imagined Desti-nies: Aboriginal Australians and the Doomed Race Theory, 1880-1939 (Carlton, Melbourne University Press, 1997), 62, 72, 196.

21 Barbara Bush, Imperialism, Race and Resistance Africa and Britain, 1919-1945 (London: Routledge, 1999), 59.

22 Davin, “Imperialism and Motherhood,” 21, 54-55; Lapping, End of Empire, 7; Nele Matz, “Civilization and the Mandate System Under the League of Nations,” in Max Planck Yearbook of United Nations Law, edited by Armin von Bogdandy, Rüdiger Wolfrum, and Christiane Philipp, (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 2005), 60; Banerjee, Becoming Imperial Citizens; E. M. Collingham, Imperial Bodies: The Physical Experience of the Raj, C. 1800-1947 (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2001),118-119. Likewise, in the metropole, compulsory education, the enfranchise-ment of working-class men, and Imperial Civil Service examination system superficially suggested that social mo-bility led to acceptance.

23 Gorman, Imperial Citizenship, 50; Lake and Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line, 9. 24 Antoinette M. Burton, “The Feminist Quest for Identity: British Imperial Suffragism and ‘Global Sister-

hood’ 1900-1915,” Journal of Women's History, 3, no. 2 (Fall 1991): 46-81; Barbara Bush, “Gender and Empire: The Twentieth Century,” in Gender and Empire, edited Philippa Levine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 77-111; Jacobs, White Mother to a Dark Race; Janice N. Brownfoot, “Emancipation, Exercise and Imperialism: Girls and the Game Ethic in Colonial Malaya,” The International Journal of the History of Sport 7 (1990): 61-84; “Healthy Bodies, Healthy Minds’: Sports and Society in Colonial Malaya,” The International Journal of the History of Sport 19 (2002): 129-156; “Sisters Under the Skin: Imperialism and the Emancipation of Women in Malaya, c.1891-1941,” in Making Imperial Mentalities: Socialisation And British Imperialism, edited by J. A. Mangan (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), 46-73.

25 Jacobs, White Mother to a Dark Race, 88; Burton, “The Feminist Quest for Identity,”62. 26Jacobs, White Mother to a Dark Race, 115-117; Sandford, Come On, Eileen!, 48,52-54, 179-182; Leslie

A. Flemming, Women’s Work for Women: Missionaries and Social Change in Asia (Boulder: Westview Press, 1989) 119; Marsh, Service Suspended, 48-49; Bennett, The Australian Aboriginal As a Human Being; Mary Mont-

23

gomerie Bennett and Mount Margaret Mission, Teaching the Aborigines: Data from Mount Margaret Mission, Western Australia,1935 (Western Australia: City and Suburban Print, 1935); K. J. MacFee, Eastern Schools and School Girls: An Account of the Educational Work of the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society (London: Church of England Zenana Missionary Society, 1927), 37-38, 45.Mrs. Elizabeth Choy, Oral History Interview; In-terviewer Miss Tan Beng Luan; 23 August 1985 Oral History Department Singapore, Project=Japanese Occupation November Acc. No 002827/27 62- Reel 5; “News from Overseas: From India, Paris, Germany,” The Age, May 12, 1936, 5.These included purdah common in India, northern Nigeria, and Malaya, child marriage found in India, Ma-laya, Aboriginal Australia, and Nigeria, entrepreneurship as practiced by the market women in southern Nigeria, and polygamy common in Nigeria.

27 McClintock, Imperial Leather, 6, , 37-38, 40; Jacobs, White Mother to a Dark Race, 67, 250. 28 In 1957, World Conferences began to meet every three years. 29 Modern Girl Around the World Research Group, “Modern Girl as Heuristic Device: Collaboration, Con-

nective Comparison, Multidirectional Citation,” in The Modern Girl Around the World: Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization, edited by Eve Alys Weinbaum (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), 1-24; Liz Conor, “‘Blackfella Missus Too Much proud:’ Techniques of Appearing, Femininity, and Race in Australian Modernity,” in The Modern Girl Around the World: Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization, edited by Eve Alys Weinbaum (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), 220-239; Priti Ramamurthy, “All-Consuming Nationalism: The Indian Modern Girl in the 1920s and 1930s,” in The Modern Girl Around the World: Consumption, Modernity, and Global-ization, edited by Eve Alys Weinbaum (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), 163.

30 Partha Chatterjee, “The Nationalist Resolution of the Women's Question,” in Recasting Women: Essays in Indian Colonial History, edited by Kumkum Sangari and Sudesh Vaid (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1990), 246; Saroja Dev Param, A Guiding Light: The Life and Work of Datuk Hajah Hendon Din (Selangor Darul Ehsan: Pelanduk Publications, 2004), 2; Maina Chawla Singh, Gender, Religion, and "Heathen Lands": American Missionary Women in South Asia, 1860s-1940s (New York: Garland Pub, 2000), 270-271; Deborah Gaitskell, “Upward All and Play the Game: The Girl Wayfarer’s Association in the Transvaal 1925 – 1975,” in Apartheid and Education: The Education of Black South Africans, edited by Peter Kallaway (Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1984), 238; Peter Kazenga Tibenderana, “The Beginnings of Girls’ Education in the Native Administration Schools in Northern Nigeria, 1930-1945,” The Journal of African History 26, no. 1 (1985): 93-109.

31 Proctor, Scouting for Girls, Conor,“‘Blackfella Missus Too Much proud:’ Techniques of Appearing, Femininity, and Race in Australian Modernity,” 220-239; Sylvia Leith-Ross, African Women; A Study of the Ibo of Nigeria (New York: F. A. Praeger, 1965), 256; Ruth Frances Woodsmall, Women and the New East (Washington: Middle East Institute, 1960) 368; “Not Much Choice,” The Straits Times, December 18, 1960, 19.

32 Proctor, Scouting for Girls, 102-107; Sandford, Come On, Eileen!, 64,166-167 “Thinking Day in Africa and Asia,” The Council Fire 35, no. 2 (April-June 1960): 88-90; Alexander, “Girl Guide Movement, International-ism, and Imperialism in Interwar England, Canada, and India,” 345; Kerr, “Story of the Girl Guides, 1908-1938: Official History of the Girl Guides Association,” 186; Folarin Coker, A Lady: A Biography of Lady Oyinkan Abayomi (Ibadan, Nigeria: Evans Brothers),1987, 70-71; Sierra Leone Girl Guides Association, Sierra Leone Girl Guides Association: 60 Years of Guiding : Girl Guides, 1924-1984 : "Service Through Guiding," (Freetown, Sierra Leone: The Association, 1984), 24-27; “Notes and News: Western Australia,” The Council Fire 31, no. 4 (October 1956): 160. By the fifties, missionary Guiders working in Aboriginal settlements had begun enrolling in radio corre-spondence courses offered by state Guiding associations in topics like camping, first aid care, and games.

33 Adas, “Contested Hegemony,” 31-42; Bush, “Gender and Empire: The Twentieth Century,” 79-89, 97. 34 Kerr, The Story of a Million Girls,192; Bennett, The Australian Aboriginal As a Human Being,112-113,

Anna Haebich, For Their Own Good: Aborigines and Government in the Southwest of Western Australia, 1900-1940 (Nedlands Western Australia: University of Western Australia Press,1988), 209-210

35 Lake and Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line, 1-12, 125-129, 155-158, 164, 235-246, 312-316, 327-331; Fiona Paisley, Glamour in the Pacific: Cultural Internationalism and Race Politics in the Women's Pan-Pacific (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2009), 84-98; Jacobs, White Mother to a Dark Race, 32-35; Wolfe, “Land, Labor, and Difference: Elementary Structures of Race,” 866-905.

36 Alexander “Girl Guide Movement, Internationalism, and Imperialism in Interwar England, Canada, and India,” 91, 109-110,118, 261, 292, 295-296,326-327,370; Gaitskell, “Upward All and Play the Game,” 44-69; Kerr, The Story of a Million Girls, 193-196; Rosemary van den Berg, “Black Thoughts on Whiteness: Perspectives from an Aboriginal Woman,” Journal of the European Association of Studies on Australia 2, no. 2 (2011): 54; “Austra-lian Federal Council Meeting,” The Council Fire 33, no. 1 (January 1958): 24.

24

37 Alexander, “Girl Guide Movement, Internationalism, and Imperialism in Interwar England, Canada, and

India,” 69-70; A Guiding Light, 2; Singh, Gender, Religion, and "Heathen Lands," 270-271; Deborah Gaitskell, “Upward All and Play the Game,” 238; Tibenderana, "The Beginnings of Girls' Education in the Native Administra-tion Schools in Northern Nigeria, 1930-1945," 93-109.

38 Warren, “Citizens of the Empire,” 245; Warren, “ ‘Mothers for the Empire?’”101-102. 39 Matthew Lange, James Mahoney, and Matthias vom Hau, “Colonialism and Development: A Compara-

tive Analysis of Spanish and British Colonies,” American Journal of Sociology 11, no. 5 (March 2006): 1427, 1428, 1430-1431; Matz, “Civilization and the Mandate System Under the League of Nations,” 47-96.

40 Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather, 6; Trefoil Round the World (1999), 231. 41 Alastair Davidson, From Subject to Citizen: Australian Citizenship in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge,

U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 60-62; The Australian Constitution of 1901 had created a federal elected government with broad law-making powers concerning domestic issues. Britain, however, still retained considerable power that it would slowly relinquish over the next 85 years.

The Nationality and Citizenship Act of 1948 granted Australian citizenship to all Australian people born in Australia including individuals of Aboriginal descent. It also clarified a misinterpreted section of the 1901 Constitu-tion so that all Aborigines who had the right to vote in state elections gained the right to vote in federal elections. Because most Aborigines lived in Queensland and Western Australia that continued to disenfranchise Aborigines from state elections, they could not vote in federal elections until 1963. Western Australia gave them the right to vote in state election in 1962; Queensland held out till 1965.

42 Toyin Falola, The History of Nigeria (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1999), 81-93; Lange, Ma-honey, and vom Hau, “Colonialism and Development: A Comparative Analysis of Spanish and British Colonies,” 1427, 1428, 1430; Robert Collis, Nigeria in Conflict (London: Secker & Warburg, 1970), 105-108. Nigeria had the fewest officials per Nigerian than any other British African colony.

43 Gorman, Imperial Citizenship, 61. 44 Lange, Mahoney, and vom Hau, “Colonialism and Development: A Comparative Analysis of Spanish

and British Colonies,” 1430-1431; John G. Butcher, The British in Malaya, 1880-1941: The Social History of a European Community in Colonial South-East Asia (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1979), 6, 12, 16, 21; Lapping, End of Empire, 154-168, 178-179; The colonial government established their complete authority over the Western Peninsula and Straits Settlements in late nineteenth century to benefit from the booming mining industry and incipient rubber boom before another colonial power did. They grouped existing sultanates into three regions each that allowed a different level of colonized governance

45 Keith Watson, “Education and Colonialism in Peninsular Malaysia,” in Education in the Third World, edited by Keith Watson (London: Croom Helm, 1982), 88; T. N. Harper and C. A. Bayly, Forgotten Wars: Freedom and Revolution in Southeast Asia (Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 10, 98; L. H Lees, “Being British in Malaya, 1890-1940,” Journal of British Studies 48, no. 1 (2009):76-101.

46 Lapping, End of Empire, 13-14. 47 “Australia,” The Council Fire 28, no. 3 (October 1953): 92. 48 Sean Brennan, George Williams, and Brenda Gunn, Treaty: What's Sovereignty Got to Do with It? (Syd-

ney: Gilbert and Tobin Centre of Public Law, 2004), 1-8. 49 John G. Butcher, The British in Malaya, 1880-1941, 2, 227; Lapping, End of Empire, 188-189; Daniel

Gruss, “UNTEA and West New Guinea,” in Max Planck Yearbook of United Nations Law, edited by Armin von Bogdandy, Rüdiger Wolfrum, and Christiane Philipp (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 2005), 98.

50 Robert Baden-Powell, Girl Guiding: A Handbook for Guidelets, Guides, Rangers and Guiders (London: C. Arthur Pearson, 1925), 185.

25

CHAPTER 1: METROPOLITAN MOTHERS' INTERNATIONALISM: THE ORIGINS,

DISCOURSE, AND GOVERNANCE OF GIRL GUIDES, 1918-1960

In 1973, Olave Baden-Powell, the only woman to be given the title, World Chief Guide,

proclaimed her confidence in the powerful connection between internationalism and Girl Guid-

ing in her autobiography:

There is no part of the world which has not something to give as well as something to gain. It is a two-way traffic. Whether we are camping in some other country or host-essing in our own, we are getting as well as giving, carrying something away as well as leaving something of ourselves behind – not material things, but the intangible qualities of friendship and understanding and respect for each other’s way of life.51 At 84, Olave described an idealized international community free of hierarchies and ex-

clusion. Scouting for girls, even before it attained its official name or Olave dedicated her life to

it, blurred the ideological binaries of the imperial rule that its founder, Robert Baden-Powell had

intended to enforce: masculinity and femininity, civilization and savagery, metropole and colony,

West and East, and colonizer and colonized. This chapter tracks how Girl Guiding movement

manipulated the discourse of maternalism to repackage its pre-war imperial identity with a re-

vised program that promised an apolitical international sisterhood of members’ committed to a

common Promise and ten laws as well as outdoor adventure. Conceptual and institutional tradi-

tions and commitments limited the realization of its international vision. With encouragement

from Olave and Robert, the international governing organization, the World Association of Girl

Guides and Girl Scouts [WAGGGS], largely subscribed to Western hierarchies of race and civi-

lization. It only gradually began to draw on the talents and knowledge of non-Western women

after World War II as modernization theory replaced the civilizing mission as the leading model

of Western dominance.52 This chapter tracks the evolution of Guiding in the metropole from a

26

program intended to train Anglo-American girls in the arts of motherhood and the civilizing mis-

sion to one based on the idea of an international sisterhood. It argues that although officialdom

often spoke of Guiding as junior League of Nations open to all races and religions, it developed

policies to exclude non-Western participants. Just as Britain granted self-governance to “white”

Australia first, then to India, Malaya, and Nigeria, WAGGGS first embraced the leadership skills

of Indian and Pakistani Guiders, then Malayan, and finally in the seventies Nigerian Guiders.

Australian Aboriginal Guiders as of yet remain marginalized from the movement.

Imperial Origins

The founder of Scouting originally designed the program to ensure that the rising genera-

tion of British boys had the skills and character to defend the Empire. Scouting, as laid out in

Robert’s 1908 Scouting for Boys, represented a bricolage of the various contemporaneous re-

sponses of “Edwardian pessimism” that gripped British society at the turn of the century.53

Until the turn of the twentieth century, pseudo-scientific race theories and recurrent nega-

tive images of colonized peoples employed in fiction, plays, textbooks, and print journalism had

united British society under the umbrella of Anglo-Saxon invincibility.54 A sense of national fail-

ure stemming from the South African Wars and the growing threat of emerging anti-colonial

nationalisms led British society to doubt its future omnipotence. Many contemporaries inter-

preted the poor performance of the British army in the South African Wars as a sign of national

deficiency. Educators, medical experts, army officers, and politicians claimed industrialization

and urbanization had weakened the British Empire to the point where most of its citizens lacked

the physical prowess needed to defend it. Overcivilization had weakened not only the bodies of

the British citizenry but also their character.55

27

In response to the clamors of reformers and imperialists who demanded that imperial citi-

zenship become a component of all educational ventures for white children, Robert set out to de-

velop a program to teach boys the skills and values that they would need to fulfill their responsi-

bilities as British subjects and members of the superior Anglo-Saxon race. Movements of ‘na-

tional efficiency,’ a combination of eugenics, social Darwinism and jingoism, and social service,

proposed the concept of imperial citizenship at the turn of the century to promote a sense of re-

sponsibility among all white British subjects for the preservation and unity of the Empire. Nu-

merous patriotic organizations and youth groups had already begun the campaign to advance im-

perial citizenship among youth when Robert returned to England in 1903 as a hero of the South

African Wars. Since his successful defense of Mafeking over a 217-day siege that lasted from

October 1899 through or until May 1900 and serendipitously ended at the symbolic turning point

of the war, Robert Baden-Powell’s name had become synonymous with British victory.56 Robert

hoped to draw on his military experience and the techniques that existing programs such as the

Boys Brigade and Church Lads’ Brigade had developed to create his own model of citizenship

education. Originally, Robert had hoped that these existing programs would adopt his methods.

C. Arthur Pearson, a newspaper editor and friend, convinced Robert to tackle the degeneracy of

British youth head on with his own boys’ youth program. From its inception, anxiety animated

Scouting.57

Before Robert had published the official handbook of the movement, Scouting for Boys,

girls and boys across Britain who read about his plan in newspapers and magazines enrolled in

Scouting companies. He quickly concluded that girls’ participation would undermine his pro-

gram; their inherent femininity would contaminate the masculine community. Thus, he prohib-

ited their membership. Girls continued to register using only their initials, bought Scout para-

28

phernalia through male middlemen, and created ‘wildcat’ companies.58 In 1909, Baden-Powell

concluded that the only way to ensure the masculine identity of a Scout was to create a parallel

Scouting movement that clothed the masculine aspects of the program in the language of mater-

nalism. While Scouting built boys’ physical prowess and moral fiber to insure they would grow

up to be selfless citizens dedicated to defending Empire against corruption and deterioration, it

developed girls’ fitness and character programs to make them better mothers and helpmates to

their husbands in service to empire.59

Much to the disappointment of the original girl Scouts, Baden Powell christened mem-

bers of his Scouting organization for girls “Guides” after a famous regiment of colonized men in

the Indian Army. He also insisted that Guides name their patrols after flowers rather than ani-

mals. Though “Guides” was a reference to male soldiers, most of British society of the early

twentieth century understood this term to be appropriately feminine.60 Most Westerners under-

stood that that white women, though morally superior to the uncivilized, shared a predisposition

towards emotive irrationality with them. In the Western hierarchy of humanity, peoples known

for their martial abilities like the Zulus of southern Africa and the Gurkhas of British India

ranked slightly lower on the civilization scale than Western women. Thus, the appellation of

Guiding suggested that British girls, like Indian men, could rise above their intuitive, passive na-

tures and adopt the discipline, resourcefulness, and obedience required to actively serve the Em-

pire but neither would aspire to or achieve what a British Scout could. The name indicated to the

public that the movement would not encourage girls to adopt masculine behaviors or decorum

inappropriate of Victorian standards of femininity.61

A different name, however, was not enough to ward off claims that Scouting turned girls

into tomboys or “hoydens.”62 Guiding emerged in Britain just as the activities of the two major

29

women’s suffrage organizations had sparked a public debate over the future role of women in the

public sphere. To quell the opposition of mothers and journalists who feared that Girl Guides

would train a new generation of suffragists and women set on stealing men’s jobs, Robert as-

signed his younger sister, Agnes Baden-Powell, a fifty-one year old unmarried “well-to-do Vic-

torian,” to lead the new movement. Agnes drew on maternalism, which by the turn of the century

had become a mainstream women’s rights ideology, to feminize the skills Robert had laid out in

Scouting for Boys as foundational for all imperial citizens. She created a program that gave girls

a future role in advancing the welfare of the Empire through physical motherhood or its meta-

phorical equivalents of nursing, frontier life, or service to those less fortunate than themselves.63

The Guiding program harnessed maternalism to gain public acceptance. It justified the need for

girls to learn survival skills such as stalking, camping, swimming, signaling, and tracking so that

they would be equipped to find injured soldiers, adequately train their sons, and exert positive

influence over men.64 By 1912, Agnes had laid down a Scouting program imbued with the dis-

course of maternalism in the Handbook of the Girl Guides or How Girls Can Help the Empire,

established strong ties to imperial girls’ clubs, and made the annual celebration of Empire Day

the central holiday of the movement.65

Shortly, after the controversy over girls joining the Scouting movement died down in

Britain, Juliette Gordon Low, the founder of the American movement, reignited it. In 1912, Low

chose to refer to the American movement as Girls Scout rather than Girl Guides. Robert insisted

that she change it, as he argued the term Girl Scout undermined the entire purpose of a separate

Scouting movement for girls. Low refused. The resulting debate established Headquarters’ atti-

tudes towards local interpretations of the movement and demonstrated the flexibility of maternal-

ist discourse. As long as local manifestations advocated an inclusive feminine citizenship based

30

on motherhood and companionate marriage, Headquarters tolerated significant deviations from

the original program.

Both Robert and Low used maternalism to justify their opposing positions. In an article

published in the international Boy Scouts’ magazine, Robert reasoned with Low, “The term ‘to

Guide’ seems to sum up in one word the high mission of woman, whether as a mother, a wife or

a citizen.” To require that girls be referred to as Scouts, “would mean nothing more than an imi-

tation of the boys’ Movement without ulterior aim or idea, and invites girlhood merely to follow

a lead rather than to take a line of its own, to weaken its position instead of strengthening it, as

modern conditions demand.” The Vice President of the Girl Scout Association of the U.S.A. ex-

plained Low’s intransigence: “The terms scout and scouting apply to girls and their activities as

appropriately as to boys, and represent the same law and ideals. The idea that we are trying to

make boys out of the girls is soon dissipated when the girls show their increased usefulness at

home, and demonstrate womanly activities at their rallies.”66 While the American movement

held out and even convinced the international governance body created in 1928 to include Scouts

in its name, the controversy did not inhibit Anglo-American cooperation as both movements

firmly believed that girls needed to participate in Scouting in order to develop skills for marriage,

motherhood, and service.67 The controversy established the stance Headquarters took when it

faced an increasing number of unanticipated adaptations to the program as the movement went

global in the 1920s.68 As in this case, it approved alterations that acknowledged the maternal

purpose of the movement.

The imperial and maternal tone of the early Guiding movement insured its popularity in

not only Britain and the United States but all “white men’s countries.” Marilyn Lake and Henry

Reynolds categorize Britain, its dominions of Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, and Austra-

31

lia, and the United States, as “white men’s countries,” connected by their spoken language of

English, their invented Anglo-Saxon origins, and a deep-seated fear that nonwhite races would

surpass the West through immigration and miscegenation. Fears of the international competition

from Asians and Africans made white men’s countries fertile territory for Scouting. By 1912,

each had developed a growing Guiding movement for white girls that their respective govern-

ments and Headquarters in London fully supported.69

Though participants in the growing movements of these white men’s countries acknowl-

edged the Fourth Law of Guiding, “A guide is a friend to all and a sister to every other Guide,”

all prioritized the unity of the white races and premised its outreach efforts on the assumption

that “(white) mother knows best.”70 Middle-class white women used the popular new movement

as a tool to strengthen the institution of white middle-class motherhood and encourage interna-

tional camaraderie among white women to mold “other” women to fit into its contours. The

British public understood the proposition of imperial citizenship as a bond among the peoples of

the Anglo-Saxon world. Daniel Gorman, a historian and political scientist explains, “The de-

pendent Empire figured little in contemporaries thinking about imperial citizenship.”71 Thus,

Robert, Agnes, and many of the first Guiders in the white Dominions and India and the first Girl

Scout leaders in the United States assumed the membership would only be open to whites.72

The Dominions and the United States, which had more diverse populations than Britain,

used Guiding to champion the ideals of white middle-class femininity as opposed to multiracial

democracy. In South Africa, Scouting became a way to unify Afrikaner and English children

into a united white ruling class.73 At a rally in South Africa in the late 1920s, Robert encouraged

white Scouts to “buck up” and “not let the rising generation of Natives beat [them] in the race.”74

Before the First World War, the U.S. Girl Scouts Association focused considerable resources and

32

energy in the effort to “Americanize” white immigrants, whom the Association deemed as infe-

rior whites because they predominately came from eastern and southern Europe.75 In Canada,

the movement undertook the Canadianization of European immigrants and Aborigines after the

war.76 The Scouting associations of Britain and white Dominions facilitated the interwar migra-

tion of British children to the Dominions in order to build a bulwark of Anglo-Saxonism to field

off the rising threats of non-Western migration, economic advancement, and demands for greater

equality.77 The imperial origins of Guiding, thus, identified citizenship as racially exclusive to

Anglo-Saxons.78 When Western Guiders reshaped this imperial citizenship into an international-

ism, they implicitly maintained their essential views of race and Anglo-Saxon superiority.

World War I: The Reinvention of Girl Guiding, 1914-1918

The First World War fundamentally altered the Guiding program. Before World War I,

Robert, like most Westerners, believed that Western civilization had achieved more through sci-

ence, industrialization, and liberal governance than any other society past or present. He concep-

tualized the world through a hierarchy of development that located white males, who were

thought to possess both intellectual and moral superiority, at the pinnacle.79 Confidence in this

schema of human ability motivated Robert to encourage the expansion of Scouting among white

children alone. He agreed with British colonizers of South Africa and India who demanded the

exclusion of nonwhites.80 To Robert, the hope of the future lay in white males, and he invested

his time and energy accordingly. He acknowledged that the British Empire would need women

of character to serve as wives and mothers, but trusted that his sister, Agnes, could construct and

promote a movement for this purpose.

Robert’s worldview changed as he watched the carnage of white-on-white violence in the

First World War. The ideological shift Robert experienced represents a general reassessment of

33

imperialism and the civilizing mission that took place among colonized and colonizers. Michael

Adas explains, “The coming of the Great War and the appalling casualties that resulted from the

trench stalemate on the Western Front made a mockery of the European conceit that discovery

and invention were necessarily progressive and beneficial to humanity.”81 The carnage of the

War transformed Robert’s views on militarism, nationalism, women, and colonized peoples.82

As British definitions of femininity changed because of women’s wartime service, Robert

addressed the barrage of letters he had received that complained that Guiding did not offer girls

the same opportunities that Scouting offered boys. He also reconsidered his sister’s leadership

abilities. The level of disorganization and general dissatisfaction he found convinced Robert to

reform the Guiding program and its organization. Before the War had ended, Robert had begun

to rewrite the handbook and curtail the power of his sister and her committee of elderly-women

volunteers.83 Like the larger British public, Robert realized that girls were more than the future

mothers of the Empire: they were part of its citizenry, crucial for its preservation. The rise of na-

tionalism, communism, fascism, and the Modern Girl required that girls in the metropole and

colonies actively train for the responsibilities of defending and expanding the Anglo-American

way of life. Once he recognized women as equally important citizens in the project of the “Third

British Empire,” a vital complement to male citizens, Robert became involved in the Guiding

movement to a greater extent than before.84

The War also provoked Robert to drop the emphasis the movement placed on national

pride and replace it with an ideal of international peace policed by the vigilance of nations fit to

rule. He became an active member of the League of Nations Union (LNU), a British organization

that advanced the humanitarian ideals of the League and began to promote Scouting as a "living

Junior League of Nations."85 Still, just as the Paris Peace Conference ensured Europe controlled

34

the League of Nations, Robert insisted that Western countries lead the Scouting movement and

prioritized white membership over nonwhite membership.86

Nonetheless or notwithstanding, Robert realized that peace would only be achieved with

the active cooperation of the colonized.87 Before the War started, the reports that Western educa-

tors sent to Robert describing how Scouting successfully taught colonized youth codes of West-

ern behavior meant little to him.88 During the War, he came to adopt a more inclusive view that

regarded Scouting as a tool of the civilizing mission. Various factors converged to change Rob-

ert’s mind. In 1915, Parliament passed the Nationality and Status of Aliens Act that acknowl-

edged the British nationality of non-white colonized people born in the Empire. Furthermore,

colonized men from India, Malaya, Australia, and Nigeria fought in WWI, and each colony con-

tributed significantly to the war effort.89 Faced with convincing evidence from educators’ re-

ports, Parliament, and the warfront that the colonized had the capability to master citizenship

skills, Baden-Powell concluded that the colonized needed the systematic citizenship training that

Scouting provided as much as British children. In a journal article, he explained that through

Scouting, “we gradually persuade the [non-Western] boys and girls to see things from the white

man’s point of view.”90 Where before the outbreak of war, Scouting sought to strengthen a sense

of citizenship among only white children; during and after the War, it broadened its scope and

targeted all children as potential citizens of global Western order.91

When the War ended, Robert completely revamped the Guide program. The new program

reflected women’s participation in the war effort and identified Guides as future citizens of an

international community. It shunned overt expressions of national, racial, or imperial superiority

and discursively celebrated internationalism. Determined to promote the expansion of Guiding

internationally, Robert encouraged his wife, Olave, who was thirty years younger than his

35

younger sister Agnes and thirty-one years younger than him, to take charge of the movement.92

Olave, who saw the imperial agenda of the program and materials as even more old-fashioned

than her husband did, worked to transform Guiding into an international endeavor that Western

women led.93

Maternalism permeated the new program’s international egalitarianism. The entire rea-

son a girl took up adventure, according to Robert was in case “she has children of her own, or if

she becomes a teacher of children, she can be a really good Guide to them.”94 Because girls often

failed to master the skills motherhood required, Robert explained, “At present there is a tremen-

dous loss of life which could be prevented among the babies ... if girls could learn how to bring

up babies and how to make young children healthy and strong and, especially, if they could show

other young women how to do it, they would be doing a work of immense value to the nation

later on.” He instructed older Guides to form schools to address and help incompetent mothers.95

Robert advocated an expansive definition of motherhood in which girls could participate in. It

was up to them, according to maternalism, to nurture “other” women and girls outside the white

middle class; only now “other” women and girls included the colonized.

With the emergence of new feminine ideal of the Modern Girl after the War, Guiding of-

ficialdom capitalized on the fears surrounding new leisure activities and consumer products that

stressed feminine sexuality and freedom. The Modern Girl known in the United States and Brit-

ain as a flapper described a woman that made-up in the latest styles and fads, unafraid to appear

erotic, and indifferent to traditional feminine responsibilities as daughters, wives, or mothers.

The maternal purpose of that official literature ascribed to all Guiding activities reassured nerv-

ous parents and social elites across the Empire that as girls gained more social and professional

opportunities, Guides and their leaders remained committed to promoting traditional feminine

36

roles and harnessing them to the new and equally modern ends of maternal citizenship. Olave

contrasted the maternal agenda of Guiding to the moral ambiguity of modern leisure activities.

She described, “Familiarity with freedom is apt to make a girl blasee [blasé]. . . And because

war has played battledore and shuttlecock with so many of our ancient codes of morality the

young girl is easily caught.” The new Girl Guide program offered girls films, novels, clothing,

and activities that embraced values which Modern Girls rejected: discipline, loyalty, and domes-

ticity. In her 1917, Training Girls as Guides, Olave dedicated a section to “Our Brazen Flappers,

A Question that Needs Urgent Attention,” in which she portrayed Guiding as a method to funnel

girls’ excess energy into appropriate channels of campcraft, badge work, and community service

and direct them away from boys, thoughtless consumerism, and vanity.96 This postwar aspect of

maternalism – wiser and older white women protecting the innocent white nationals and non-

white colonials – contributed to the spectacular international expansion Guiding achieved during

the 1920s. As the Modern Girl went global, so did the Girl Guides. The colonial and white

women who became involved in Guiding perceived Scouting as a way to detract girls’ attention

from the glamour of the Modern Girl that newspapers, advertisements, and movies fostered. The

media of the Guiding world, handbooks, Guiding novels, posters, journals, and movie clips, por-

trayed the Modern Girl as negligent citizen who wasted her time and energy on fashion, enter-

tainment, and meaningless relationships.97

The Baden-Powells: The Preservation of the Civilizing Agenda

As World Chief Scout and Chief Guide, Olave and Robert Baden-Powell took it upon

themselves to promote Scouting publicly as an international, interfaith, and interracial movement

that linked children across the Empire and world into a common mission of active citizenship

spanning national borders.98 They created an oeuvre of official discourse that superficially em-

37

braced participants of all classes, educational levels, and ethnicities yet only accepted colonized

Guides as passive participants that had not attained the accomplishments that Western Guides

had achieved. Yet, Guiding and Girl Scouting literature maintained the binary of colonizer and

colonized until the 1960s.99

The citizenship that Scouting stressed granted members responsibilities but said little

about their rights. It expected each girl to accept her position in local and imperial hierarchies

with obedience.100 In many ways, the Baden-Powells spoke of international citizenship as an ex-

panded version of the pre-war ideal of British imperial citizenship that included the United States

and Europe.101 Instead of the “imperial family,” they spoke of a Scouting family, a global net-

work of women and girls connected through similar values and goals. Though they wanted all

girls to imagine belonging to an international community of sisters committed to peace, they ex-

pected Westerners to lead the movement and presented the British movement as the ideal Guid-

ing model.102

In the 1920s, the Baden-Powells began to actualize their two-tiered vision of internation-

alism, in which Western Guides and Guiders surpassed non-Western “sisters” in skill, character,

and knowledge. They encouraged national organizations to include nonwhite youth and lobbied

colonial governments to provide Girl Guides with the same amount of funding that they provided

Boy Scouts.103 Both were prolific authors and speakers who traveled extensively to build the

international reputation of Guiding. Olave and Robert quickly became agents of “celebrity colo-

nialism” whose visits throughout the Empire endorsed colonial authority as legitimate, inclusive,

necessary, and benevolent.104 In their publications and speeches, the Baden-Powells argued that

no matter how diverse were the girls who took part in the movement, all Guides followed a

common program based on what they saw as the universal ideals of Western womanhood and

38

citizenship.105 However, they frequently measured colonized participants against their Western

counterparts and found them lacking. Such comparisons unveiled that the internationalism of

Guide community was often rhetorical. Although the Fourth Law and monikers like international

sisterhood and “junior League of Nations” explicitly rejected the racial hierarchy of civilizations,

Olave, Robert, and other Western leaders of the international Guiding movement still acted as if

Western girls were the most advanced Guides, followed by Asians and Australian Aborigines

with Africans at the nadir.

In the Baden-Powells’ vision of Guiding as an international sisterhood, European and

American women and girls acted the part of the wise maternal authority figures either as older

sisters or mothers to their acquiescent colonized counterparts, whom they cast as intractable stu-

dents or children in need of help.106 Robert closed the second International Conference with a

reminder to the audience of European and American delegates: “Our teaching is largely by ex-

ample. Let us in this conference of “elder sisters” show how fully we are influenced by the

Guide spirit. We are here not to uphold the rights or aims of one country against another, but on

the contrary, to bring about the greater good of the whole.” In his 1918 handbook, Robert as-

serted that the frontiers of the British Empire needed Guides “to give the most help to the least

fortunate.”107 When confronted with the stubborn tenacity of the less civilized, he advised

Guides not to listen to objections and to assume the Western way as the best way: “Generally

those people who need the most help are the ones who hide their distress; and if you are clever

and notice little signs such as unhappiness, you can give them or offer them help in some way.”

Within the colonial context, such innocent advice quickly became license for aggressive cultural

imperialism.108

39

To illustrate that Western women held a superior position in the world community, Ba-

den-Powel pointed to the degraded conditions that women in other countries faced. For exam-

ple, he explained, “In Japan when a child is born a sign is hung outside the house to inform

neighbors whether it’s a boy or a girl. In the case of it being a girl a doll is hoisted, while in the

case of a boy a fish is displayed; the meaning being that the girl is really a plaything to look

pretty, whereas the boy, like a fish has to swim his way against the tide of life. In the Girl Guide

Movement we do not agree with this Japanese idea.”109 Even in countries like Japan that had

adopted many Western customs and had attained military and imperial strength equivalent to

most Western powers, according to the official handbook, barbaric practices remained for West-

ern Guides to identify and eradicate.

Yet, the handbook did not portray all non-Western customs as barbaric. Occasionally, it

exemplified admirable non-Western practices in a context that implied that if an Asian or African

man could accomplish a certain skill, young girls could certainly accomplish it, most likely with

more accuracy and in less time.110 For example, in his discussion of tracking and stalking, Robert

asserted, “Almost any savage can draw you a map in the sand with the point of his stick: so I am

sure that any Guide could do it on paper with a pencil --- especially after a little practice.”111

Similarly, Robert held up “our friend the Japanese” and “our Ghoorkas [sic], the little warriors in

our Indian army” as role models for Brownies, who were Guides under the age of eleven, to

emulate. Then, he concluded, “But she [the Brownie] can also do more than the Jap or the

Ghoorka can do, for if she can help herself not only become strong but to grow big if she

tries.”112 Robert’s comparisons demonstrate a conviction in racial essentialism, in which even

Western women were stronger, fitter, and smarter than non-Western men.

40

To Western contemporaries facing the rise both of anti-colonial nationalisms in India and

Japan, Robert’s encouraging remarks implied Western girls racially were more fit than Japanese

and Indian soldiers, but could easily slip from this position if not vigilant. While girls and Japa-

nese and Indian soldiers all could eat healthy and build muscle through exercise, only Western

girls had the racial capability “to grow big.” Yet, if Western girls failed to exercise and eat

healthy, the West would lose its superior position in global hierarchy.113

Like her husband, Olave wondered if colonized Guides and Guiders were as capable as

European girls and whether they had the intelligence to participate in Guiding. In the many

books and articles Olave wrote, she depicted Guiding as a meritocracy that encouraged all girls

to try their hardest and to improve but rewarded badges and leadership roles only to those who

demonstrated proficient skills. Olave explained inequality as a product of ability. She stated,

“Those who have gifts can use them without effort, lucky people; and those of us who are per-

haps a bit backward and not so brilliant can probably cultivate what talents we have and get quite

clever at arts and crafts if we plod along and have a good try.”114 With this logic, colonized girls

and women should be able to join Guiding but only participate to the extent they were “able.”

Olave believed some girls were natural masters and that others were servants and em-

braced the importance of each. In Training Girls as Guides, she described, "It is surely as fine a

thing to be a good servant as it is to be a good master, and in order that one may serve one must

be fitted for such service in knowledge and capabilities.”115 Though Olave left the race of the

“lucky people” and “natural masters” unstated, her travelogues enforced a hierarchical view of

the sisterhood of Guiding in which Western girls were the lucky people and natural masters. She

concluded that some colonized girls, particularly those who were “black,” could never learn even

to be servants and thus, questioned if they had the capabilities required for Guiding activities. In

41

her 1936 Guide Links, Olave observed of the Australian Aborigines, “Some of them are ex-

tremely good servants, thoughtful and honest, though others are quite useless and ‘untrain-

able.’”116

Her reflections regarding Africans were far more scathing. She reflected,

It is in my mind an open question whether we are justified in going on with guides in these places [Gambia, Gold Coast, Sierra Leon, Nigeria] as it is almost really a travesty of what WE would call Guiding. The mentality of those people is so very different from the European, and they are so VERY far behind in development, and it is really hard that we in these days bring Western Twentieth Century civilization to them and expect them to jump straight from a civilization of SEVERL [sic] hundred years back into what we now have here today.117

The meritocratic sisterhood that Olave developed in instructional literature suggested that any

girl, colonizer or colonized, could develop leadership skills; yet, the observations that she re-

corded in letters and travelogues suggested the colonized were at best the natural followers of the

colonizers. Some colonized people, Olave feared, might lack the basic ability to follow.118 After

the decolonization of India and most of Africa, Olave embraced a more positive outlook that all

people could achieve the level of modernization of the West. Yet, she insisted the non-Western

women only had begun to abandon traditional ways of life and still demanded Western assis-

tance.119

The dissonance between Olave’s prescriptive and descriptive writing captures a funda-

mental contradiction that characterized the Guiding movement until the late sixties. On the one

hand, the program celebrated equality and active citizenship in an imagined global sisterhood,

while on the other it supported traditional colonial hierarchies that limited the active citizenship

of its membership. Kristine Alexander, a Canadian scholar of interwar Guiding, concludes, “In

terms of the movement’s internationalist vision, some ‘Guide sisters’ were more equal than oth-

ers.”120 In the international sisterhood as the Baden-Powells envisioned, colonized Guides could

42

belong to the movement but would inevitably be inferior Guides compared to colonizers. The

Baden-Powells understood colonized Guides as exotic anomalies that with the help of Western

women could understand the principles of modernity. As the driving force behind the creation of

an international Scouting organization, the Baden-Powells institutionalized their understanding

of two-tiered international sisterhood where Western women made decisions on behalf of their

less fortunate colonized “sisters.”121 After World War II, a new corps of leaders a generation

younger than Olave reiterated the Baden-Powell’s two-tiered model in the language of moderni-

zation theory. They divided members into those committed to Westernization and those who

still adhered to tradition.

The Mother of Guides and Her Family

When Olave took charge of Guiding Headquarters after WWI, she set out to institutional-

ize the vision she and her husband shared for a Western led international network that connected

national and colonial Guiding associations across the world. She first created the International

and Imperial Councils in 1919 made up exclusively of white women living in Great Britain; the

members of the Councils each represented a country or colony in which they had a special inter-

est. These two Councils began to promote a variety of international initiatives including the pub-

lication of an international Guiding magazine called The Council Fire, the coordination of bien-

nial World Conferences and World Camps, the production of international Guiding films, radio

programs, and lantern slide shows, and the organization of pen-pal programs.122 Furthermore, the

two councils actively engaged with the League of Nations and claimed to serve the as training

ground for future members of the League.123

In 1928, delegates of the Fourth Biennial World Conference laid the framework for the

World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts [WAGGGS], an international governing body

43

based in London that actively promoted Guiding globally and continues today.124 The all-

Western delegation constructed a system of governance that acknowledged non-Western women

as essential to its international mission yet simultaneously treated them as subjects of its reform

efforts.125 They not only assumed non-Western women and girls to be products of mothers who

adhered to backwards, superstitious practices in need of direction but also doubted the capabili-

ties of white women outside of Europe and the United States. They feared that women from the

Dominions had lost some of the finer points of civilized culture living so far from the metropole

among the colonized and hoped to create an international association that prioritized the views of

colonizers from the metropole. From the first World Conference in Oxford, England in 1920

until the World Conference of 1928, the International Association debated whether white dele-

gates from the Dominions should participate in international governance.126 Though they decided

to grant the Dominions and India representation at the World Conferences, the delegates from

Great Britain continued to represent the Guide Associations of crown colonies like Nigeria and

Malaya until they gained independence and successfully applied for Tenderfoot status in 1960.

Their system of representation resembled that of the League of Nations that granted representa-

tion to India and the Dominions, territories considered fit for some level of self-government, but

left other British colonies unrepresented.127

To assure that Westerners controlled the international movement, Robert suggested that

the executive committee of WAGGGS, the World Committee, which would draft the Associa-

tion’s constitution and govern between conferences, “not be representative of countries but it

should consist of merely experts.”128 Consequentially, Western women from Europe and Amer-

ica made up the majority of the Committee well into the sixties. As late as 2012, only Western

women had served as the World Board Chairman, a position that the Committee members

44

elect.129 As their final act, the delegates unanimously chose Olave to serve as World Chief

Guide, an executive position that became a more symbolic as Olave aged. The position ended

with her death in 1977.130

To justify their policies of exclusion and patronization, leaders of WAGGGS relied on

the language of maternalism and the hierarchies of civilization. Western leaders idealized Olave

as the mother of the movement, and she occasionally referred to herself as “your chosen Guide

Mother.” Beneath her, the Western officialdom followed the lead of Western government offi-

cial and prominent social reformers. They organized the countries with Guiding movements

along a developmental schema that initially matched the rhetoric of the civilizing mission and

transformed in the forties and fifties to parallel theories of decolonization and modernization.131

In their discourse, membership countries132 that belonged to the World Association served as the

mothers or older sisters to their young children who were the Tenderfoot countries (partial mem-

bers of WAGGGS who could attend conferences but not vote) and their infants who were colo-

nies or countries not represented in WAGGGS.133 Widespread use of this metaphor continued

until the late fifties. Isobel Crowe, a representative of the World Association, explained after her

tour of Asia in 1952, “In this Guide family of ours some of our sisters are walking firmly on

their own, while other are still ‘toddlers’ or ‘walkers.’”134 Alix Liddell, the editor of The Council

Fire for over thirty years, clarified, “There are many pre- and pre-pre-tenderfoot countries work-

ing hard towards membership of our family and they need all the help we can give them.”135 The

Western women who controlled WAGGGS, thus, considered Malaya and Nigeria as “pre-

tenderfoot countries” and India nearly a “walker.” Though they considered Australia a “walker,”

this appellation only referred to the white majority of Australian Guides and Guiders.136

As metaphorical mothers to the colonized Guides and Guiders, Western women usually

45

spoke on behalf of non-Western women and girls or, in the case of the Aborigines of Australia,

remained silent regarding a growing number of Guides. For example, British women continued

to represent India at the World Conferences until 1938.137 The predominately Western delegates

who attended World Conferences rarely questioned assumptions that Western women should

represent non-Western women. When delegates did question these exclusionary policies, they

inevitably concluded that non-Western countries were not ready for such responsibilities yet dis-

cursively reiterated their dedication to international diversity. For example, Patricia Richards,

one of the Anglo-Indian delegates to the World Conference of 1930, became embarrassed when

a European delegate asked her why Indian women had not served as the delegates of India.

Richards explained, “Women’s education in India and a broadly national outlook are very recent

growth. Only a very few exceptional Indian ladies could do more than represent their own

community.” Furthermore, according to Richards, only Western Guiders could afford the trip as

“There are no available Guide funds in India for sending delegates to Europe or America.” The

All-India Association spent their discretionary income on the annual World Quota and capitation

fees WAGGGS membership required. WAGGGS, which had just begun the construction of its

new Imperial Headquarters building on Buckingham Palace Road with a projected cost £74,000,

in March of 1929, needed the £44,000 of donations it had raised in 1930 for the building and

moreover, believed the cost of travel to be the delegates’ responsibility.138

Richard’s presence prompted delegates at the World Conference of 1930 to agree that

“countries should whenever possible, send Delegates of their own nationality to the World Con-

ference, in order that their national and racial points of view should be brought before the World

Movement.” This declaration, however, offered no means of enforcement and left the larger

constitutional issue that colonized Guides and Guiders outside of India had no representation

unaddressed. As a result, Western women mostly from Europe or the United States continued to

46

addressed. As a result, Western women mostly from Europe or the United States continued to

speak and institute policies on behalf of the colonized and the white women in the colonies and

Dominions.139 For example, at the 1934, International Conference About Scouting and Guiding

in the Colonies, the all Western delegation made up of representatives from the Netherlands,

France, Belgium, Great Britain, and Spain agreed that Scouting proved an effective mean to

build natives’ physical and moral fortitude.140

Even when non-Western delegates and observers began to attend World Conferences and

Camps, Western planners often failed to include them in performances and parades and showed

no interest in their work.141 Western delegates who made speeches, left logbooks, or published

articles noted their presence. Most Westerners portrayed the non-Western delegates as spectacles

that existed only to prove the international authenticity of WAGGGS.142 Their comments

generally focused on the “exotic” sari uniforms that some Indian women had begun to wear in

the late 1930s. At Pax Ting, the last international camp before World War II organized in

Hungary in 1939, the one Indian delegate created so much publicity that Hungarians living near

the camp showed up as if she were an exhibit at a world’s fair. Rose Kerr, a Guider and officer of

WAGGGS, described, “The Indian Guider, in her attractive sari, received so much attention from

public and Press that she finally had to be removed to the hospital tent for her own protection.”143

One diary from the World Conference of 1954 reported, “The Eastern delegates in their lovely

clothes and open sandals provoked more ‘oohs’ and nudges than anyone else.”144

Though the numbers of non-Western women who attended international gatherings in-

creased steadily except during World War II, few records exist that capture their perceptions of

international gatherings and minutes rarely record them speaking out in proceedings.145 Some

Indian women published descriptions of their trips to America, Australia, or Europe for interna-

47

tional gatherings between 1930 and 1960 in The Council Fire. Most of these merely praise the

other women and Guides they met on their trips. When not overtly complimentary, these women

framed their critique of Westerners’ behavior as another problem that could be solved with the

precepts of Guiding. For example, one Indian who worked as the Traveling Commissioner of

Asia in the late 1950s showed how her accommodation of Western curiosity illustrated the motto

of Guiding, “Be prepared:” “For the sari, both young and old were intrigued by it. I was asked

so often, ‘How do you wrap it and drape it?’ that I had to carry a spare one for demonstrations.”

Such guarded testimonies offer little insight into the perceptions on the non Western Guides who

attended these international events.146

The accounts that a Guider from Bombay, Sherene Rustomjee published stand out for

their thoughtful critique of Western provincialism. She described her experience at international

gatherings across Europe in the early thirties: “It has been amazing to me to find in the course of

my visits to Europe how little people know of India, its peoples and its distances. This must be

true of other countries too.” Though her assessment reaffirmed the efficacy of the Guiding pro-

gram -- “Let us, anyhow, get to know each other better through Guiding,” – she recommended

that Guides and Guiders look outside of Guiding as well. She specified that Guides “could

widen their knowledge by reading books and newspapers of other countries, not only Guide lit-

erature.”147 Her recommendations, though published in The Council Fire of 1936, had little im-

mediate effects on the international movement. Because Rustomjee stayed involved in

WAGGGS until the late fifties, she gradually gained the voice at international level to make her

views matter. Throughout her career as Guider, an Indian delegate to multiple World Confer-

ences, and a WAGGGS representative in Indonesia during the fifties, she continued to push for

greater international awareness with Guiding.148

48

Western Illusions of Internationalism

The World Association sought to create transnational forums for women and girls to in-

teract with Guides and Guiders from different countries and backgrounds, literature to propagate

the international spirit of Guiding, and a contingent of trainers to recruit and instruct new leaders.

During the period of this study, 1909-1960, its leaders, even though they were predominately

Westerners, developed potent symbols of the unity of the international Girl Guiding community

that bypassed borders and blurred categories: exchange programs, international gatherings, flags,

a World song, international Guide Centers, and a close working relationship with the League of

Nations during the interwar period and the United Nations [UN] post-World War II.149 They

claimed that through these efforts they would promote connections between Guides and Guiders

from disparate nations.150

Western participants frequently observed the efficacy of international gatherings and vo-

cally advocated for the participation of all nationalities as essential to the movement.151 The First

Biennial Report captures this sentiment: “The whole strength and health of the Guide scheme

depends upon it never getting stale, so that now that it has spread so far its methods will be kept

fresh through being tried out by different peoples, who will instill into them something of their

customs and traditions, and thus maintain their interest for the children.”152 To Western women,

who held the reins of power, certain non-Western women brought spiritual authenticity and a

connection to tradition that the West had lost upon industrialization. Art traditions and dress of

Asian delegates delighted Western members and gave them a sense of cultural connection with

colonized women. Western members looked on the sari-clad Guiders from India as relics from

the great civilizations of India’s past and professed that the hand crafted goods and “primitive”

traditions of Malay cultures served as an antidote to the alienation caused by industrial society.153

49

Although Robert frequently integrated Zulu war chants and relics into the Boy Scout program,

Robert and Western women leaders did not hold up any African traditions as appropriate for

Guides to admire.154 When The Council Fire included pictures of African Guides or Guiders

from South Africa, Nigeria, Uganda, Egypt, and Kenya they wore the same uniforms that British

Guides wore. Yet, for the Western leaders of WAGGGS, such superficial signs of non-Western

presence in the movement were enough to validate the movement’s claims of internationalism.

They placed little value on the active participation of non-Western women in policymaking;

Before the late 1930s, Western leaders on the World Committee believed that the British

Empire and the Leagues of Nations offered models of international cooperation that they hoped

to replicate. One Western Guider explained,

The British Empire, formed as it is of several young nations growing up, is becoming a model of united states for the disunited states of Europe to follow. If we, in Africa and India, Australia and Canada, aye, and nearer to the old mother country, too, in Ireland and Scotland and Wales, look beyond our own particular national outlook, and take the broader unselfish view of contributing each our share to the well-being of our great Em-pire, we shall be giving a practical lead to those other countries towards the practice of mutual goodwill and co-operation.155

What this Guider failed to acknowledge was that the “mutual goodwill and co-operation” within

the British Commonwealth depended on the subjects in India, Malaya, and Nigeria contributing a

greater share of their resources and receiving fewer civil rights and tangible benefits than the

white settlers of Canada and Australia. Likewise, the League of Nations only allowed the civi-

lized nations to participate as members and parceled out territories Western powers believed un-

prepared for nationhood to its members to care for as mandates with the goal of preparing the

colonized for independent nationhood.156 Though left unsaid, Western women expected the same

distribution of power and privilege within the World Association. They wanted non-Western

members but until after WWII did not consider nonwhite women as potential leaders or even

50

equal participants in the international movement.

Just as the ruling Western elite of the British Empire and League of Nations did, Western

women made decisions that reflected their hierarchy of membership and perpetuated Western

dominance. Until 1957 when Petrópolis, Brazil hosted the sixteenth World Conference, all

World Conferences were held in Europe or New York. When non-Western women attended,

Western organizers did not give them any official active role in either the social events as per-

formers or the daily program of trainings and workshops as presenters or panelists.157

Moreover, WAGGGS had invested in building projects only in European locations until

a group of Asian Commissioners in the late fifties suggested that WAGGGS fund a World Cen-

ter in Asia. Other locations never even came up during discussions. For example, when Mrs.

Helen Storrow pledged to finance an international World Center, the 1930 World Conference

with no debate decided Adelboden, Switzerland as the best location because of its popularity as a

vacation spot for European Guides.158 “Our Chalet” opened in 1932 and hundreds of European

Guides and Guiders visited annually. Mrs. Hussain, an Indian Guider and a school founder of

one of the first Muslim girls’ schools, became the first non-Western visitor when she attended

Eighth World Conference at Our Chalet two later.159 Up until 1960 no colonized representative

had visited Our Chalet from Nigeria, Malaya, or Australia, and Indian and Pakistani Guides had

only attended when they had received funding through the World Association or another non-

profit organization.160

Rather than confront the evidence that the location of World Centers deterred most

Guides and Guiders from outside Europe from visiting, the Western leadership interpreted the

predominance of European visitors at Our Chalet as evidence of their cultural superiority and

ability to plan ahead. Then, when WAGGGS leaders decided to build the second World Center,

51

Our Ark, they based their decision on the same sense of cultural superiority. With donations that

Girl Guides around the world collected, Western delegates agreed that London, as the center of

the Guiding movement, was the natural location. Like Our Chalet, so few non-Western women

stayed in the hostel before 1960 that when they did, The Council Fire published an article re-

garding their visit.161 That many Western leaders considered the World Centers among their

most successful efforts to promote internationalism indicates that they only expected Western

Guides and Guiders actively to take part in the movement at the international level.162

Likewise, the leaders of WAGGGS interpreted the low financial contributions of non-

Western members as evidence of their lack of initiative and general laziness. The Thinking Day

Fund, a tradition that began in 1933, required every company to collect pennies on Thinking

Day, February 22, the birthday of both Baden-Powells. The World Association collected and re-

ported in The Council Fire the success of each nation or colony. Nigeria, Malaya, and India,

where most Guides were non-Western, usually collected far less than their Western counterparts

because the populations of these colonies had less money to donate.163 Western officialdom,

however, saw their low contributions as evidence of lack of resourcefulness and ingenuity. A

Guider from Milwaukee and Assistant Treasurer to the World Committee in 1952, Alice Chester,

questioned “Does it [the gap between the amount regions contributed] not rather indicate that the

adults in those countries were less clever in reaching their girls in presenting the needs and mak-

ing the collection?”164 Most Western leaders of WAGGGS, like Chester, blamed the intrinsic

characteristics of the Guides and Guiders of a country rather than examine the larger social

forces that limited non-Western participation.

Western Leaders Question the Extent of Their International Principals

Occasionally, Western women recognized the imperial attitudes of Western members that

52

still limited the international goals of Guiding and divided its membership. Katharine Furse, the

President of WAGGGS from 1928-1939, observed at the World Conference of 1932, “For we

sometimes see our Movement divided into separate groups by race, by language, even, now and

then, by churches and individualistic independence. We see it limited by the question of col-

our.”165 A staff member of the World Bureau acknowledged, “Unfortunately, much of our inter-

national unity must rest on theory. Nothing can promote it as much as our camps, our inter-

changes of visits, etc., but comparatively few of our members will ever be able to take part in

these.”166 In her opening address at the 1936 World Conference, Olave observed, “To some of

you who are here to-day the view of World Guiding is limited by the boundaries of Europe.”167

Such observations indicate that some Western leaders had an awareness of the exclusivity of the

international movement, but their confidence in the civilizing mission convinced them it was up

to their disenfranchised members change rather than WAGGGS. In the eyes of Western leaders,

when the non-Western Guides finally adopted the values of the program, hard work, thrift, and

ingenuity, they would be able to take part in the movement at the international level.

Other Western leaders pointed out that cross-cultural encounters and international travel

did not insure understanding, cooperation, and friendship. One speaker at the 1936 Conference

pointed out that even at international gatherings, “Sometimes the difficulty due to language af-

fects the situation, because when a group of leaders get together and are very interested in the

discussions, those who understand each other easily tend to hold the floor, and those who cannot

keep up with a quick interchange of ideas lose interest and sit back.”168 Olga Malkowska, the

founder of Guiding in Poland, posited that international encounters often promoted a sense of

cultural superiority rather than sisterhood: “And the Guides went home with a feeling that be-

yond the frontier there must be a collection of very strange people, and their little hearts sighed,

53

perhaps, with relief, ‘Thank Heaven I am not like them.’”169 In light of these observations, the

international gatherings that WAGGGS organized in Europe and the United States come across

as opportunities for Western Guiders and Guides to catch glimpses of the backwards dress and

habits of non-Western women and girls without having to leave the West.

WAGGGS officials, both American and British struggled to balance the pride they felt

for the accomplishments and superiority of the West with the belief that only internationalism

would achieve peace and create dutiful citizens with the ability to see beyond narrow-minded

national interest. Superficially, WAGGGS rid the program of its blatantly imperial ties. It

wanted to show the public that it firmly rejected the defensive imperialism, jingoism, and mili-

tary ethos that had led to World War I. In 1925, it introduced the International Knowledge

Badge. In 1926 they broke their ties to imperial youth organizations; they prohibited Young Im-

perialists Clubs from sponsoring Guide companies, dropped their membership to the Women’s

League of Empire, and objected to the plan of the British Empire Union to reward children with

medals for imperial service. In 1927, WAGGGS changed their annual celebration of community

service and international sisterhood from Empire Day, a distinctly British holiday that honored

Queen Victoria’s Birthday, to Thinking Day, which fell on February 22, the shared birthday of

the Baden-Powells.170 Unlike the Boy Scouts, it refused to cooperate with any nationalist youth

organizations.171 Such changes constructed the façade of internationalism that included all mem-

bers of Guiding. Nonetheless, a sense of Western superiority prevented WAGGGS officials

from making structural changes to the program that would allow non-Western women and girls

to participate fully.172

Only after World War II, with the rise of anti-colonial nationalisms, the popularization of

modernization theory, and the inception of formal decolonization did the critique of Western

54

dominance within the movement became more strident and structural changes occur.173 Much of

this criticism came from Western women who felt Western dominance would limit the growth of

the movement and that Guiding should more receptive to ideas from outside the West. Alix Lid-

dell pointed out that many members of WAGGGS believed that Great Britain or America ran the

World Association. She clarified, “With the best will possible on both sides, the Eastern Guide

Association who imports a Western trainer or advisor will be suspected by their fellow country-

men and women of undermining their national organization of ‘americanising’ it or ‘anglicizing’

it or whatever it may be.”174 Sylvi Visapaa, a member of the World Committee, questioned at the

1952 World Conference, “Must we not admit that hitherto, as a World Movement, we have been

applying our principles thinking mainly of the Western pattern of life?”175

In response, the World Association implemented new projects. Many were superficial ef-

forts that marketed the international image of Girl Guides rather than addressed the marginaliza-

tion of non-Western Guides and Guiders. In 1947, Olave developed the program of International

Friendship Companies, where entire companies in different regions of the world became pen pals

with other companies and could buy a Certificate from WAGGGS to acknowledge their relation-

ship.176 WAGGGS approved of a World Badge for Guides in 1948 and Brownies in 1950.177 It

developed a World Song in 1952 that companies could acquire for a small fee.178 The Western

leaders of Our Arc, the World Center in London, created the “Friends of Our Ark” an organiza-

tion that would help Guides and Guiders who had visited the Ark stay in touch for a small mem-

bership fee.179 The cost of these international symbols and programs limited their reach to pri-

marily middle-class Western Guides.180 However, as countries across Eastern Europe banned

Guiding and dropped their WAGGGS membership and the Cold War gained momentum, these

55

demonstrative acts of international goodwill exhibited the movement’s commitment to a capital-

ist modernity.181

WAGGGS especially focused on promoting an image of friendship and camaraderie

among colonized and British Guides throughout the Empire. The late forties and fifties marked a

moment of transition and possibility in the British Empire, and WAGGGS made a last attempt to

renew a sense of imperial unity that had diminished in the wake of Indian independence, the

withdrawal of the Irish Free State from the Commonwealth, and the legal creation of separate

Canadian and Australian citizens. It also may have hoped to counter publicity that colonized

Girl Guides and Guiders were taking part in anti-colonial demonstrations against the British gov-

ernment in Africa.182 In 1952, Olave created the “Chief Guide’s Overseas Challenge” a contest

only for companies in the British colonies intended to celebrate the diversity of the Empire.

Companies could send in samples of local stories, handcrafts, songs, and flora to be displayed,

judged, and awarded a standard. The British Guide Association developed the Empire Circle to

raise money for Guiding in the colonies and Dominions and to host visiting Guides and Guiders

from around the Empire.183 In 1954, the World Association renamed the Imperial Headquarters

as the Commonwealth Headquarters.184

Once the decolonization process started in British Africa, WAGGGS made every effort to

portray it as a boon to the Empire and attempted to strengthen its connections with Guiding asso-

ciations in Africa to ensure that it actually was. Though many British colonies and countries in

Africa had established associations by the 1920s and had communicated periodically with Head-

quarters, only South Africa and Egypt officially belonged to WAGGGS before 1957 when Sudan

joined.185 WAGGGS had assumed that the two British delegates adequately represented all the

associations of the British African colonies. Now with independence looming, WAGGGS, in-

56

vited and funded African Guides and Guiders to attend international gatherings held at Foxlease

in Hampshire, England. Eager to gain the support of the colonized elites, who would control the

soon-to-be national Guiding associations upon independence, it also sent trainers to British Af-

rica to prepare a corps of colonized women to take the place of the white Guiders.186

As British African colonies began to attain independence, WAGGGS representatives of-

ten attended the independence celebrations to demonstrate their hope that imperial unity (and

British influence) would continue with decolonization. For example, Olave, who spent a week in

Accra to celebrate Ghanaian independence, euphemized independence as “the elevation of the

Gold Coast to Dominion status as Ghana.” She also visited Nigeria in 1960 to celebrate its inde-

pendence. In reports on British decolonization in journals and books intended for Guides, West-

ern leaders portrayed independence as new form of imperial partnership. WAGGGS desperately

held on to the image of imperial unity and with it imperial tutelage until it became untenable in

the late sixties.187

The expansion of Guiding after the independence of India and Pakistan in 1947 and the

increasing levels of self-governance in Nigeria and Malaya led WAGGGS to start a process of

structural change that gradually made the international movement more inclusive. Before 1963

when it revised the governing structures of the organization, WAGGGS pursued a four-pronged

approach to limit Western dominance that reflected the influence of modernization theory. It

publicly supported newly independent countries and increasing levels of self-government for

British colonies. In the early fifties, it incorporated Indian and Pakistani women into the leader-

ship of international movement and accepted their ideas. It also began to hold international gath-

erings outside of Europe and the United States. Finally, WAGGGS provided funding for African

women to take part in international events for the first time. After 1960, as the number of non-

57

Western member countries increased in WAGGGS and an Indian representative served on the

primary executive body of WAGGGS, the World Committee, reform efforts quickened culminat-

ing with constitutional changes that provided a regional structure to the organization that assured

that the World Committee, renamed the World Board, included at least one representative from

each region: Africa, Asia, North Africa, the Middle East and the Gulf, Europe, and the Western

Hemisphere.

The reform efforts up until 1960 best capture the conflicting ideologies that drove West-

ern leaders to accept Asian women as leaders, but only include African women as passive par-

ticipants. Western leaders of the movement were modernizers, and their efforts reflected the

modernization paradigm that emerged in the mid-twentieth century. They wanted to equip non-

Western women as agents of development. However, they still treated non-Western women ac-

cording to pre-war civilization hierarchies that ranked Asians as more developed than Africans

and Australian Aborigines.188 That India, Malaya, and Pakistan had attained independence before

most of British Africa and that Aboriginal mothers could not be trusted to raise their own chil-

dren confirmed their prejudices.

WAGGGS publicly aligned itself with the new independent states and openly supported

self-government for British colonies. Helen Gibbs, an Overseas Commissioner for the World As-

sociation during the early fifties gave her tacit approval:

If their [those of the colonies] difficulties are great, their opportunities are greater, for where Guiding is really carried out as the Founder intended it is a means of breaking down the barriers that stand in the way of progress and providing a nursery for citizen-ship – more than ever valuable to those countries whose people are struggling to fit themselves for self-government within the Commonwealth.189 Many Western experts, inside and outside of WAGGGS, saw the Guide movement as es-

sential to building strong independent states out of the former British colonies. A UNESCO ex-

58

pert, opined, “The Girl Guide Movement was the one organization capable of imparting the nec-

essary training to girls and young women in order to mould them into useful and disciplined citi-

zens.”190 Guiding, it seemed to many Western women, might provide a means to continue their

efforts to persuade the non-Western world to accept the Western version of modernity after de-

colonization.191

To encourage greater Asian participation and leadership at the international level, West-

ern leaders of WAGGGS looked to the UN for ideas and funding. The work that leaders of

WAGGGS did with the UN and the other nonprofits involved with UN gradually gave them a

more objective understanding of how the make-up of the World Committee, the location and

languages of international gatherings, and the requirements of membership affected the interna-

tional make-up of their organization.192 Furthermore, UNESCO and other nonprofits that

worked with the UN, which subscribed to the idea that developing countries needed Western

capital to develop, funded many of the Guides’ international outreach efforts.193 For example,

UNESCO set up Gift Coupons that allowed Western companies in “Our World” to sponsor com-

panies in “The Underdeveloped World.”194 The Committee for Free Asia, the predecessor of to-

day’s Asia Foundation, that at its inception held a clear anti-communist political agenda, paid for

two Provincial Commissioners from Pakistan to attend a Training Camp at Our Chalet in Adel-

boden Sweden in 1953.195 As more Asian Guiders had the opportunity to attend international

gatherings, they took a more active role in debates, often presented & performed, joined commit-

tees, and took on leadership roles.196

The examples that the other nonprofits and the UN set helped WAGGGS to recognize

that the locations of conferences, camps and World Centers mattered as did the distribution of

funds and materials. Over the fifties, WAGGGS started to redistribute the dues and donations of

59

member states and outside organizations in ways that contributed to movements outside Europe.

Before they used the dues and donations of non-Western movements to build World Centers and

organized international gatherings in Europe. By the late fifties, WAGGGS began to hold inter-

national gatherings outside of Europe and the United States and regularly pay for the travel ex-

penses of non-Western Guiders and Guides. In 1954, the World Association held the first inter-

national training conference outside of Europe at the Ladies College in Columbo, Ceylon. Train-

ers from Pakistan, Australia, India, Great Britain, Malaya, Japan, Ceylon, Philippines, and Sin-

gapore participated.197 At the 1957 International Commissioners’ Meeting in New Delhi, Com-

missioners from eleven countries requested the World Association build the next World Centre

in Asia and appoint a Traveling Commissioner to promote Guiding within Asian countries.198

Within two years, the Association had appointed an Indian woman, Anasuya Karkare, as the

Traveling Commissioner of Asia and by 1966 built Sangam, a World Center outside of Mumbai.

The investments WAGGGS made in Asia became a self-reinforcing cycle. The favorable

press generated by the participation of Asian women in international events encouraged

WAGGGS to reach out beyond Europe and America for venues for international camps, accept

Asian expertise in its governance, fund Asian women’s efforts to expand Guiding in India, Paki-

stan, Malaya, and Singapore, and reward Asian companies for their service to their newly inde-

pendent countries.199 The agency of Asian women encouraged WAGGGS to adopt a more inter-

national program. As WAGGGS made structural changes that incorporated talented Asian

women into the movement and recognized the work of Asian movements, white Guiders in the

metropole and Dominions became more interested in learning from non-Western Guiders and

sought out their perspectives regarding international Guiding.200 The chairman of the Fourteenth

World Conference of 1952 in Dombås, Norway, explained,

60

We Guides and Girl Scouts would not form a real World Association if we listened only to teachings of the West; ancient and highly cultured civilizations of the East have very real contributions to make and are at least joining international life and beginning to play their part both in general spheres and in Guiding. Their voice must be heard among us, and their influence felt.201 In 1957, India and Australia and Pakistan and Great Britain participated in Guider ex-

changes where each set exchanged Guiders for couple months.202 1957 also marked the first time

delegates at the World Conference elected an Indian woman to the World Committee. 203

Throughout the fifties and sixties, Malayan and Indian Guiders earned scholarships to study and

teach Scouting in the United States and Britain.204 Western acceptance of Asian women as teach-

ers, committee chairs, and officers at the international level gave ambitious Asian women an op-

portunity to influence the international Guiding movement and bring more of its benefits to their

national associations. As Asian women gained positions of power within WAGGGS, they en-

couraged policies that made governing structure of WAGGGS more democratic and granted out-

reach to poorer countries.

Attitudes of Western superiority, however, persisted. Prior Western hierarchies of race

had ranked Africans as primitive and far below the semi-civilized Asians. Though such hierar-

chies held less influence over Western thinking after WWII, Western leaders of WAGGGs con-

tinued to exclude African women from any real positions of authority. For example, when Nige-

ria became an official member of WAGGGS in 1960, WAGGGS did not include the African

delegates from Sudan or Nigeria in the Planning Committee responsible for the first All Africa

camp in 1961. According to a report in The Council Fire, the Committee only included members

that had “have specialized knowledge of the needs and conditions in Africa.”205 Over the sixties

and seventies, African delegates within WAGGGS gradually gained a greater voice and took on

leadership roles in their region. Yet, they never convinced WAGGGS to build an African World

61

Center as the Asian Guiders had in the late fifties. The Nigerian government even offered 32

acres of land in its capital, Abuja, during the early nineties for the Center.206 The reluctance

WAGGGS shows towards the project demonstrates the longevity of imperial legacies.

Conclusion

This chapter focused on the Western imperial origins of Guiding and the ways the West-

ern-led international movement used the language of maternalism to build imperial relationships

between Western countries and non-Western colonies while promoting a vision of international

sisterhood. After WWII, Western members gradually pursued change yet remained the dominant

force in the international movement into the 1960s. Though a few Asian women from India and

Pakistan gained leadership roles within WAGGGS and began to shape its decisions particularly

regarding Guiding in Asia and the Pacific, participation of non-Western women at international

conferences remained minimal.207 WAGGGS continued to use Western leaders and trainers to

organize events and trainings in Africa and failed to acknowledge much less address the increas-

ing numbers of Australian Aboriginal Guides.208

Beyond the influence colonial Guiders’ had over Robert’s decision to open Guiding to

colonized girls after WWI, the international Guide movement fits the traditional model of causa-

tion in imperial historiography, which understands the West as the source of change until the late

1940s. In 1940s, Asian Guiders began to influence the policies of the movement. The next two

chapters show how colonial Guiders formed and practiced their own visions of Guiding, combin-

ing nationalist rhetoric with the Guides’ notions of maternalism and internationalism, in order to

and mobilize Guide membership in their own interests.

51 Olave Baden-Powell and Mary Drewery, Window on My Heart: The Autobiography of Olave, Lady Ba-

den-Powell (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1973), 228. 52 Allen Warren, “Citizens of the Empire: Baden-Powell, Scouts and Guides, and an Imperial Ideal,” in Im-

perialism and Popular Culture, ed. by John M. MacKenzie (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1986),

62

245-246; Michael Adas, Machines As the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Domi-nance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), 411.

53 “The Chief Scout Says,” The Council Fire 13, no. 1 (January 1938): 1-2; Robert explained, “When the Movement first started there was no thought of its becoming an international one.”

54 John M. MacKenzie, Propaganda and Empire: The Manipulation of British Public Opinion, 1880-1960 (Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 1984), 177-199, 228-253; Richard Voeltz, “Adam’s Rib: The Girl Guides and Imperial Race,” San Jose Studies 14, no. 1 (1988): 97.

55 Anna Davin, “Imperialism and Motherhood,” History Workshop no. 5 (Spring 1978): 9-65; Carey Watt, “The Promise of ‘Character’ and the Spectre of Sedition: The Boy Scout Movement and Colonial Consternation in India, 1908-1921,” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 22, no. 2 (1999): 39-40; Eliza Riedi, “Women, Gen-der, and the Promotion of Empire: The Victoria League, 1901-1914,” The Historical Journal 45, no. 3 (September 2002): 591.

56 Thomas Pakenham, The Boer War (New York: Random House, 1979), 425, 429. Historians have chal-lenged Robert Baden-Powell’s heroic reputation. Pakenham points out that he executed Africans for stealing food.

57 C. Love, “Swimming, Service to the Empire and Baden-Powell's Youth Movements,” International Jour-nal of the History of Sport 24, no. 5 (May 2007): 682; Tammy Proctor, On My Honour Guides and Scouts in Interwar Britain (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2002), 33, 132, 147; Daniel Gorman, Imperial Citi-zenship: Empire and the Question of Belonging (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2006), 12. There were many prominent Christian youth movements before Scouting that included the Boys Brigade, the Church Lads Brigade, the Boys’ Life Brigade, the Girls’ Brigade, the Girls' Life Brigade, and the Girls' Guildry. Furthermore, many imperial organizations offered activities for youth like the League of the Empire, the Navy League and the Imperial Maritime League, the National Service League, Victoria League, Duty and Discipline Movement, and the Tariff Reform League.

58 Sarah Mills, “Scouting for Girls: Gender and the Scout Movement in Britain,” Gender, Place and Cul-ture 18, no. 4 (August 2011): 541, 542-545.

59 Kitty Barne, Here Come the Girl Guides (London: Girl Guides Association, 1946) 14-15; Voeltz, “Adam’s Rib,” 91-92.

60 Robert Baden-Powell, Girl Guiding: A Handbook for Guidelets Guides, Rangers and Guiders (London: C. Arthur Pearson, 1925), 61-62; Agnes Baden-Powell and Robert Baden-Powell, The Handbook for Girl Guides or How Girls Can Help Build the Empire (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1912), 16-17; Barne, Here Come the Girl Guides, 15. Barne describes the disappointment of the original girl Scouts: “An ideal of womanliness as such doesn’t make much appeal at thirteen and undeniably it was a come-down to find yourself no longer a Scout, no longer a Wildcat or Nighthawk, but a Violet or a Lily of the Valley in a patrol of Girl Guides.”

61 Michael Adas, “Contested Hegemony: The Great War and the Afro-Asian Assault on the Civilizing Mis-sion Ideology,” Journal of World History 15, no. 1 (2004): 33-36; Janet Aldis, A Girl Guide Captain in India, (Ma-dras: Methodist Publishing House, 1922), 55; Carey Watt, “The Promise of ‘Character,’” 42; Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men's Countries and the International Challenge of Ra-cial Equality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 7. Moreover, it reassured the metropole of its superi-ority and right to rule India in the wake of recent violence that had gripped much of India after the unpopular parti-tioning of Bengal in 1905.

62 Proctor, On My Honour, 68, 74. 63 Helen D. Gardner, The First Girl Guide: The Story of Agnes Baden-Powell (Stroud: Amberley, 2010),

103; Watt, “The Promise of ‘Character,’” 39; Voeltz, “Adam’s Rib,” 97-98; Agnes Baden-Powell and Robert Ba-den-Powell, How Girls Can Help Build the Empire, 18, 19-21,31, 34; Aldis, A Girl Guide Captain in India, 17; Rose Gough Kerr, The Story of a Million Girls; Guiding and Girl Scouting Round the World (London: The Girl Guides Association, 1937), 188; Olave Baden-Powell, Window on My Heart, 108, 127; Robert Baden-Powell, Girl Guiding, 175; Robert Baden-Powell, Lessons from the ‘Varsity of Life,’ (London: Pearson, 1933), 155-156. Histori-ans debate the role Robert played in the creation and publication of the first handbook. The handbook lists both Agnes and Robert as authors. In Robert’s memoir Lessons from the ‘Varsity of Life,’ he claims no role in its crea-tion. Olave’s memoir, Window to my Heart, confirms this. Most likely his editor, C. Arthur Pearson, asked him to include his name on the cover to boost sales. Because it is highly probable that Agnes was the sole author, I have chosen to refer to Agnes as the author in the body of the thesis.

Agnes warned, “People say that we have no patriotism nowadays, and that therefore our empire will fall to pieces as the great Roman Empire did, because its citizens became selfish and lazy, and only cared for amusements. I am not so sure about that. I am sure that if you girls will keep the good of your country in your eyes above every-

63

thing else, it will go on all right. But if you don't do this there is very great danger, because we have many enemies abroad, and they are growing daily stronger and stronger.”

64 Barne, Here Come the Girl Guides, 24; Voeltz, “Adam’s Rib,” 97; “The Scheme for Girl Guides.” In Aids to Scoutmastership published in 1920 Robert explained, “The term ‘Scouting’ has come to mean a system of training citizenship, through games, for boys or girls…. The girls are the important people, because when the moth-ers of the nation are good citizens and women of character, they will see to it that there sons are not deficient in these points.”

65 Atiya Begum Fyzee-Rahamin, Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, and Sunil Sharma, Atiya's Journeys: A Muslim Woman from Colonial Bombay to Edwardian Britain (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010), 231; Barne, Here Come the Girl Guides, 24-25; Olave Baden-Powell, Window to my Heart, 108; Warren, “Citizens of the Empire,” 245. Olave Baden-Powell, Robert Baden-Powell’s wife and sidekick from their marriage in 1912 till his death in 1941, claimed that she and Robert dismissed the first Guiding handbook as “The Little Blue Muddly” and the first Guiding program as boring and Victorian in its outlook. However, Olave conceded, “She [Agnes] did the job [lead-ing Guiding] very well having regard to the strict conventions of the time. Before 1914, the dead hand of Queen Victoria still rested heavily on anything to do with female. Whilst encouraging young girls to take a first tentative step towards independence, Agnes had at the same time to allay the fear of their parents that Guides might in any way become ‘unwomanly’.”

66 Quoted in Proctor, On My Honour, 147. 67 Rima D. Apple and Joanne Passet, “Learning to Be a Woman: Lessons from Girl Scouting and Home

Economics, 1920-1970,” in Defining Print Culture for Youth The Cultural Work of Children's Literature, edited by Anne H. Lundin and Wayne Weigand (Westport, Conn: Libraries Unlimited, 2003),142-143; Mary Aickin Roth-schild, “To Scout or to Guide? The Girl Scout-Boy Scout Controversy, 1912-1941,” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 6, no. 3 (Autumn, 1981): 115-121; Kitty Barne, Here Come the Girl Guides (London: Girl Guides Associa-tion, 1946), 85-86; Olave Baden-Powell, Guide Links (London: Pearson, 1936), 195; Trefoil Around the World; Robert Baden-Powell, "Girl Scouts or Girl Guides," Jamboree (October 1921); W. J. Hoxie, How Girls Can Help Their Country (New York: The Knickerbocker Press, 1913), vii. According to Rothschild, Juliette Gordon Low originally called her first companies of girls Girl Guides. The girls requested to be call Girl Scouts, and Low agreed. Olave Baden-Powell described that Low chose Girl Scouts “as everybody knew what a Boy Scout was, and as peo-ple were sympathetic towards the Boy Scout Movement.” Nonetheless, Low’s decision provoked outrage from the American Boy Scout Association and ambivalence from Guiding Headquarters. Olave summated, “They [Boy Scouts of America] thought that it [the name Girl Scouts] would be detrimental to the movement for the boys, and make them feel that ‘Scouting’ was not manly enough game for them if girls were going to play too! However, nowadays in many families the sons are Scouts and the daughters are Scouts too – all of them good Scouts together.”

Robert Baden-Powell continued to oppose the name Scouts for girls. In 1928, the Fifth International Con-ference debated the issue again and the two names became irrevocably combined: World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts. As Guiding and Scouting spread globally, countries chose which names to adopt. In general if an American initiated the movement the country or colony would official becomes Girl Scouts. Because Great Britain had a larger expatriate female population, most regions use the title, Guide. In some colonies, both movement started nearly simultaneously and later united under one Association. Other countries chose Scouts over Guides because of connotations Guides held in their language. Today many national Guiding/ Scouting associations have merged with Boy Scouts to share facilities and cut down overhead costs.

68 Proctor, On My Honour, 148. 69 Lake and Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour Line, 27, 72-24124, 138; Barbara Bush, “Gender and

Empire: The Twentieth Century,” in Gender and Empire, edited Philippa Levine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 77-111; Gwendoline Hamer Swinburne, Among the First People, 1908-1936: The Baden-Powell Girl Guide Movement in Australia (Sydney: Girl Guides Association of Australia, 1978), 7; World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, Trefoil Around the World (The World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, 1999), 231. Rob-ert’s friend from the South African War, Lieutenant Colonel David Cossgrove, brought Scouting to New Zealand for boys and girls and published one of the first Scouting handbooks for girls, Peace Scouting for Girls. Guides in Tas-mania and Japan initially used Cossgrove’s Peace Scouting for Girls. In 1923, Peace Scouts changed its name to Girl Guides to acknowledge its allegiance to the worldwide movement. This episode exemplifies that settler coloni-alism encouraged near simultaneous cultural developments despite geographic distance. In New South Wales, ‘The Australian League of Girl Leagues’ appeared before Guiding. In Victoria, Florence Nightingale Girl Aids became the first Scouting organization for girls.

64

70 Margaret D. Jacobs, White Mother to a Dark Race: Settler Colonialism, Maternalism, and the Removal

of Indigenous Children in the American West and Australia, 1880-1940 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009), 423; Agnes Baden-Powell and Robert Baden-Powell, How Girls Can Help Build the Empire, 25-26, 38-41; Anthony Moran, “The Psychodynamics of Australian Settler-Nationalism: Assimilating or Reconciling with the Aborigines?” Political Psychology 23, no. 4 (December 2002): 677-678.

71 Gorman, Imperial Citizenship, 206. 72 Proctor, Scouting for Girls: A Century of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2009), 64. 73 Proctor, “ ‘A Separate Path:’ Scouting and Guiding in Interwar South Africa,” Comparative Studies in

Society and History 42, no. 3 (July 2000): 612; 74 Robert Baden-Powell, “White Men in Black Skins,” Elders Review of West African Affairs 8, no. 30

(July 1929): 6-7. 75 L. Hahner, “Practical Patriotism: Camp Fire Girls, Girl Scouts, and Americanization,” Communication

and Critical/Cultural Studies 5, no. 2 (1995): 113-134. Trefoil Round the World (1999); World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, “Our World,” http://www.wagggs.org/en/world (accessed April 22, 2012). American lead-ers also founded companies in the U.S. territories, Puerto Rico, Alaska, Hawaii, and the Philippines, to promote white feminine norms over indigenous and Old World traditions.

76 Kristine Alexander, “Girl Guide Movement, Internationalism, and Imperialism in Interwar England, Can-ada, and India,” (PhD diss., York University, 2010), 207-208.

77 Proctor, On My Honour Guides, 133-134; Antoinette M. Burton, “The Feminist Quest for Identity: Brit-ish Imperial Suffragism and ‘Global Sisterhood’ 1900-1915,” Journal of Women's History, 3, no. 2 (Fall 1991): 62.

78 World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, Trefoil Around the World (1994), 19, 62, 73, 79, 98, 112, 149, 207, 276. By the beginning of WWII, small Guiding movements, some made up of only one company, had begun in Sweden, Austria, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Netherlands, and Poland. British and Americans had started small movements in Chile, Cyprus, Puerto Rico, Alaska, Hawaii, and the Philippines. The largest movements were in Britain, Australia, South Africa, and Canada. The United States movement had Guiding compete against other girl scouting associations and did not become the most popular until after World War I.

79 Michael Adas, “Contested Hegemony,” 32, 41. 80 Watt, “The Promise of ‘Character,’” 37-62; Lakshmi Mazumdar, “The Girl Guide Movement in India,”

in Social Welfare in India (New Delhi: The Planning Commission of the Government of India, 1955), 120-121. 81 Michael Adas, “Contested Hegemony,” 32, 41. 82 Proctor, On My Honour Guides, 1-33; Allen Warren, “‘Mothers for the Empire?’: The Girl Guides Asso-

ciation in Britain, 1909-1939,” in Making Imperial Mentalities: Socialisation And British Imperialism, ed. J. A. Mangan (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), 96-109; Warren, “Citizens of the Empire,” 242-246.

83 Olave Baden-Powell, Window on My Heart, 108-109; Proctor, On My Honour Guides, 10, 108, 112-113. Alexander, “Girl Guide Movement, Internationalism, and Imperialism in Interwar England, Canada, and India,” 165-168; Bush, “Gender and Empire: The Twentieth Century,” 79; Olave Baden-Powell, Training Girls as Guides: Hints for Commissioners and All Who are Interested in the Welfare and Training of Girls (London: C. Arthur Pear-son Ltd., 1919), 13; Barne, Here Come the Girl Guides, 47, 57. Barne chronicled, “The world, as far as women were concerned, was in fact completely changed.” She credited Guides’ war service to ending “The Woman Question.”

84 Allen Warren, “‘Mothers’ for the Empire?,’” 99-101; Robert Baden-Powell, “Girls and the National Fu-ture,” quoted in Proctor, On My Honour, 71; Bush, “Gender and Empire: The Twentieth Century,” 78, 82-83. Baden Powell explained, “The vast mass of our present girls will in the near future have a powerful voice in determining the affairs of the nation. Are they fitted for it or are they being fitted for it? They [women] are more important since it is the woman's influence that leads the man; it is the mother that develops the spirit of the child.’

85 Proctor, On My Honour, 95; Proctor, “Scouts, Guides, and Fashioning the of Empire, 1919-39,” in Fash-ioning the Body Politic: Dress, Gender, Citizenship, edited by Wendy Perkins (Oxford: Berg, 2002), 130

86 Helen McCarthy, “The League of Nations, Public Ritual and National Identity in Britain, c. 1919-1956,” History Workshop Journal, (Autumn 2010): 111, 118; Proctor, “‘A Separate Path:’ Scouting and Guiding in Inter-war South Africa,” 605-631; Watt, “The Promise of ‘Character,’”37-62.

87 J.S. Wilson, Scouting Round the World (London: Blanford Press, 1959), 18. 88 In cases like India and South Africa, where Robert believed the membership of colonized Scouts and

Guides would disrupt the movement’s popularity among white children, he insisted that colonial educators cease using his program.

89 L. H. Lees, Being British in Malaya, 1890-1940,” Journal of British Studies 48, no. 1 (2009): 79; 91-93; James K. Matthews, “World War I and the Rise of African Nationalism: Nigerian Veterans As Catalysts of

65

Change,” The Journal of Modern African Studies: A Quarterly Survey of Politics, Economics and Related Topics in Contemporary Africa 20, no. 3 (1982): 493-502; DeWitt C. Ellinwood, “The Indian Soldier, The Indian Army, and Change, 1914-1918,” in India and World War I, edited by DeWitt C. Ellinwood and S. D. Pradhan, (Columbia, Mo: South Asia Books, 1978), 183; National Archives of Australia. Australian Indigenous Servicemen WW1 (Canberra: National Archives of Australia, 2003).

90 Robert Baden-Powell, “White Men in Black Skins,” 6-7. 91 Charles Bridge and Kent Fedorowich, “Mapping the British World,” in The British World: Diaspora,

Culture, and Identity, edited by Carl Bridge and Kent Fedorowich (London: F. Cass, 2003), 8. Bridge and Fe-dorowich show that many British and American leaders saw the global Western order as the British world, an asso-ciation of English-speaking people who embraced to British values and goals.

92 Agnes Baden-Powell and Robert Baden-Powell, How Girls Can Help Build the Empire, 16, 22; Gardner, The First Girl Guide, 66; Warren, “‘Mothers for the Empire?’” 104-105; Olave Baden-Powell, Window On my Heart,108-109; Robert Baden-Powell, Girl Guiding, 41, 174-175. This handbook was first published February 1918. New editions and impressions followed in March 1918, August 1918, August 1919, January 1920, May 1920, No-vember 1920, September 1921, February 1922, and January 1923.

93 The Girl Guides' Gazette 8, no. 85 (January 1921): 5 quoted in Proctor, On My Honour, 108,131; Olave Baden-Powell, Training Girls As Guides,13. Barne, Here Come the Girl Guides, 47, 57. Barne chronicled, “The world, as far as women were concerned, was in fact completely changed.” She credited Guides’ war service to end-ing “The Woman Question.”

94 Robert Baden-Powell, Girl Guiding (London: C. Arthur Pearson, 1921), 62-63. 95 Robert Baden-Powell, Girl Guiding, 177, 179. 96 Olave Baden-Powell, Training Girls as Guides, 13-14; Modern Girl Around the World Research Group,

“Modern Girl as Heuristic Device: Collaboration, Connective Comparison, Multidirectional Citation,” in The Mod-ern Girl Around the World: Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization, edited by Eve Alys Weinbaum (Durham: Duke University Press, 2008), 1-4; Proctor, On My Honour, 71, 119-127; Richard A. Voeltz, “The Antidote to 'Khaki Fever'? The Expansion of the British Girl Guides During the First World War,” Journal of Contemporary History 27, no. 4 (October 1992): 627-638. Voeltz argues, “Guides acted as a cure, or antidote, for 'flapperdom' and 'war fever' or 'khaki fever', assumed to be dangerous social and psychological afflictions which beset the girls and young women of Britain, causing them to act in unrestrained, even bold and brazen ways, thus threatening the very moral order of the country.” Proctor cautions, “Voeltz is right in saying that Guides created the appearance of a safe alternative for women, but Guiding also fashioned a space for girls and women to experience independence and freedom from the restrictions of home life during World War I.”

97 Girl Guides' Gazette, November 1917, 62, 192 as quoted in Voeltz, “The Antidote to 'Khaki Fever’?,” 633; Olga Malkowska, “Guiding as Preparation for Life,” The Council Fire 10, no. 3 (July 1935): 4-5; Alexander, “Girl Guide Movement, Internationalism, and Imperialism in Interwar England, Canada, and India,” 173-176; Proc-tor, Scouting for Girls, 101-108; Olave Baden-Powell, Training Girls as Guides, 13-15; Proctor, On My Honour Guides, 71

98 Barne, Here Come the Girl Guides, 92. 99 See The Girl Guide World Bulletin, 1926-1928; The Council Fire, 1928-1960; Barne, Here Come the Girl Guides; Phyllis Stewart Brown, All Things Uncertain: The Story of the G.I.S. (Girl Guides Association, 1966); Alix Liddell, “Story of the Girl Guides, 1938-1975: Official History of the Girl Guides Association,” in The Story of the Girl Guides (London: Girl Guides Association, 1976); Kerr, The Story of a Million Girls; F. O. H. Nash, The Audrey Books (London: Sheldon Press (SPCK), 1933); Painting Book: Uniforms, Badges and Flags of Countries Members of the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (London: World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, 1955); Harriett Claire Philmus, Brave Girls: The Story of the Girl Scouts and Girl Guides in the Under-ground (New York, Girl Scouts National Organization, 1947) Ann Rylah, Australian Adventure; Girl Guiding Un-der the Southern Cross (Melbourne: Lansdowne Press, 1963) Doris Spratling, Extension Echoes: The Story of Girl Guiding for the Disabled in Victoria- 1927-1987 (Melbourne: Girl Guides Association of Victoria, 1987); . Gwendoline Hamer Swinburne, Among the First People, 1908-1936: The Baden-Powell Girl Guide Movement in Australia (Sydney: Girl Guides Association of Australia, 1978); J.S. Wilson, Scouting Round the World (London: Blanford Press,1959).

100 Alexander, “Girl Guide Movement, Internationalism, and Imperialism in Interwar England, Canada, and India,” 176-177.

101 Gorman, Imperial Citizenship, 212.

66

102 L.H. Lees, “Being British in Malaya, 1890-1940,” 80; Lake and Reynolds, Drawing the Global Colour

Line 233; Bush, “Gender and Empire: The Twentieth Century,” 78,102 Proctor, “Scouts, Guides, and Fashioning the of Empire, 1919-39,” 130; Olave Baden-Powell, “A Letter from the World Chief Guide,” The Council Fire 3, no. 1 (January 1933):1; “A Letter from the World Chief Guide,” The Council Fire 4, no. 1 (January 1934): 1; “The Open-ing of the Conference,” The Council Fire 4, no. 4 (October 1934): 126-128.

103 Robert Baden-Powell, “White Men in Black Skins,” 6-7; Cheryl Johnson-Odim, "Lady Oyinkan Abayomi," Nigerian Women in Historical Perspective (1992): 154-155; Mrs. Sen, “India,” The Council Fire 7, no. 4 (October 1932):105.

104 Robert Clarke, “The Idea of Celebrity Colonialism: An Introduction,” in Celebrity Colonialism: Fame, Power and Representation in Colonial and Postcolonial Cultures, edited by Robert Clarke (Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009), 1-10.

105 Penny Tinkler, “English Girls and the International Dimension of British Citizenship in the 1940s,” European Journal of Women's Studies 8, no. 103 (February 2001): 411-568.

106 Kerr, The Story of a Million Girls, 377-378. 107 Robert Baden-Powell, Girl Guiding, 65- 66, 71, 195. 108 Robert Baden-Powell, Girl Guiding, 56-59,77, 79. Robert specified, “ I want Girl Guides to learn to be

almost like detectives in their sharpness in noticing small signals and reading meaning in them, not merely for the purpose of studying animals and birds, but also for studying their fellow human creatures. It is by studying the small signs of distress or poverty in people that you can often help them in the best way.”

109 Robert Baden-Powell, Girl Guiding, 175. 110 Robert Baden-Powell, Girl Guiding, 32-33, 39, 76-77, 106, 123, 129, 167, 176. 111 Robert Baden-Powell, Girl Guiding, 129. 112 Robert Baden-Powell, Girl Guiding, 17, 31, 123. Brownies referred to Guides under the age of 11. Rob-

ert explained, “Any girl can become a Brownie who is under eleven, and who does her best to carry out the Promise of the Brownies.”

113 Alexander, “Girl Guide Movement, Internationalism, and Imperialism in Interwar England, Canada, and India,” 189-190.

114 Olave Baden-Powell, Guide Links, 99. 115 Olave Baden-Powell, Training Girls as Guides, 16. 116 Olave Baden-Powell, Guide Links, 64. 117 Quoted in M. Proctor, “Scouts, Guides, and Fashioning the of Empire, 1919-39,” 137-138. 118 Alexander, “Girl Guide Movement, Internationalism, and Imperialism in Interwar England, Canada, and

India,” 185-186 119 Olave Baden-Powell, Window on My Heart, 176, 223-238. 120 Alexander, “Girl Guide Movement, Internationalism, and Imperialism in Interwar England, Canada, and

India,” 48, 53. Alexander analyzes, “Many official Guide publications produced during this time, like much of the coverage the movement received in the popular press, still bore traces of older, more conservative and hierarchical ways of thinking. Most significantly, a number of contemporary newspapers, as well as Guide fiction and prescrip-tive literature published in or dealing with England, Canada, and India, continued to discuss the Guides in ways that reinforced and perpetuated Anglo-centric forms of racial and cultural categorization.”

121 Charlotte Weber, “Unveiling Scheherazade: Feminist Orientalism in the International Alliance of Women, 1911-1950,” Feminist Studies 27, no. 1 (2001): 125-157; Leila J. Rupp, “Constructing Internationalism: The Case of Transnational Women's Organizations, 1888-1945,” The American Historical Review 99, no. 5 (1994): 1571-1600. Olave’s confidence in Western superiority was common to feminists of her generation. “With few ex-ceptions, First Wave feminists of all stripes,” explains Charlotte Weber, “readily accepted a key element of the West’s orientalist legacy – namely, the unquestioned belief in the superiority of ‘Western’ ways.”

122 Alexander, “Girl Guide Movement, Internationalism, and Imperialism in Interwar England, Canada, and India,” 313, 316, 340-341; “The Girl Guide Movement and Imperial Internationalism During the 1920s and 1930s,” The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 2, no. 1 (Winter 2009): 37-63; Kerr, The Story of a Mil-lion Girls, 375; Sheelah Reade, “Reply to Letter from the League of Nations,” The Council Fire 2 no. 5 (April 1927): 9-11; Cynthia Forbes, 1910 ... and Then? (Great Britain, 1986), 12; Olave Baden-Powell, Guide Links, 130, 196 Olave Baden-Powell and Kipling, The First Trail, 10; Eileen Kirkpatrick Wade, Olave Baden-Powell: the Authorised Biography of the World Chief Guide (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1971), 122; Barne, Here Come the Girl Guides, 80-83; Folarin Coker, A Lady: A Biography of Lady Oyinkan Abayomi (Ibadan, Nigeria: Evans Broth-ers, 1987), 69; “Ourselves,” The Girl Guide World Bulletin, International Conference Number 1, no. 2 (August

67

1926). Delegates to Fourth International Conference at Camp Edith Macy in New York decided to change the for-mer name of the world publication, World Bulletin, to The Council Fire. The new name evoked the campfire “at Camp Edith Macy, into which each delegate threw a faggot naming the particular contribution which her country had made to building up of the modern world.”

123 Samuel McCune Lindsay, Dame Katharine Furse, Mrs. H. H. Moorhead, William Martin, William F. Snow, Julia C. Lathrop, “Discussion: International Social Welfare Problems,” Proceedings of the Academy of Politi-cal Science in the City of New York 12, no. 1 (July1926): 424-427, 432; McCarthy, “The League of Nations, Public Ritual and National Identity in Britain, c. 1919-1956,” 119; Halslen-Kallia, “Reports on the Work of Other Organi-zations By Their Representatives: Secretariat of the League of Nations,” The Council Fire 18, no. 4 (October 1943): 200; “Moral Disarmament,” The Council Fire, 2 no. 4 (February 1927): 2; Sheelah Reade, “Reply to Letter from the League of Nations,” The Council Fire, 2 no. 5 (April 1927): 9-11; Halslen-Kallia, the Secretariat of the League of Nations, saw the governing structure of WAGGGS as parallel to that of the League of Nations. Robert championed the League of Nations and served as Vice President of the League of Nations Union, a non-political group of League activists.

124 Proctor, Scouting for Girls, 70. The delegation to the Fourth World Conference only determined which National Associations qualified as full members. Full members would have the right send delegates to vote at World Conferences and propose women to run for the World Committee. They would also have the responsibility of paying an annual quota based on membership numbers. To become a member of the World Association, the Guide or Scout Association had to apply and show that their organization supported the principles established in the original Promise and Laws. Each country could choose the wording of the Promise. The first Member countries of WAGGGS were Australia, Belgium, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Hungary, Ice-land, India, Japan, Latvia, Liberia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, South Af-rica, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States of America and Yugoslavia. The World Committee waited until 1936 to draft a Constitution which explicitly laid out six qualifications for membership:

a) adhere to the principles of the original Promise and Law as laid down by the Founder; b) Have a move-ment open to all girls and young women without distinction of creed, race, class, or nationality; c) Have a self-governing Movement independent of any political organization and not supporting any political party; d) Have adopted the Trefoil (the symbol of the threefold Promise as its Badge); e) Have undertaken ...to be-gin work on a Constitution...; f) Undertake to pay annually the Tenderfoot Membership Quota to WAGGGS, and to send an annual report to the World Bureau.

The World Committee may have waited to adopt a Constitution until South Africa, which had a large movement, allowed nonwhite girls to join which occurred January 1936.

125 Alexander, “Girl Guide Movement, Internationalism, and Imperialism in Interwar England, Canada, and India,” 320-325; Rupp, "Challenging Imperialism,” 8; Fiona Paisley, Glamour in the Pacific: Cultural Internation-alism and Race in the Women’s Pan-Pacific (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2009), 6-7. Paisley shows that many international women’s organizations adopted this attitude because their founders and initial leaders were Western women who celebrated antiracism and cultural understanding but never abandoned the race-thinking com-mon in the early twentieth century. In her study of the Women’s Pan Pacific from 1928-1958, she finds that non-Western women who attended conferences faced a contradictory set of expectations. While they came to the con-ferences with expectation to claim agency and influence, many of their Western colleagues dismissed them as less experienced world citizens that needed guidance

126 WAGGGS, First Biennial Reports, 1928-1930 (London: WAGGGS, 1931), 52, 56, 61. For more re-garding the “double difference” of women from the dominion colonies see Marilyn Lake, “'Between Old World Barbarism’ and Stone Age ‘Primitivism’: The Double Difference of the White Australian Feminist,” in Australian Women: Contemporary Feminist Thought edited by Norma Grieve and Ailsa Burns (Melbourne: Oxford University Press), 80-91; Avril Janks, Leadership for Life: 100 Women, 100 Years in Guiding (Rosanna, Vic: Bounce Books, 2010), 83; Australian Guiders remained marginalized from international leadership until the 1960 World Conference when delegates elected the Australian Major Eleanor Manning Obe.

127 Eileen Sandford, “Guiding in Nigeria” The Council Fire 31, no. 4 (Oct 1956): 148; Helvi Sipila “Ten-derfoot and Pre-Tenderfoot Countries,” The Council Fire 35, no. 4 (October/December 1960): 151-154; “Present at the Seventeenth World Conference” The Council Fire 35, no. 4 (October/December 1960): 174-176. In 1960, an Asian observer attended from Malaya.

128 The Council Fire 3, no. 2 (July 1928): 55. 129 The Council Fire 6, no. 6 (October 1931); Leslie E. Whateley, “A World Committee Meeting,” The

Council Fire 27, no. 2 (April 1952): 43; World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, “History of WAGGGS,”

68

http://www.wagggsworld.org/en/about/About/History (accessed January 22, 2012); Katharine Furse, “The Business Side of the Conference,” The Council Fire 5, no. 4 (October 1930): 54.

130 The Council Fire 5, no. 4 (October 1930): 123; Kerr, The Story of a Million Girls, 383; WAGGGS, First Biennial Reports, 1928-1930, 19, 61; Lagercrantz, “Impressions,” The Girl Guide World Bulletin, International Conference Number 1, no. 2 (August 1926): 6; Kerr “The Fourth International Conference: At Camp Edith Macy, New York State,” The Girl Guide World Bulletin, International Conference Number 1, no. 2 (August 1926): 7.

131 Frederick Cooper and Ann Stoler, “Between Metropole and Colony: Rethinking a Research Agenda,” in Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, edited by Anna Stoler and Frederick Cooper (Ber-keley, Calif: University of California Press, 1997), 13-15.

132 Out of the 26 founding members of WAGGGS in 1928, only three, Japan, Liberia, and India were non-Western countries.

133 Alix Liddell, “The Will to Succeed,” The Council Fire 27, no. 3 (July 1952): 71-75; Rose Kerr, “Ten-derfoot Members and Others,” in Third Biennial Report, 1932-34 (London: WAGGGS), 14; Olave Baden-Powell, “A Letter from the World Chief Guide,” Council Fire 3, no. 1 (January 1933):1; “A Letter from the World Chief Guide,” The Council Fire 4, no. 1 (January 1934): 1; “The Opening of the Conference,” The Council Fire 4, no. 4 (October 1934): 126-128; In 1933, Olave writes to her international readership, “It’s nice, isn’t it, to feel we are such a gigantic family, tied together like a bunch of strong twigs of the great strong tree.” In 1934, she open her annual letter, “And so our family is growing bigger and bigger.”

134 Isobel Crowe, “Pride of Belonging,” The Council Fire 27, no. 2 (April 1952): 39-40; “The Far East” The Council Fire 27, no. 4 (October 1952): 136-137.

135 Alix Liddell, “The Will to Succeed,” The Council Fire 27, no. 3 (July 1952):74. 136 Jacobs, White Mother to a Dark Race, 67. The discourse of WAGGGS echoed a common practice

among imperialists and social scientists to see greater difference as signs of stilted human development. Alice Cun-ningham Fletcher, an anthropologist and activist, captured this belief: “The life of nations and peoples of the world is like the life of the human being; it has the childhood period, the adolescent period, and the mature period . . . We speak of savagery, barbarism and civilization, -- terms which merely represent these stages.”

137 The Council Fire 8, no. 4 (Oct 1938): 73. 138 Patricia Richards, “Girl Guides in India,” The Council Fire 6, no. 3 (July 1931):4; Alexander, “Girl

Guide Movement, Internationalism, and Imperialism in Interwar England, Canada, and India,” 334-336. 139 The Council Fire 4, no. 4 (October 1930): 123; The Council Fire 4, no. 4 (October 1934); The Council

Fire 3, no. 3 (July 1933); “Speeches at Sessions of Delegates, Visitors, and Guiders: Lighter Moments of the Con-ference,” The Council Fire, World Conference Number 5, no. 4 (October 1930): 76; E. H. Piepers, “International Conference About Scouting and Guiding in the Colonies,” The Council Fire 4, no. 1 (January 1934): 107.

140 E. H. Piepers, “International Conference About Scouting and Guiding in the Colonies,” The Council Fire 4, no. 1 (January 1934): 107.

141 Alexander, “Girl Guide Movement, Internationalism, and Imperialism in Interwar England, Canada, and India,” 211; Kerr, “Story of the Girl Guides, 1908-1938: Official History of the Girl Guides Association,” in The Story of the Girl Guides, edited by Alex Liddell (London: Girl Guides Association, 1976) 188; “Report of the Eighth World Conference of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts,” The Council Fire 4, no. 4 (October 1934): 123; “Discussion Following Katharine Furse: Older Women in Our Movement,” The Council Fire 4, no. 4 (October 1934): 185-191; “Discussion Following Mary A. Dingman: ‘ La Vie Personelle Dans L’Age Technique,’” The Council Fire 4, no. 4 (October 1934): 171-174; “Discussion Following Antonia Lindenmeyer: ‘The Girl Scout Movement in Relation to Schools,’” The Council Fire 4, no. 4 (October 1934): 161-163.

142 Lillian Mitchell, “Australian Visits India,” The Council Fire 32, no. 2 (April 1957): 95-97; Anu Kark-are, “The Expanding Circle of Friendship,” The Council Fire 34, no. 1 (January 1959): 30-31; The Council Fire, The Seventh World Conference 7, no. 4 (October 1932); “The Chief Guides Opening Speech,” The Council Fire 6, no. 4 (October 1936): 14-15; Alexander, “Girl Guide Movement, Internationalism, and Imperialism in Interwar England, Canada, and India,” 325-326; Patricia Richards, “Girl Guides in India,” The Council Fire 6, no. 3 (July 1931): 41; In her opening speech at the 1934 World Conference, Olave encouraged, “I urge you to start making friends with your fellow-workers from other countries with whom you have not hitherto come into contact. You will gather from them information which may be helpful to you in your own lands; the main purpose of this Conference is to ex-change personal experiences and to gain suggestions with which to carry on Guiding amongst your own people.”

143 Rose Kerr, “Pax-Ting,” The Council Fire 14, no. 4 (Oct. 1939): 52; “The Pax-Ting Camp,” The Council Fire 14, no. 4 (Oct 1939): 55.

144 “Extracts from a Conference Diary,” The Council Fire 29, no. 4 (October/November 1954): 149.

69

145 “The International Camp, Waddow Hall Lancashire,” The Council Fire 17, no. 4 (October 1942): 51.

The Council Fire reported on only one international gathering in 1942. The conference was held in Britain and only five other countries were represented

146 Elizabeth Choy, interview by Tan Beng Luan; Singapore, August, 23 1985; Anu Karkare “The Expand-ing Circle of Friendship,” The Council Fire 34, no. 1 (January 1959): 30-31. Elizabeth Choy became one of the first Malayan Guiders to have the opportunity to travel to an international gathering in 1947 when she received the Bronze Cross. When she recalled her experience in London thirty-eight years later, she offered an implausible re-cord of events including Lord Baden-Powell, who died in 1941, as the man who gave her the award. Most likely, she assumed the man in the Scouting uniform beside Olave was Robert. Her confusion shows that the high expecta-tions of non-Western Guiders shaped how they experienced and remembered international events in a way that en-couraged praise.

147 Alexander, “Girl Guide Movement, Internationalism, and Imperialism in Interwar England, Canada, and India,” 327.

148 Rupp, Challenging Imperialism, 8; Sherene Rustomjee “Education in Patriotism,” The Council Fire 28, no. 1(January 1943):10; WAGGGS, Twelfth Biennial Report (London: WAGGGS), 36-37; Eighth Biennial Report, 1942-1944, 51; The Council Fire 8, no. 4 (October 1938): 73; Kerr, The Story of a Million Girls, 223; Fourth Bien-nial Report, 1934-1936,71.

149 Kerr, “Foxlease,” The Council Fire 2, no. 6 (July 1927): 20. 150 Paisley, Glamour in the Pacific. Paisley claims that the Pan Pacific Women’s Association renamed the

Pan-Pacific and South East Asia Women’s Association in 1955, employed unique methods to build interracial rela-tionships at conferences. However, WAGGGS employed the same methods: dressing in costumes, performance, and indigenous folk art shows, etc.

151 The Council Fire 5, no. 4 (October 1930): 63; WAGGGS, Fourth Biennial Reports, 1934-1936 (Lon-don: WAGGGS), 39.

152 First Biennial Report, 1928-1930, 46; Furse, “Close of Conference,” The Council Fire 11, no. 4 (Octo-ber 1936): 43; In 1936, Furse echoed, “As we have heard here, Guiding and Girl Scouting are developing differently in every country. No one country has found the only way to give the Chief Scout’s vision to the children. Each country has contributed valuable ideas, and we hope this joyous Conference has pooled all these ideas so that they will combine to inspire us in the future.”

153 Paisley, Glamour in the Pacific , 170,176; Helen McSwiney, “Eastern Tour,” The Council Fire 30, no. 3 (July 1955): 91-94; V. Rhys Davids, “Imagination in the Brownie Pack,” The Council Fire 3, no. 4 (October 1933): 63-64; Cecile Coleridge, “Programme de Reunione Pour Une Envolee de ‘Bluebirds’ Hindoues,” 66; Rose Kerr, “Pax Ting,” The Council Fire 14, no. 4 (October 1939): 52-54; “Quo Vadis Conference on Training, 16th-24th May 1955,” The Council Fire 30, no. 4 (October 1955): 150-153; Lillian Mitchell, “Australian Visits India,” The Council Fire 32, no. 2 (April 1957): 95-97; Paisley, Glamour in the Pacific, 1, 221.

154 Tammy Proctor,“‘A Separate Path:’ Scouting and Guiding in Interwar South Africa,” 608-609. Proctor argues that Robert integrated Zulu relics and rituals into both Guiding and Scouting; yet, all of her examples come from the Boy Scout program. I found no evidence in Robert’s articles speeches, or Guiding handbooks to suggest that Robert encouraged Guides to learn Zulu war chants or admire their traditional simplicity. In the Guiding hand-book, he only mentions Zulus as enemies of war.

155 “The Imperial Camp for Overseas Guiders, ” The Council Fire 3, no. 4 (October 1928): 68; “Speeches at Sessions of Delegates, Visitors, and Guiders: Extension, Post Guides, and Brownies,” The Council Fire, World Con-ference Number 5, no. 4 (October 1930): 80; A British Guider proclaimed, “The only branch of Guiding so far as I know in which the government is so convinced of the good that is being done that they will pay English Guiders is in the homes for mentally defective children.”

156 Nele Matz, “Civilization and the Mandate System Under the League of Nations,” in Max Planck Year-book of United Nations Law, edited by Armin von Bogdandy, Rüdiger Wolfrum, and Christiane Philipp, (Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 2005), 52-67

157 Alexander, “Girl Guide Movement, Internationalism, and Imperialism in Interwar England, Canada, and India,” 3.

158 “Speeches at Sessions of Delegates, Visitors, and Guiders: The World Training Center,” The Council Fire, World Conference Number 5, no. 4 (October 1930): 81-83.

159 Fourth Biennial Report, 1934-1936, 34; Kerr, “Story of the Girl Guides, 1908-1938: Official History of the Girl Guides Association,” 188.

70

160 Kerr, The Story of a Million Girls, 223; WAGGGS, Fourth Biennial Report, 1934-1936, 71. “Our Cha-

let,” The Council Fire 30, no. 1 (Jan. 1955): 32. In 1935, the All-India Association paid for Sherene Rustomjee to attend a Round Table of Trainers there.

161 WAGGGS, Fifth Biennial Report, 1936-1938, 35; Margaret Hornby, “Our Ark: The Acting Chairman’s Report,” The Council Fire 27, no.4 (October 1952): 124-125; “Our Ark’s New House,” The Council Fire 35, no. 2 (April-June 1960): 59-61; The Ark, which had moved in September of 1959 to a new location of London, reported that by the spring of 1960 Guides from 25 countries had already stopped. One was a Guider from India traveling to America to study; a Guider from Pakistan spent Christmas of 1951.

162 Helen Storrow, “Speeches at Sessions of Delegates, Visitors, and Guiders: The World Training Center.” The Council Fire, World Conference 5, no. 4 (October 1930): 81-83; Margaret Hornby, “Our Ark: The Acting Chairman’s Report,” The Council Fire 27, no. 4 (October 1952): 124-125; “Our Chalet,” The Council Fire 27, no. 4 (October 1952): 122-124; “Our Ark’s New House,” The Council Fire 35, no. 2 (April-June 1960): 59-61; Dorthea Woods, “Unesco,” The Council Fire 27, no. 4 (October 1952): 125-126; “Tatana,” The Council Fire 34, no. 1 (Janu-ary 1959): 11-13

163 Olave Baden-Powell, “Thinking Day Fund,” The Council Fire 3, no. 2 (April 1933):17. In the first year, the Association held the Thinking Day Fund, they decided to count all British colonies in West Africa as one dona-tion. Thus, that year alone West Africa raised more money than any European country; of course it included Sierra Leone, Gambia, the British Gold Coast (modern Ghana), and Nigeria.

164 Alice Chester, “Thinking Day Fund: Appeal by the Assistant Treasurer to the World Committee,” The Council Fire 27, no. 4 (October 1952): 118-119; “Mrs. Alice Chester: Scouting’s Spark,” The Milwaukee Journal March 25, 1962, 2, 6.

165 Katharine Furse, “How is Our Guide and Girl Scout Movement to be Kept Free of Politics,” The Coun-cil Fire 7, no. 4 (October 1932): 76; Alexander, “Girl Guide Movement, Internationalism, and Imperialism in Inter-war England, Canada, and India,” 357; WAGGGS, Second Biennial Report, 1932, 7. Furse continually pointed out the limitations of the internationalism WAGGGS promised.

166 The Council Fire 5, no. 4 (October 1930): 99. 167 Olave Baden-Powell, “The Chief Guides Opening Speech,” The Council Fire 6, no. 4 (October 1936):

14. 168 “‘Preparation’ of International Trainers,” The Council Fire 6, no. 4 (October 1936): 30. This speaker

also acknowledged the limitations white Guiders faced in the colonies. “So often people tend to think habits differ-ent to their own funny or odd or peculiar. Yet these problems and habits may be of vital importance to the leaders of the movement in their own countries and may be the root of their difficulties running Guides or Girl Scouts.”

169 Olga Malkowska “Whither Patriotism?” The Council Fire 12, no. 1(January 1937): 3-4. 170 Olave Baden-Powell, Window on My Heart, 159-160; Barne, Here Come the Girl Guides, 92; Mark

Kerr (Vice-Chairman of the International Conference) “The Fourth International Conference: At Camp Edith Macy, New York State,” The Girl Guide World Bulletin, International Conference Number 1, no. 2 (August 1926): 7; Proc-tor, Scouting for Girls, 132. France had proposed Thinking Day at the Fourth World Conference at Camp Edith Macy in New York as a more universal holiday for the movement than Empire Day where Guides and Guiders would offer thoughts of kindness to their sisters around the world and celebrate the Founders, Promise, and Laws that united them. In her memoirs, Olave recalled that a Guider from Belgium proposed it at the 1932 World Confer-ence in Poland.

171 Warren, “‘Mothers for the Empire?’”106; Wilson, Scouting Round the World, 38. WAGGGS, largely because of Olave’s influence and the leadership of Katherine Furse, resolutely refused to work with imperial youth organizations from 1926 onwards. Though Boy Scouts did not build formal ties with imperial youth organizations, Robert continued to negotiate with Mussolini regarding his Bailla, a fascist Italian form of scouting founded in 1928, until 1933 and encouraged the South African Boy Scout Association to cooperate with Voortrekkers, the Afrikaner nationalist scouting organization. Both boys from Hitler Jugend and Bailla attended the 1933 World Jamboree and International Conference in Hungary.

172 Alexander, “Girl Guide Movement, Internationalism, and Imperialism in Interwar England, Canada, and India,” 311-312.

173 Isobel Crowe, “The Far East,” The Council Fire 27, no. 4 (Oct 1952): 136-137; Frederick Cooper, "De-velopment, Modernization, and the Social Sciences in the Era of Decolonization: The Examples of British and French Africa," Revue D'Histoire Des Sciences Humaines 10, no. 1 (2004):16. The Colonial Development and Wel-fare Act of 1940 demonstrated the popularity of the modernization paradigm among colonial bureaucrats. It rein-vested taxes that British citizens of the metropole paid in colonial development projects.

71

174 Liddell, “The Will to Succeed,” 71-75. 175 Sylvi Visapaa, “Report of the Chairman of the World Committee,” The Council Fire 27, no. 4 (October

1952): 104. 176 Olave Baden-Powell, “International Friendship Companies,” The Council Fire 22, no. 2 (April 1947):

20; “International Friendship Company Certificates,” The Council Fire 27, no. 2 (April 1952): 67; 177 J.S. Wilson, Scouting Round the World 103. 178 “The World Song,” The Council Fire 27, no. 2 (April 1952): 55. 179 Margaret Hornby, “Our Ark: The Acting Chairman’s Report,” The Council Fire 27, no. 4 (October

1952): 124-125. 180 Edna M. Banham, “This Post Box Business,” The Council Fire 35, no. 2 (April-June 1960): 69.

WAGGGS received more requests for international pen pals and friend companies from European Guides. Banham explains, “Many European Guides want pen-friends in, what seems to them, the more glamorous countries of the East, and in other parts of the world where the way of life is different from their own in the colder climes.”

181 World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, Trefoil Around the World (1999), 75, 93,132, 170, 239; Proctor, Scouting for Girls, 92.

182 Neville Meaney, “Britishness and Australia: Some Reflections,” in The British World: Diaspora, Cul-ture, and Identity, edited by Carl Bridge and Kent Fedorowich (London: F. Cass, 2003), 128-133; Proctor, Scouting for Girls, 137-140; Timothy Parsons, “The Evolution of the Girl Guide Movement in Colonial Kenya,” in Scouting Frontiers: Youth and the Scout Movement's First Century, eds. Tammy M. Proctor and Nelson R. Block (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Pub, 2009), 53; Bush, “Gender and Empire: The Twentieth Century,” 102-105. This may have also been part of a larger trend among nonprofit organizations in the metropole to appeal to a multi-national audience since the passage of the 1940 Colonial Welfare and Development Act. The 1940 Colonial Wel-fare and Development Act transformed the Empire, at least rhetorically, “into a multiracial Commonwealth of ‘equal’ citizens and development.” Consequentially imperial societies changed their names and agendas. The Vic-toria League became the Victoria League for Commonwealth Friendship. The Society of the Oversea Settlement of British Women (SOSBW) no longer sent white women to the colonies to boost white numbers against the savage hordes but as social workers to train natives.

183 Helen Gibbs, “All Over the Map: The British Commonwealth,” The Council Fire 27, no. 2 (April 1952): 48-51. Gibbs described, “Each company achieving a certificate standard will receive a certificate with the design of a world map and trefoil of gold, silver, or bronze according to the standard attained.”

184 Proctor, Scouting for Girls, 137. 185 Sierra Leone Girl Guides Association, Sierra Leone Girl Guides Association: 60 Years of Guiding: Girl

Guides, 1924-1984 : "Service Through Guiding," (Freetown, Sierra Leone: The Association, 1984); World Associa-tion of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, Trefoil Around the World (1999). Liberia belonged to WAGGGS for two years between 1928 -1930. It is unclear why they lost their membership. They rejoined in 1966. 186 Coker, A Lady, 74; Eileen Sandford, Come On, Eileen! (Shrewsbury: Shrewsbury Words, 2010), 46. 187 Olave Baden-Powell, Window on My Heart, 223-224; Proctor, Scouting for Girls, 129; Wade, Olave Baden-Powell, 166-167. 188 Adas, Machines As the Measure of Men, 411-418.

189 Gibbs, “All Over the Map: The British Commonwealth,” The Council Fire 27, no. 2 (April 1952): 51. 190 WAGGGS, Thirteenth Biennial Report, 1952-1954, 94. 191 Leslie E. Whateley, “Challenge to Girl Guiding,” The Council Fire 35, no. 3 (July-Sept 1960): 106. 192 Dorothea Woods “Unesco,[sic],” The Council Fire 27, no. 4 (October 1952): 125-126; Leslie E.

Whateley, “The Director’s Travels,” The Council Fire 34, no. 4 (October 1959): 139-143; Liddell “The Will to Succeed,” The Council Fire 27, no. 3 (July 1952): 75; Leslie E. Whateley “Eradication of Prejudice and Discrimina-tion: United Nations Conference of Non-Governmental Organizations, 31st March – 4th April 1955,” The Council Fire 30, no. 3 (July 1955): 110-111; Joyce Waley “The World Assembly of Youth,” The Council Fire 29, no. 1-2 (January-April 1954): 104-105. The UN and many of the nonprofits it worked with held conferences outside of the West and employed the latest technologies to facilitate communication. For example, headphones provided transla-tion in Chinese, English, French, Russian, and Spanish. World Conferences and international gatherings adopted such technology more gradually.

193 Gibbs, “All Over the Map: The British Commonwealth,” The Council Fire 27, no. 2 (April 1952): 48-51; Dorthea Woods “Unesco,” The Council Fire 27, no. 4 (October 1952): 125-126. In 1952, UNESCO set aside $34,000 to sponsor travel to inter-regional youth activities. A large amount went to Guides. The Juliette Low World Friendship Encampment held annually at Our Chalet provided funds for twenty older Guides 17-19 to come and

72

represent their country during a two week camp: “She [applicants] must be actively serving in a company or troop, have some camping experience, and be able to teach songs, dances and simple handcrafts of her own country. She should be able to speak at least one language in addition to her own.” In the 1950s, Asians from Pakistan and India participated nearly every year. In 1950 two Pakistani Guides won a scholarship from the Juliette Low World Friendship Fund that funded a trip to Our Chalet in Switzerland, where she camped with Guides from 21 other na-tions that included Brazil, Haiti, France, Norway, South Africa, Soumi-Finland, and the United States.

194 Margareta Enggard, “What is International Guiding,” The Council Fire 33, no. 1 (Jan 1958): 26-2; Christabel Taseer, “Pakistan: Each One, Teach One,” B.P.: 1857-1957 Supplement to the Council Fire (July 1958): 18-20.

195 WAGGGS, Thirteenth Biennial Report, 1952-1954, 76 196 Biva Mukerjea, “Indian Visits U.S.A.” The Council Fire 34, no. 1 (April 1959): 107-108; “Quo Vadis

Conference on Training, 16th-24th May 1955,” The Council Fire 30, no. 4 (Oct. 1955): 150-153; Dorothy Ogden, “ A Growing Force for Freedom,” The Council Fire 29, no. 1-2 (January-April 1954): 30-31; WAGGGS, Twelfth Bien-nial Report, 1951-1952, 36-37; WAGGGS, Fourteenth Biennial Report, 1954-1956.

197 K. G. Woollacott, “We Met in South-East Asia,” The Council Fire 29, no. 3 (July 1954): 79-81; “Round Table Conference of Trainers: Ceylon, 19th-27th April, 1954,” The Council Fire 29, no. 4 (October/ November 1954): 171.

198 Lakshmi Mazumdar, “International Commissioners’ Meeting: Asian Arena (1956) in India,” The Coun-cil Fire 32, no. 2 (April 1957): 62.

199 “The Walter Donald Ross (Vancouver, B.C.) Perpetual Trophy: Pakistan Guides Fight Smallpox and Cholera,” The Council Fire 35, no. 4 (October-December 1960): 216-217; Thirteenth Biennial Report, 1952-1954 (London: WAGGGS), 76; Fourteenth Biennial Report, 1954-1956, 39. “The World Chief Guide in Australia,” The Council Fire 33, no. 2 (April 1958): 47-49. WAGGGS also began to focus on the goals, needs, and accomplish-ments of non-Western Guides. In 1952, it chose an Indian company over those from France, Greece, Italy, and the Philippines to receive the Walter Donald Ross Perpetual Trophy for outstanding service to the community, and in 1960 it chose a company from East Pakistan. In the early fifties, WAGGGS and UNESCO offered a significant number of non-Western Guides the funds to travel to international camps.

200 Leslie Whateley, “The Director’s Travels,” The Council Fire 31, no. 2 (April 1956): 55-58; Biva Muker-jea, “Indian Visits U.S.A.” The Council Fire 34, no. 3 (July 1959): 107-108; The American leadership knew of and respected the ideas and opinions of Mrs. Asoka Gupta, Mrs. Julie, Sen, and Mrs. Dutt.

201 Ada Cornil, “ Opening Speech,” The Council Fire 27, no. 4 (Oct 1952): 103. She continued, “A major-ity of opinion must not try to impose its way on a minority. Each one of us can and must explain her own point of view; but must try to understand the others. From this diversity of opinions we must endeavor to discover, all to-gether, common decisions that are acceptable to all.”

202 “Interchange of Personnel,” The Council Fire 32, no. 4 (October 1957): 168-169. Pakistan exchanged with Great Britain and India with Australia.

203“World Personalities: Mrs. Lakshmi Mazumdar,” The Council Fire 33, no. 3 (July 1958): 113-114. 204 WAGGGS, Fourteenth Biennial Report, 1954-1956, 39; Eleventh Biennial Report, 1949-1950 (London:

WAGGGS), 7, 8; Biva Mukerjea, “Indian Visits U.S.A,” The Council Fire 34, no. 3 (July 1959): 107-108; “Three Have Tea with Envoy's Wife,” The Straits Times (April 25 1963): 11; Ashoka Gupta, Sipra Bhattacharya, and Ran-jana Dasgupta, In the Path of Service: Memories of a Changing Century (Kolkata: STREE, 2005): 112-113, 159-177; Leslie E. Whateley “The Director’s Travels,” Council Fire 28, no. 2 (April 1953): 36. “The Walter Donald Ross Perpetual Trophy: Pakistan Guides Fight Smallpox and Cholera,” The Council Fire 35, no. 4 (October-December 1960): 216-217; Thirteenth Biennial Report, 1952-1954 (London: WAGGGS), 76; Fourteenth Biennial Report, 1954-1956, 39. “The World Chief Guide in Australia,” The Council Fire 33, no. 2 (April 1958): 47-49. The experience of Biva Mukerjea, an Indian Guider, illustrates a typical study tour in the States. In 1959, Juliette Low World Friendship scholarship funded Mukerjea to travel to the U.S. and teach at the Edith Macy Training School. There she taught Indian dances, song, and handicraft; eventually she traveled to other camps throughout the United States. Often Guiders stopped in London or the Philippines during their journey.

205 Coker, A Lady, 74; Marjorie H. Grant “All Africa Conference, May 1961,” The Council Fire 35 no. 4 (October-December 1960): 159; “Reports: World Association Events: between the 16th and 17th World Conferences 1957-1960,” The Council Fire 35 no. 4 (October-December 1960): 156-157.

206 World Association of Girl Scouts and Girl Guides, “Document N°11: Fifth World Centre,” (34th World Conference 2011, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. April 15, 2011), 1-4; World Association of Girl Scouts and Girl Guides, “Regional Conference Report: AF.400,” (8th African Regional Conference, Zambia, June 12-18, 2007), 13;

73

WAGGGS, “Nigeria,” WAGGGS, 2012. http://africa.wagggsworld.org/en/organisations/99 (accessed July 8, 2012) The African region first requested a World Center in 1993. In 2011, WAGGGS decided that such an institution would promote the participation of Africans in the movement who continue to be underrepresented at international events.

207 Leslie E. Whateley, “The Director’s Travels,” The Council Fire 34, no. 4 (October 1959): 139-141; Whateley observed, “Only three of the Non-Governmental Organizations (N.G.O.s) present were represented by eastern nationalities, but what they lacked in numerical strength they certainly made up for in quality.”

208 “From Papuan to Sydney,” The Council Fire 35, no. 4 (October-December 1960):133; United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, System of Associated Youth Enterprises, 1959-1962,” Paris, Oc-tober 30,1962 unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0015/001555/155550eb.pdf (Accessed January 27, 2012); United Na-tions Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, “Working Party of Non-Governmental Organizations on the Extension of International Collaboration in Education, Science, and Culture to the Countries in Africa,” Paris, Janu-ary 27, 1961) unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0018/001843/184352eb.pdf (Accessed January 27, 2012).

74

CHAPTER 2: FUTURE MOTHERS OF EMPIRE: WHITE GUIDERS AND THEIR

MISSION TO MOTHER IMPERIAL CITIZENS, 1915-1945

A Snapshot of Success

A frazzled Mable Marsh, the principal of the Methodist Girls’ School in Kuala Lumpur,

Malaya, struggled to dress her Girl Guide company in the required uniform for their parade per-

formance to honor the Prince of Wales. Her company, comprised of Asian girls from Chinese,

Japanese, Indian, and Malay backgrounds, had begun their preparation months before the

Prince’s scheduled arrival. Though Marsh had ordered the required brown stockings of the uni-

form, which could only be procured from England with months to spare, the stockings failed to

arrive for the parade in March 1922. Marsh and fellow teachers decided that “the expected stock-

ings matched the natural color of the girls’ legs, so why worry?” Dressed in the blue jumpers that

British Guides wore, her company performed a flag ceremony and a series of physical drills for

the visiting dignitaries. After the event, Marsh concluded that the “parade of stockingless girls

was as well applauded as if everyone had been fully covered.”209

Marsh, an American missionary, introduced Girl Guides to her girls’ school in 1915 after

one of her teachers returned from Britain with a small booklet on the program. Since the incep-

tion of World War I, Marsh had grown increasingly upset with the barbaric violence of the West

and believed that the War had led the colonized to question the Western model of civilization.

As she described it to a high school friend, “It was bad enough to have to face these Oriental

people and try to reconcile our teaching with the fact that the Christian nations are at each other’s

throats.” Guiding, Marsh believed, would help to reassert the superiority of Western culture and

liberate her students, mostly non-Christians, from the degrading Asian patriarchal traditions they

75

learned at home. After her first years as a Guider, she reveled with a mother’s pride in the suc-

cessful transformation of her one submissive Asian students into model independent Western-

style women:

Our girls, who used to be so stilted, have developed into the most charming little hostesses …. There was a time when they had to travel the streets unseen, but now they mount their bicycles, grab their tennis or badminton racquets, go with their friends to the neighboring courts and enjoy outdoor games with as great a zest as their brothers used to do without them.210 Whereas Marsh, a missionary Guider for over thirty years celebrated her stockingless

Guides as a success, Margaret Martyn, the wife of an India Civil Service Officer stationed in

Calcutta lasted less than a day as a Guider. She complained that the “dilapidated and shabby”

living conditions of her Guides made her “really sick and terrified of catching to germs that

seemed to be stalking about the room.” Martyn had only become a Guider at the request of the

wife of another colonial official. She preferred her days to be filled with tennis, golf, and cock-

tails and met her maternal obligation to nurture the community with volunteer work that de-

manded no more than a few meetings with other British women.211

Despite their differences, both women accepted that as white middle-class women they

had a maternal role that required them to serve as the mothers of what scholar Margaret Jolly la-

bels ‘other mothers’ – women and girls outside the Western bourgeoisie cultural sphere.212 This

sense of innate Western feminine superiority united Western women across the British Em-

pire.213 While the social expectation that women were the caretakers of society empowered

women like Marsh to avoid marriage, become missionaries, and dedicate their lives to education

or medicine, it became a burdensome obligation for many British wives like Martyn.214 Thus,

maternalism could liberate women from traditional obligations as well as trap women in posi-

76

tions of responsibility over others they neither wanted nor cared about but to which they had to

obligate themselves.

This chapter examines the ways that white Guiders maternal message united and divided

them. It argues that missionary Guiders at the peripheries of the Empire, like Marsh, rather than

forces or individuals at the center transformed Guiding into a feminine expression of Western

supremacy over colonized cultures. Missionaries expected that Guiding would enable the colo-

nized to abandon their backwards ways, adopt Western values, and join the imperial community

as equally able to mother the community or their own children as white colonizers. Once the co-

lonial governments in Malaya, Nigeria, and India withdrew their opposition to colonized girls

Guiding and supported the movement, wives of colonial bureaucrats joined missionaries’ efforts

in the twenties. Wives questioned the missionaries’ confidence and generally felt that it would

take generations of white Guiders like themselves mothering the colonized before they would

ever be able to join the imperial community as equals. That British wives who volunteered as

Guiders or officers and missionary Guiders ascribed different timelines to the civilizing mission

shows that women colonizers were not a cohesive group. Though they often shared goals and

methods, women colonizers approached these goals in a lens shaped by their relationship to the

colonial government and colonized women.

Opposition of Colonial Governments

When white missionary women started Guide companies for colonized girls in Malaya,

Australia, India, and Nigeria, they faced opposition from colonial governments and the white co-

lonial public in spite of the overt imperial orientation of the original Guiding program and the

loyal intentions of most missionaries who adopted it during and just after WWI. Guiding Head-

quarters refused to officially recognize them until after WWI. In the case of India, Headquarters

77

sided with white Guiders who insisted the movement only allow white girls to join and officially

prohibited the participation of Indians until 1916. Even after Baden-Powell had announced his

support for colonized Girl Guides, government officials saw white Guiders’ efforts and interac-

tions with colonized youth as potentially subversive and likely to inflame nationalist passions, or

at the very least, petitions for greater rights. To colonial governments, the Fourth Law of Girl

Guides, “A Guide is a friend to all and a sister to every other Guide,” violated the unspoken

premise of white superiority that legitimated the Western rule and exploitation of non-Western

peoples. The initial opposition of these colonial governments to Scouting for colonized children

indicates the fragility of their imperial dominance. In Malaya and Nigeria, the governments

feared colonized opposition might needlessly complicate their relationship to colonized rulers.

In India, officials feared that nationalists would employ the program as a way to spread their

message to young girls and boys.215

Historians debate the extent that governments opposed missionaries’ efforts to bring

Guiding to the colonized. They agree that colonial governments feared Scouting might equip

colonized boys with an ideology and skill set they might later use against the Empire. However,

historians split along gender lines whether the colonial governments believed Guiding as subver-

sive. Tammy Proctor and Kristine Alexander argue that colonial government initially opposed

Guiding as they feared it might breed revolutionaries. Carey Watt and Timothy Parsons claim

the colonial governments did not consider Girl Guides a threat to British rule.216

My research shows that in India and Malaya overt government opposition existed but

quickly dissipated after WWI and never led to confrontations between Guiders and colonial gov-

ernments. In Malaya, the government initially feared Guiding to be needless “unwanted, patron-

izing interference” that would upset the Malay sultans and Chinese elites upon whom they de-

78

pended to enforce their rule. Colonial officials in India had two primary objections. They feared

and that Indian nationalists would co-opt the movement as Irish nationalists had and promote

anti-British sentiments.217 Additionally, they disapproved of European and Indian girls partici-

pating in the movement as equals as it undermined the myth that the colonizers were innately

more virtuous and capable than the colonized.218 After WWI, as British officials across the Em-

pire faced the disillusionment of many colonized elite with Western models of modernity, they

increased their efforts to provide for the welfare of the colonized. Consequentially, they began to

allow Guiding companies. By the late 1920s, colonial officials fully supported the movement for

Malayan and Indian girls and often provided companies with funds for Guiding equipment, trips,

and facilities and donations of land, buildings, and labor.219

Generally, colonial governments in British Africa that relied on indirect-rule, Kenya,

Uganda, and Nigeria, withheld their approval and support longer than any other colonial gov-

ernments.220 This hesitancy to include African members indicates that Western racial hierarchies

of development that held that Africans were less civilized and further away from self-

government than Asians persisted after WWI. In the Nigerian case, the colonial government

withheld its financial support from Guiding after they financially had begun to support Scouting

for boys. They feared the opposition of tribal headmen and emirs whom the colonial government

used to control rural areas. Only in 1931 with pressure from a coalition of white Guiders and one

colonized Guider did the government agree to fund a few of the Girl Guides’ projects. During the

thirties, Guiders had to lobby for each additional grant of funding, and the demand for Guiding

among Nigerian elites remained higher than the Nigerian Guiding Association could meet with

such limited funding.221

79

The state governments and federal government of Australia took a more equivocal atti-

tude toward Guiding among Aboriginal girls than their colonial counterparts that had greater po-

litical ties to the metropole. They never explicitly opposed the movement, but never embraced

the movement among colonized girls as colonial officials in Malaya, India, and Nigeria did. An

explanation for the marginalization of Aboriginal girls from movement requires an understand-

ing of the settler logic that shaped government policies and missionary Guiders’ goals.

Australia, because it was a settler colony, operated according to what Patrick Wolfe calls

the “logic of elimination” rather than the civilizing mission.222 Settlers never envisaged that Abo-

rigines could become self-governing, and they set up laws and traditions that effectively made

Aborigines non-citizens. As the victors in “the war of extermination against the Aborigines,”

Australian settlers viewed Aborigines as a problem to eliminate through “carceration,” a process

Wolfe defines as removal and containment, and assimilation, process of elimination that depends

on idea of dilution of blood. Because many scientists believed that eventually the Aborigines as

a race would die out, all states had resorted to a dual approach to eliminate Aboriginal popula-

tions by the early twentieth century. States began to place “full bloods” in isolated church- or

state-run reserves to protect them from the dangers of white society and to insure that they did

not corrupt their children, many of whom had “white blood.” They also developed policies which

sanctioned government officials, usually police, to forcefully remove light-skinned Aboriginal

children, “half-castes,” from their families and place them into institutional environments. The

state-funded institutions, which included missions, settlements, and boarding schools, light-

skinned Aboriginal children learned the skills needed to become domestic servants and farm la-

borers, or as Wolfe describes, “the lowest echelons of white society.”223 Government officials

believed “half-caste” girls to be the most promising candidates for assimilation as Australia had

80

an “excess of unmarried males.” They hoped that state-funded missions and boarding schools

could turn Aboriginal girls into domestic servants and potential marriage partners for light

skinned Aborigines or lower class white men.224

The settler belief that Aborigines had no place in the future of White Australia led to ex-

clusion of Aboriginal girls for the first two decades of the Guiding movement in Australia.225

Missionaries only started Scouting companies for Aborigines in the early thirties when new leg-

islation allowed state governments to take Aboriginal children away from their parents in larger

numbers and calls to “breed-out-the-colour” or eliminate Aborigines through blood dilution in-

vigorated assimilation efforts. Missionary Guiders worked primarily at government-funded insti-

tutions with wards of the state they believed to be candidates of assimilation.226

Australian government officials disagreed whether Guiding would help or hurt effort to

assimilate or absorb Aborigines into white society. When white missionaries first started Guiding

companies at state-funded institutions, a few state officials approved of the program wholeheart-

edly even donating supplies upon occasion. Most, however, believed that Guiding could easily

lead to disruptive behavior. Because many settlements faced endemic staff shortages that pre-

vented the adequate supervision of children, government bureaucrats bred a culture of fear to

maintain order. In many settlements, canceling Scouting excursions and banning companies be-

came a new method to punish the child inmates.227

Partners in Empire

Once the colonial governments in Malaya, India, and Nigeria dropped their opposition,

they provided the financial base for Guiding activities among colonized girls. They also used

their influence to recruit more volunteers and solicit more donations, many of which came from

colonized elites.228 This has led numerous historians to consider Guiding a tool of imperial patri-

81

archy.229 Yet, it was women who requested the government’s funding, choreographed elaborate

shows for governmental ceremonies and parades, and attempted to teach colonized girls and

women that the British government was the source of all progress. White Guiders effectively

transformed the maternal agenda of Guiding into an imperial project that elevated the white

Guider into the bearer of Western culture and the preserver of beneficial non-Western traditions.

Essentially, Barbara Ramusack’s term, “maternal imperialist,” aptly describes most white

Guiders.230

Government support for Guiding brought an influx of British volunteers to the move-

ments in Malaya, Nigeria, and India starting in the late twenties and lasting through independ-

ence. Their presence changed the dynamic and composition of the women involved. In the teens

and early twenties before colonized Guides had received the blessings of the metropole or colo-

nial governments, American, Australian, and British missionaries dominated the movements of

India, Nigeria, and Malaya. By the thirties British women had taken over the most prominent of-

ficer roles and represented a large number of the Guiders for colonized girls.231

British wives approached Guiding colonized girls with a radically different perspective

than missionaries. Most of them were wives of British officials or officers. Between the late

twenties and early thirties, involvement in Guiding became a duty expected of dependent women

from the official British community; opting out required apologies that occasionally required

husbands to become involved.232 Though like missionaries, they assumed that colonized girls

needed Western mothering if they ever were to belong to the larger imperial community, British

wives imagined that this process would require generations. They tended to juxtapose the inferi-

ority of colonized Guides to complete badge work, drill, and demonstrate sportsmanship to the

superiority of British Guides to enact similar feats. Often they used these comparisons to evi-

82

dence of the continued need of British control and the danger of increasing levels self-

government. In contrast, missionaries usually compared their Guides in a positive light to British

Guides and understood their Guides as the first generation of colonized imperial citizens -- sym-

bols of the developing partnership between colonized and colonizer.233 These different perspec-

tives led most missionary Guiders and British wives to approach Guiding and understand their

experience in radically different ways.

Mutual distrust categorized the relationship between missionary Guiders and those re-

cruited from official British society. Generally, the two groups collaborated only at the occa-

sional meetings of the colonial Guiding associations and at colony-wide camps. The lifestyle of

missionaries, many of whom lived at the schools that employed them and worked with non-elite

colonized women, unsettled British wives.234 White missionary Guiders often complained that

married British women served short stints as leaders and failed to commit the time and attention

necessary to adequately train their Guides.235

The relationship between white missionary Guiders and the local government was more

than quid pro quo. Most white missionary Guiders in Nigeria, Malaya, and India loyally sup-

ported the British government before they benefited from its support. Most ran schools that only

began receiving funding from colonial governments during the twenties. They understood Guid-

ing as a complement to the domestic sciences that their schools offered. Other missionary

Guiders brought Guiding to the leper colonies of India and Nigeria, the “Criminal Tribe Settle-

ments” and Women’s Gaols of India, as well as to native settlements, missions, and institutions

of Australia.236 In Australia, the vast majority of missionary Guiders of Aboriginal girls, who

received no tangible perks from the government, continued to promote the Australian govern-

ment and its place in the Empire. Missionaries’ memoirs, letters, and interviews with historians

83

enthusiastically depicted the Empire as a large-scale humanitarian effort to promote peace and

Western standards of living.237

In contrast, British wives who volunteered as Guiders expected the government to recog-

nize and reward their loyalty to the civilizing mission of the Empire. Because the government

determined a wife’s economic well-being, her husband’s career, and where she lived, it shaped

her social status. While some wives volunteered with fond memories of Guiding from their youth

in Britain or out of boredom, wives of higher-ranking colonial bureaucrats compelled their social

inferiors to do so. Because wives viewed the incorporation of the colonized in more aspects of

government or army as a threat to their husband’s career and their social position as colonizers,

they wanted to postpone the incorporation of colonized people as imperial citizens. The close ties

to that wives felt with colonial government skewed their views of colonized Guides and

Guiders.238

The different relationships wives and missionaries had with the government affected

their commitments to colonized Guides. British wives came to live in the colonies as a marital

duty and had little emotional or professional attachment to the people. They rarely served the

movement in one region more than one or two years as their husbands’ careers demanded fre-

quent relocations. Their social and domestic obligations as mothers and wives required much of

their time, and beyond their house servants, they resisted associating with the colonized except

for the purposes of charity. Many saw their role as Guiders as a weekly commitment of an hour

to prove to other colonial wives their dedication to the civilizing mission.239

Missionaries, on the other hand, spent significant periods of their lives working with

colonized girls and women and at least picked up basic language skills and an experientially

based understanding of local cultures. Their professional goals led them to invest more time and

84

effort in the girls and women they hoped to reach through Guiding than British wives. Moreover,

their jobs as educators gave them greater access to the various cultures of the colonized than

British wives had. As missionaries they worked with colonized women, visited students’ houses,

and often socialized with colonized Christian elites. Empathy and compassion dulled the viru-

lence of the racist presumptions that underlie the maternal civilizing mission to which they sub-

scribed.240

Generally, wives had closer ties to the metropole than missionaries. Whereas many wives

had been involved in Guiding in Britain and came to their work in the colonies with the expecta-

tion they could institute the program as the handbook specified, missionaries often had little per-

sonal experience with Guiding beyond a brochure or handbook. Wives were also more likely to

attend international gatherings sponsored by WAGGGS and regularly read and contribute to its

magazines. From reading Guiding literature, letters from daughters they had sent home to Britain

for school, and participation in international gatherings, they knew of the achievements and ac-

tivities of European and American Guides and wanted to train colonized Guides just as they

would a company of Western Guides.241 One Malayan Commissioner, who had started as a

leader of a Guide company but decided to serve in a less hands-on capacity, captured this attitude

in 1935, “What appeals to and helps the girls in the West has much the same effect on the eastern

girl.”242

Yet their Guides often did not want to do activities as the handbook instructed or wear the

uniform as directed. English was not their first language, which made the memorization and ex-

planation of the Promise and Laws that much more difficult. Tropical climates, limited access to

required equipment, and foreign cultural customs required ingenuity of behalf of the Guiders.

Compared to missionary Guiders, wives showed reluctance towards reinventing uniforms,

85

changing or abandoning requirements for badge tests, dropping rules in games, and deviating too

far from the handbook.243 The accommodations wives felt they had to make only intensified their

belief that it would be generations before colonized Guides would grow up to be imperial citi-

zens.

When faced with a company of Guides who failed to fulfill their expectations, British

wives typically reacted in one of three ways. Many lost motivation and quit, as they could not

tolerate the cross-cultural encounters and flexible expectations that the work required.244 Others

persevered but complained bitterly, often sending reports to WAGGGS that their Guides lacked

ambition, competitive spirit, and common sense, ate strange food, and lived in unbearable condi-

tions.245 Lastly, a small number of British wives became officers in the colonial associations,

which in Nigeria and Malaya were exclusively white until after WWII and in India, made up of

white and elite educated Indian women. Their position as members of the official community,

their reasons for joining the Girl Guides, and their constant communication with the metropole

shaped their conclusion that colonized girls had a long way to go before they would be the equals

of their British peers.

One white Guider, Sheila Bridges, the wife of a District Officer in the Colonial Service,

demonstrates how wives’ high and often unmet expectations reinforced their understanding of

colonized people as completely unprepared to assume the responsibilities and rights of imperial

citizenship. Her remarks carry an unstated assumption that Nigerians only could attain a common

level of citizenship as their British and white Dominion counterparts if they westernized all as-

pects of their lives from their food to their leisure preferences. A Guider with years of experience

in Britain, Bridges depicted differences between the performances and attitudes of her Nigerian

Guides and former British Guides as cultural deficits traits shared by all Nigerians. Because her

86

Guides preferred games and dancing to badge work and failed their Second Class Test due their

poor English, Bridges claimed they were lazy. When subjected to a native meal “of rice, soup,

meat, fish, spices, vegetables and pal oil, all cooked together in a precise way,” Bridges be-

moaned, “Here food is the difficulty, as there is nothing among native dishes that compares to

the ever-useful sausage, fried egg and sandwich.”246 She made her observations, published in The

Council Fire of 1956, just as the British government began to hand over greater control of the

government to Nigerians and less than a decade after the British Nationality Act had created a

“nominal commonwealth citizenship” that allowed the migration of large numbers of nonwhite

colonized peoples to the metropole.247 Thus her exaggerated claims contained political relevancy

to her contemporary readers in the metropole and colonies.248

For the British wives who left their work with colonized girls to take on officer positions

within colonial Guiding associations, the “failures” of their Guides became a rallying call for

more white women to volunteer and proof of the movement’s importance. Their quips to the

press noted the difficulties that backwards traditions posed to the Guide movement but assured

readers that with time and education the colonized could take up the ways of the West. B. H. C.

Thomas, the Malayan Guiding Commissioner in the 1930s, explained,

It is not always easy to get in touch with Asiatic parents and to explain to them that the object of Guiding is to develop, in a practical way, homecraft and the care of children and to improve the standard of fitness among girls. Mothers, but more often grandmothers, are afraid we may encourage their daughters to strive for more independence than they them-selves enjoyed, and we find it hard to persuade them that this emancipation has already begun, and the old sheltered way of life being no longer possible, we and other organiza-tions are trying to supply steadying influence.249

Her politic remark juxtaposes Western modernity and Asiatic tradition as incompatible and

promises that Guiding and similar educational efforts will eventually triumph by overwhelming

and eradicating native tradition.

87

Missionaries came to Guiding with few expectations. Missionary Guiders rarely stayed

abreast of Guiding news from the metropole or ever communicated with WAGGGS in any way.

They usually did what worked rather than what the program specified or what international lead-

ers suggested as best practices. Most missionary Guiders shaped their interpretation of the pro-

gram to emphasize what they thought most important for girls to know and what resources they

had available. Few bothered to set up the patrol system and Court of Honor as laid out in the

handbook; many disregarded badge and test requirements like Morse Code, tracking, and knot

tying as irrelevant to the lives of their Guides. Instead, they focused aspects of Western feminin-

ity they believed as essential to building dedicated imperial citizens: sewing, sports, first aid, hy-

giene.250

Missionaries generally saw their efforts as successful, even when they made significant

adaptations to the official program. For example, in Malaya, Northern Nigeria, and India,

Guiders organized camps in secluded areas often on the properties of indigenous rulers to insure

the privacy of their Guides. These camps had little resemblance to camping that Baden-Powell

outlined in his 1918 handbook. Guides often learned tracking in the rulers’ gardens or palaces,

slept inside, and adjusted the recommended schedule to accommodate for the daily religious ritu-

als of Muslims and Hindus. Nonetheless, missionaries’ depictions of camps portray differences

between their efforts and the prescriptions of the handbook as assets that made non-Western

Guiders more open to other belief systems and cultures.251

Missionaries kept up with former Guides and backed their claims that Guiding trans-

formed colonized girls into imperial citizens with anecdotes that of their Guides accomplish-

ments. Whether their Guides married, pursued higher education, or became teachers or nurses,

white Guiders confidently portrayed them as the true mothers of their communities who could

88

more effectively deliver Western culture to the colonized than their white counterparts. One

Guider in Malaya claimed, “Educate the Asian girls and they’ll be just as good, if not better, than

the Western girls.”252 The smallest acts, riding in a rickshaw with a man and covering tables in

“tea-cloths” and chairs in “tidies,” received equal attention as their Guide’s larger accomplish-

ments of attending university in the metropole (Australia, United States, or Britain), entering

“positions of responsibility” as housewives, teachers, principals, nurses, and entrepreneurs, or

surviving the hardships brought on by WWII.253 Guides, according to missionary reports often

became ambassadors of modernity to the families and villages. Mothers, impressed with skills

girls learned at school and in Guiding meetings, would integrate Western practices into the

home. For example after a Guider in Malaya demonstrated the Singer Sewing Machine, her

Guides went home and insisted to their mothers and grandmothers that their families buy one.254

British wives, who volunteered as Guiders, rarely portrayed their Guides and families this ame-

nable to Western “improvements.”

Because missionary Guiders assumed that with Western education colonized people

could become imperial citizens with the privileges and responsibilities of the colonizers, when

colonial governments expanded the responsibilities and rights of colonized peoples, missionary

Guiders welcomed the changes. Furthermore, they expected that the Guiding associations

would follow the government’s lead and incorporate more colonized women as participants and

officers. Yet, missionary Guiders rarely advocated on behalf of colonized Guiders before the

government had deemed the colonized capable of taking on leadership roles. Thus, many sup-

ported the exclusion of colonized women from the colonial association in Nigeria until after

WWII. In contrast, in India, where the British granted Indians full control of certain aspects of

89

governance in 1919, most missionaries accepted Indian officers at regional and national levels

from the beginning.255

Australian missionaries, like their counterparts in Malaya, India, and Nigeria, credited

Guiding with improving the lives of participants and believed that once equipped with Western

values and skills, aboriginals would be able to join the imperial community. They also supported

the political status quo and subscribed to the same logic of elimination that government policy

did. Once absorption became de facto government policy in the late twenties and thirties, mis-

sionaries began to envision an imperial citizenship for Aboriginal girls in limited terms; they

imagined them joining white maternalists as the teachers and nurses of the lighter Aboriginal

children of the next generation.256 They were silent regarding the legal rights that this imperial

citizenship might entail– to vote, to move freely, to control privately owned property, to raise

children, and to use public facilities.257

The success stories of Australian missionaries, when compared to those of other mission-

ary Guiders in Malaya, India, and Nigeria, demonstrate the extreme marginal position of indige-

nous people in settler colonies. Because white Guiders could only sponsor companies with per-

mission from their supervisors in the state and church bureaucracies, Aboriginal companies

tended to last only a short period. Personnel changes, epidemics, and budget cuts limited the

long-term efficacy of the movement in these institutionalized settings. The positive changes

white Guiders noted --the pride of ownership that uniforms and badges brought to participants,

Guides’ mastery of all the wildflower names of Western Australia, and the enjoyment girls found

in bushwalking and knot tying show the limited impact of the movement on Aboriginal girls’

lives.258

90

Few Aboriginal girls escaped the destiny the state had laid out for them to become do-

mestic servants and wives of poor whites or light-skinned Aboriginal men. Those who did be-

come teachers faced such intense segregation and verbal and sexual abuse they often resigned.

Although white missionary Guiders observed the harsh conditions that the state imposed on Abo-

riginal girls, few abandoned their faith in the benevolent forces of the government and their con-

viction that white Australia would embrace Aborigines who completely abandoned their back-

wards, primitive ways.259

The difference in tone between accounts left by missionaries and British wives who led

colonized companies represent not only different attitudes but also the different audiences the

accounts targeted. The sources missionary Guiders have left in reports to WAGGGS, letters to

patrons, memoirs, and articles in the Council Fire, suggest missionary Guiders were more open

to cultural syncretism, had a greater willingness to adapt the program, and offered a more inclu-

sive view of citizenship, though much less so in Australia. They often learned the languages of

their Guides and modified badges, uniforms, and activities accommodate for their Guides interest

and cultural backgrounds.260 Because missionaries addressed an audience of potential patrons,

their accounts included the important role Guiding played in the moral, physical, and academic

development of the colonized girl, but focused on the successful results. They imply that Guiding

freed colonized girls from the limitations that their more primitive cultures had placed on their

mothers and grandmothers.

British wives addressed mostly British audiences in the metropole through magazine arti-

cles and memoirs and had little incentive to stress the potential of their Guides for improve-

ment.261 As the metropole began to favor self-government in India after WWI, the statements

and memoirs of British wives became safe platforms to express their opposition to self-

91

government.262 The official community of India, Nigeria, and Malaya had a stake in the per-

petuation of the Empire. Self-government to them meant the loss of their elite status as the

crème de la crème of colonial society and threatened their material welfare. Thus, they empha-

sized the differences of colonized Guides and their families that had to be eradicated before the

British began to relinquish control. If they became commissioners or took up other leadership

positions within the colonial associations, wives welcomed the public spotlight so that they could

stress the difficulties of teaching colonized girls Guiding skills and the slow nature of pro-

gress.263

Despite the ideological divisions between missionary Guiders and British wives, both

sought out and benefited from support of the colonial governments of Malaya and India in the

twenties and Nigeria in the thirties. Government support facilitated white Guiders’ efforts to

promote the values and skills of imperial citizenship to the colonized in two primary ways. They

funded national camps, uniforms, sports equipment, and Guiding publications. More impor-

tantly, colonial officials lent their “star power” to promote its events, fundraise, and recruit more

volunteers.

The cooperation between colonial governments and Western Guiders in Malaya, Nigeria,

and India became most apparent on celebrations in honor of the British royal family put on to

display the power of the colonizers before the colonized. The British built and ruled their Em-

pire largely on prestige, which demanded elaborate ceremonies to enforce the consent of the

colonized. Colonized Guiders became prominent participants in the public displays of grandeur

that the colonial governments of Nigeria, Malaya, and India created to celebrate birthdays, visits,

coronations, and anniversaries of members of the royal family.264 The prominent participation of

colonized Guides in these arranged performances confirmed the altruistic image that colonial

92

governments sought to portray in the interwar years. The usual Guide performance started with a

color guard of colonized girls clad in Western uniforms raising the British flag and singing the

anthem, “Rule Britannia.” Then colonized girls would perform a dance or drill that white

Guiders had choreographed to honor the British Empire and dramatize the multiracial harmony

and prosperity it created among its subjects. Performances varied from synchronized calisthen-

ics to a pageant of Empire where each girl dressed in a costume to represent what each country

of the Empire contributed.265

Government patronage had a snowball effect, which only furthered the gap between the

Guiding movement among colonized girls of Australia and those of Malaya, Nigeria, and India.

Colonial officials featured colonized Guides in public event in order to come off as the benign

ruler. Guiders took advantage of such public demonstrations to showcase Guiding as a feasible

tool to teach colonized girls Western forms of drill, drama, and dance. In turn, the government

funded their efforts to reach more colonized girls. Guiders in Malaya, Nigeria, and India took

ambitious projects like nation-wide camps, rallies, and conferences. They started companies

outside the cities and English language schools. The conspicuous involvement of colonial Brit-

ish officials empowered Guiders to approach religious institutions and colonized leaders for do-

nations and approval and motivated colonized rulers to become involved.266

By the thirties, colonized rulers in India and Malaya often supported the movement.267

They hoped that their support would promote an image of benevolent rule and demonstrate their

loyalty to the Empire. In Nigeria, colonized rulers only started to promote the movement after

World War II, when Guiding had committed to preparing girls for the future Nigerian nation.

When colonized rulers began to demonstrate their approval of the movement depended on vari-

93

ety of factors; two of the most important were the attitude of the British colonial government to-

ward girls’ education and gender roles.

In India, colonized rulers, Muslim and Hindu, encouraged the movement as an ideal form

of women’s education and enrolled their daughters. Some became involved after Katherine

Mayo’s 1927 Mother India, a scathing expose of conditions that the British government had

funded to convince Americans that the way Indians treated women proved the necessity of pro-

longing British rule in India. Colonized rulers hoped that their support of Guiding would demon-

strate that educated Indian women and girls existed, a side of Indian womanhood Mayo’s depic-

tion of India failed to capture, and thus legitimate their right to rule independent of Britain.268 For

other Indian rulers, like the Begam of Bhopal, who often instituted policies that antagonized the

British, it may have been a way to demonstrate publicly her loyalty to crown.269 Others adopted

Guiding as a method to bridge divisions between castes and religious groups.270 All rulers, how-

ever, embraced the ideal of feminine imperial citizen who mothered her children as well as her

community that the movement encouraged.

Her Highness the Yuvarani of Mysore, the sister in-law to the ruler of Mysore, who

served as Chief Guide of Mysore in 1930s and her husband as the Chief Scout exemplifies the

various manifestations that colonized rulers’ support could take.271 The Yuvarani became in-

volved in Guiding because she believed it discouraged communalism. In the Indian subconti-

nent, communalism is a form of xenophobic nationalism, where a particular religious community

wants to build a nation from exclusively citizens of their religion. Mysore royalty had sought to

pacify rampant Hindu and Muslim communalism since the late teens. The Fourth Law of Scout-

ing complemented their effort to insured peace as it brought Indians of all faiths and castes into

the imagined community of Empire.272 The Yuvarani participated as volunteer, patron, and In-

94

dian representative to the international movement. In 1933,when her husband and his older

brother, the Highness the Maharanee of Mysore funded the construction of a Guiding home, the

Yuvarani laid the first brick of the foundation.273 When her youngest daughter Princess Sri Jaya

joined the youngest branch of Indian Guides, the Bluebirds, she staged an elaborate investment

ceremony where she took on the additional title as Chief Bluebird of the State. Newspapers

across the Empire featured in America featured it, possibly to reassure their Western audience

that Britain still held the consent of the colonized.274 When Olave visited India 1937, the Yu-

varani met with her personally. She was one of two Indians to do so. The rest of the Guiding

“dignitaries” to meet with Olave were white. Rather than passively accept the imperial loyalty

that her husband’s position demanded, the Yuvarani used Guiding to create an imperial commu-

nity that included Indian women and girls.275

In Malaya, colonized rulers began to support the movement in the 1930s. Some did so in

response to requests issued by Western-educated Malays employed in the British government.276

Others may have sought the admiration of the Western press and colonial government. As colo-

nized rulers pledged money and granted approval to Guiding, the colonial government officials

became more supportive of the movement. Though sultans had no real political power, British

officials respected their wishes regarding social policies and initially prohibited Guiding in Ma-

lay rural areas because they feared that it would threaten the Malays traditional lives of subsis-

tent farming or offend Malay gender norms.277 Once the sultans adopted Guiding as a means to

modernize Malay girls along Islamic lines, colonial officials encouraged Guiding to expand from

the predominately Chinese and Indian girls who attended urban English-language schools to in-

clude Malay girls who attended village schools that taught neither English nor academic sub-

jects.278 With the Sultans’ support, white Guiders set up vernacular-language companies for Ma-

95

lay girls. In turn, the colonial government, which felt, a special obligation to protect Malays from

the direct competition with the immigrant labor force, invested more once the sultans became

involved.279

Nigerian colonized rulers, including a few women chiefs, did not support Guiding until

after World War II. They only changed when the British began to transfer political power to Ni-

gerians through a federal form of governance and a colonized woman, who promised that Guid-

ing would lay the foundations for a Nigerian nationalism that bridged traditional ethnic and relig-

ious divisions, took charge of the movement. Before the late forties, most of the colonized and

colonizers in Nigeria treated girls’ education as an unneeded expense and unnecessary intrusion

into traditional gender relations. In the north, emirs opposed education for girls outside the

home.280 In the south, the native administrations claimed that their people disdained Western

education and accepted colonial authorities’ refusal to address adequately girls’ education.281

The hesitancy of Nigerian rulers to embrace Guiding largely originated from the ambiva-

lent attitude the colonial government and many missionary organizations held towards girls’

education including Guiding. Colonial officials deemed girls’ education as unimportant to

peaceful governance and too political to warrant their attention. Until the publication of the 1925

Memorandum of Education Policy in British Tropical Africa, the colonial government deliber-

ately left girls’ education to missionaries. Even as the colonial government began to fund secon-

dary girls’ schools in the late twenties, they refused to support Girl Guides despite their enthusi-

astic support for Boy Scouts. Only the persistent requests of the Nigerian Guiding Association

led to the government’s support in 1931; to keep the government’s support during the thirties,

white Guiders had to lobby the government continually for additional funds.282 Without a com-

96

pelling political incentive to support Guiding, native administrators saw no benefit in lending

their support to the movement.

Australia demonstrates that without government support and the corps of British volun-

teers that accompanied it, missionaries did not possess the resources or manpower to cultivate

Guiding among Aboriginal girls as a lasting, meaningful institution. Australia lacked a signifi-

cant contingent of officials’ wives eager to volunteer to start colonized companies. Because Aus-

tralia had created a national identity founded on white Britishness, the Australian Guiding

movement, unlike those in other colonies, never considered colonized girls its primary audience

and avoided the issue before the fifties. Accordingly, the state and federal governments of Aus-

tralia directed their funding and patronage to the movement to enrich the lives of white members.

Australians, Aboriginal, Asian, or Anglo-Saxon, all perceived the movement as a white institu-

tion.283 The white Australian missionaries who lived with their charges at state-funded institu-

tions miles from the closest town understood state officials as their superiors and employers

rather than potential patrons of Aboriginal Guiding. Though some contacted the Australian Guid-

ing Association with requests for supplies or donations, they did not involve themselves or their

Guides in national or state gatherings that occurred regularly.284 This meant Aboriginal Guides

remained beyond the purview of the government, Guiding Associations, and the small number of

Aboriginal elite. Unlike the Guiding movements of Malaya, Nigeria, and India where the gov-

ernments and Guiders, both missionaries and dependent British wives, agreed that if carefully

instructed, the colonized would eventually become imperial citizens capable of self-government

and the legal equals of their British colonizers, missionary Guiders of Aborigines were among

the only Australians able to imagine them as future citizens of Empire.

97

Missionary Guiders’ confidence that colonized girls needed Western skills to become

modern citizens of the Empire drove their intervention into the lives of the girls in their company

even when they faced opposition or apathy from colonial governments. Their success in Malaya,

India, and Nigeria convinced colonial governments that Guiding mothered young colonized girls

in the British values and customs that they lacked in their homes. With the full support of the co-

lonial governments of Malaya and India by the mid-twenties, British wives, colonized rulers, and

missionary organizations offered their resources and approval to the movement and colonized

Guides became standard participants in ceremonies of imperial power. In Nigeria, where the

government granted its financial support reluctantly and colonized rulers distanced themselves

from the movement until after WWII, and Australia, where neither the government nor the Asso-

ciation full supported Aboriginal Guides, colonized girls still paid tribute to the Empire. In Nige-

ria, Guiders proudly displayed their Guides’ skills and loyalty to the Empire at rallies attended by

the Governor and high-ranking colonial officials, while in Australia, Aboriginal Guides remained

marginalized by state institutions with only the audience of their Guider, a few other white staff

members, and the children of the settlement who had earned time off from the grueling regime of

constant manual labor.285

Mothering the Future Citizens of Empire

Nearly all white Guiders of colonized girls agreed that their Guides suffered from a cul-

tural deficit as compared to Guides in the West primarily due to their racial origins and family’s

influence. Without explicit instruction through programs like Scouting, Guiders believed that the

colonized could never distinguish between right and wrong, much less be or raise citizens of the

British Empire. When working with colonized Guides, white Guiders took the prevailing racist

assumptions of Western society into account and selected activities accordingly. Malays were

98

easily tricked and socially constrained, but loveable; Chinese had an excessive work ethic; Indi-

ans lived in dire poverty and had a proclivity to steal; Africans lacked initiative and a competi-

tive spirit; Aborigines were loyal and loveable, but dense. Though the perceived racial weak-

nesses of each group varied, Guiders across the Empire focused on four aspects of the Guiding

repertoire: performances of imperial pride, service projects targeted at mothers and children,

“traditional” crafts and games, and physical culture and adventure.286 Guiders held up these fac-

ets of Guiding as essential tools in the process of training colonized girls to overcome the racial

predispositions they were born with.

White Guiders integrated the demonstrative imperial aspects of Guiding into their meet-

ings and performances in order to strengthen the bonds that colonized girls felt to the abstract

entity of the Empire. They encouraged colonized girls to emulate British Guides, which Guiding

literature held out as the model. Every meeting opened with the recitation of the Promise where

girls pledged their loyalty to the King. Many girls in Nigeria, Australia, and Malaya wore the

same uniforms as their British counterparts, learned the intricacies of flag ceremony with the

same flag, worked on the same badges, which ranged from the Empire Knowledge Proficiency

Badge introduced in 1925 to the Domestic Service Badge, and spoke the same language while at

meetings. In India, the presence of a significant number of influential colonized women engaged

in the movement from its inception and the presence of unofficial guiding organizations that

competed with the official Guiding movement for membership led the Indian movement to adapt

more quickly to local customs of dress, language, and skill sets. Even in India, however, meet-

ings opened with the pledge of loyalty to the King and flew the Union Jack at All-India camps.287

Guiders relied on performances to make demonstrations of imperial power fun and to

popularize the movement. This performative aspect of Guiding, the Western uniforms, the pa-

99

rades, and the rallies, the very aspects to which most parents objected, often motivated girls to

join despite the disapproval of their parents.288 As soon as Lakshmi Mazumdar, a young Indian

girl saw her first Guider, a British woman from the metropole clad in the distinctive dark blue

uniform, she desperately wanted to become a Guide. Her parents, who opposed British rule, ob-

jected to her participating in such an overt form of British imperial pride. Mazumdar did not

give up. She told her father that although she “shared his views about Independence and all

that,” she would join the Guide company at her school. To her parents’ dismay, Mazumdar did,

becoming one of the most active participants.289 In the few records that colonized Guides have

left most share Mazumdar’s enthusiasm for the uniforms and remember singing “Rule Brittania,”

performing the Maypole Dance, and participating in the annual Empire day with greater nostal-

gia than passing the tests required of the needlework badge or fulfilling the requirements of First

Class Guide status.290

Service, an essential component of Guiding in the colonies and metropole, allowed white

Guiders to expand their influence over women and children outside of the girls in their company.

White Guiders who had grown up during the height of maternal outreach in Britain, Australia,

and the United States brought many of the same forms of service to the colonies: baby shows,

donation drives, unsolicited outreach to poor mothers, and health promotionals. The colonial so-

cial landscape only exacerbated the invasive nature and potential of these projects.291 Common

projects included adult literacy programs, hygiene training, and home nursing in villages.

Guiders believed that their colonized Guides possessed superior skills and knowledge as com-

pared to other colonized people and pushed them to take on the role of expert even when it vio-

lated local age and gender hierarchies. For example, Indian Guides between the ages of nine and

sixteen went into villages to show women how to mother correctly, demonstrate the hygienic

100

methods of cleaning and cooking, and conduct literacy classes for children.292 In Nigeria,

Guides helped colonized nurses make home visits and wrote public health columns in missionary

magazines.293 Essentially, Guiders wanted their Guides to be ambassadors of Western ideals to

their community. Beinhart describes, ““African children were ‘saved’ by contact with Western

ideas, while non-school children remained surrounded by, and vulnerable to, disease and dirt.

The schooled children, joining a core of middle-class urbanites, would in turn become ‘mission-

aries’ of Western culture and hygiene.”294

Missionary Guiders who worked at schools in Malaya and India and at Aboriginal set-

tlements in Australia involved their companies in extensive service projects that in the West

would have been seen as the responsibility of the government or professional experts. One com-

pany of Indian Guides at St. Mary’s Girls’ School in the state of Bihar took on the care of se-

verely injured patients of a terrible driving accident.295 In Malaya, a company at a girls’ boarding

school found an abandoned infant and kept it at the boarding school for successive companies of

Guides to raise and practice their mothercraft skills.296 In Australia, Sister Kate, the founder of

the Queen’s Park Children’s Home for quarter-caste children turned her Guide company into

fundraising vehicle for the Home. They performed at festivals and built toys to raffle at the an-

nual fête the Home sponsored. Essentially, Sister Kate’s Guides financed the cost of their institu-

tionalization that the government refused to cover.297 White Guiders effectively took advantage

of their Guides’ Promise “to help people every day” and used their companies to further colonize

the lives of colonized people. As Guides grew out of their companies, many became Guiders,

social workers, and teachers who championed westernization, thus furthering the reach of West-

ern cultural forces.298

101

In some cases, service projects appear more beneficial to the Guider’s reputation than her

Guides’ welfare. For example, one Guider, working in “the poorest mission village” in India, en-

couraged her Guides to give up their portion of daily grain toward the Guide Empire Air Ambu-

lance Scheme during World War II. For their sacrifices, the company received a two-sentence

write-up in The Council Fire, surely a greater boon to the Guider than her Guides.299 The few

written recollections Guides have left show general ambivalence towards service projects. A

Chinese Guide in Malaya who belonged to a company led by two British Guiders bemoans that

once Britain declared war on Germany in 1939 “We Girl Guides spent all our time during meet-

ings knitting grey socks for the soldiers and going to the hospital to wash medicine bottles.”300 In

the case of Australia, some service projects that Guiders invented like picking wildflowers to sell

and earn money for the war effort- appear to be clandestine attempts to gain the supervisor’s

permission to take her Guides outside of the boundaries of institution. Other projects like sewing

washcloths for soldiers seem like additional work for girls who typically already had to sew the

“orders for thousands of garments pouring in from all over the State.”301

One of the most contradictory elements of the Guiding program that white Guiders im-

plemented in the colonies was the preservation (and occasionally invention) of traditional arts

and games. Many Western women understood native folklore, folk dances, and traditional cos-

tumes as a means to connect girls to their roots and protect them from the temptations of modern

life that warped dutiful daughters and future mothers into “Modern Girls” intent on romantic

love and the latest fashions.302 Imperialist nostalgia drove these efforts. Renato Rosaldo, an an-

thropologist, simplifies, “ Imperialist nostalgia revolves around a paradox: A person kills some-

body, and then mourns the victim.”303 Though white Guiders hoped to westernize Guides, a

sense of imperialist nostalgia compelled them to stress the importance of the colonized traditions

102

that they deemed worthy. The rubric that governed Guider’s decisions of what traditions merited

preservation grew from the hierarchy of civilization.

White Guiders in Australia, India, and Malaya followed the lead of the metropole and

tried to revitalize practices that they believed implied continuity with the past and would protect

their Guides from the debilitating temptations that modern civilization encouraged. The West

had confronted the dangers of modernity first hand; Robert Baden-Powel designed Scouting to

save British children from the cultural and spiritual alienation that social pundits claimed had

become epidemic in the modern West.304 After World War I, the West turned to non-Western

cultures to find an alternative “to the ‘wounded’ civilizations of Europe.” By the 1920s, Girl

Guides had become one of the many progressive women’s organizations that promoted indige-

nous traditions and folk-arts in order to exhibit the liberal cosmopolitanism of their members and

provide an antidote to the alienation that industrial society caused.305 Through pageants of native

dress, handicraft competitions, publications and recitations of fairytales and folklore, and per-

formances of folk dance, the Council Fire and international gatherings cast Guides as the bearers

of culture and their Guiders as wise preservationists of the lost peasant traditions of Europe.306 In

reaction to Western-orientation of WAGGGS’s imperial nostalgia, white Guiders in the colonies

began write to the metropole in the thirties of their efforts simultaneously to impose modern

methods and revitalize or invent ancient traditions that they believed complementary to British

imperialism.

Because the West believed Asia to have rich cultural heritage from their past civiliza-

tions of greatness, Guiders liberally incorporated songs, dance, calisthenics, crafts, and vernacu-

lar languages from the predominant cultural traditions of India and Malaya into their program.

One Guider in Maharashtra, India taught her Marathi-speaking Guides games she believed to be

103

“a real part of the cultural heritage of India” that reflected the “warlike ancestry” of the Marathi

people.307 In Malaya, B. H. C. Thomas, who served as the Chief Commissioner in 1934-1935,

started her work with Girl Guiding as a Guider of vernacular Malay companies with the patron-

age of the Sultans of Selangor, Johore, and Kedah. She hoped to preserve the language and the

purity of peasant cultural traditions for Malay girls immersed in the urban environment of Kuala

Lumpur.308 Australian missionary Guiders emphasized the wilderness skills of Aborigines, but

dismissed their cultural traditions as barbaric. At the Mitchell River Mission in Queensland, Aus-

tralia, the Brownie leader arranged for an Aboriginal man to take her flock of Brownies into the

bush to hunt, track, and pursue “many other items of tribal importance” every Saturday.309 White

Guiders understood such efforts to preserve colonized traditions in Asia and Australia as essen-

tial to the imperial project. Without their wisdom and powers of discretion, colonized women

would discard even the beneficial aspects of their culture that reinforced the attributes that femi-

nine imperial citizenship demanded and protected girls from the moral ambiguity of moder-

nity.310

Before WWII, racism and beliefs in a hierarchy of civilizations led white Guiders in Ni-

geria to dismiss all native traditions as backwards.311 White Guiders, most of whom worked at

English language schools or missions in Southern Nigeria, associated African tradition only with

practices they deemed inferior: polygamy, cannibalism; the low legal status of women, concubi-

nage, child marriage, idol worship, and purdah. Unlike India, where scholars and Theosophists

had recognized a rich cultural past that even Westerners might learn something from, Malaya,

where the colonizers praised the Malays for their simple, pre-industrial lifestyles, and Australia,

where Aborigines had gained the status of a “noble savage,” Nigerian culture lacked Westerners

who championed their culture. The acceptance of some Aboriginal traditions compared to the

104

dismissal of traditions native to the Nigerian people stems from the logic of elimination. Al-

though Western society classified both groups as black, they considered Aborigines a “dying

race” and thus deemed certain parts of their culture historic relics to be preserved. Because Brit-

ain claimed to rule Nigeria as part of the civilizing mission, racism shaped the meaning they at-

tached to native traditions.312

Political developments and local demand strengthened Guiders’ rejection of native tradi-

tions that may have enhanced their program. Just as Guiding began to expand across Southern

Nigeria, girls’ schools became eligible for government funding and thus came under the scrutiny

of the colonial government. Although the 1926 Education Ordinance encouraged colonial

schools to adapt the program to the local conditions, the first “Lady Superintendent of Educa-

tion,” Sylvia Leith-Ross saw the policy as short-sighted and believed that most Nigerian parents

wanted a British education for their daughters. In the late twenties, Leith-Ross toured Southern

Nigeria and decided which mission-schools deserved government grants. White Guiders, most of

whom worked mission schools, initially may have feared that the use of African dance, stories,

and songs might lead their school to lose the opportunity for government funding.313 The deci-

sion of the Nigerian Girl Guide Association in the 1930s to limit the number of colonized

Guiders and demand adherence to the original program compounded Guiders’ motivations to

avoid native tradition. Therefore, external pressures may have contributed to white Guiders’ fail-

ure to incorporate Nigerian elements into Guiding as much as much as their beliefs in white su-

periority did.314

The last way that white Guiders attempted to teach their Guides the Western values they

would need to participate as citizens in the British Empire was through physical culture, both

camping and sport. Guiders tended to view both as British inventions that united peoples of dis-

105

parate cultures and freed colonized women from backwards traditions. An American Guider in

Malaya explained,

The British love for sport has penetrated all corners of the earth where the white man has made play popular. These Orientals used to haunt gambling dens and spend leisure hours in stuffy rooms indulging in this and other vices that vaunted their flagrance in our faces at every turn. Today they clear off a vacant lot, put up a badminton or tennis net, and spend their waking hours in wholesome exercise.315

Guiders assumed that most colonized girls lacked the freedom to play games at home.316 In Aus-

tralia, where Aboriginal girls lived in institutions often against their will, games provided white

Guiders a means to bring Aboriginal girls a semblance of an English childhood which was nec-

essary to build the sportsmanship that imperial citizens exhibited. In Nigeria, white Guiders

hoped games would instill their Guides with an understanding of rules and a sense of competi-

tion, both characteristics white Guiders saw as lacking in Africans.317

Camping, in the mind of white Guiders, held a similar utopian reputation for building

bonds among disparate races, castes, nationalities or religions and providing freedom unknown

to colonized girls before the arrival of their British rescuers.318 One American missionary

Guider believed that Guiding camps would overcome the rifts between colonizer and colonized

that had developed in India and reestablish British authority. She promised that camps “do more

than anyone can estimate to build lasting bulwarks of goodwill and understanding in India to-

day.”319 In Malaya and Nigeria white Guiders promoted camps as a way to overcome ethnic and

religious divisions.320

The Australian movement celebrated camping as a means to achieve unity between white

Guides from different states; the Aboriginal Guides played no part in this discourse.321 The strict

regulations of the institutions where Aboriginal children lived and white Guiders worked pre-

vented nearly all camping excursions. When the Guiders who often doubled as Scout leaders

106

proposed trips, supervisors only approved of Scout trips. Officials at Aboriginal settlements

feared girls’ camping would cause the settlement to lose the profits that the girls’ sewing work

brought, promote disorder among the younger children, whom girls were largely responsible for,

and increase the number of girls who ran away, which was already an endemic “girl’” problem at

these institutions. Shortly before one white Guider who worked in a settlement in Western Aus-

tralia embarked with her Aboriginal Guides on a camping trip which had been approved, her su-

pervisor canceled the trip as a large number of younger children had broken out with chicken pox

and the institution depended on the girls’ manpower to care for the children.322 Despite the ef-

forts of white Guiders, few Aboriginal Guides ever went camping with their company and the

biannual interstate camps that began in the thirties remained beyond their reach even after

WWII.

Just as white Guiders in Malaya, India, and Nigeria believed sports and games had intro-

duced colonized girls to new levels of freedom and activity, they advanced that camping allowed

colonized girls to appreciate the outdoors. Based on reports she received from white Guiders in

India, Kerr, the official historian of the movement in the 1930s; described:

One of the miracles performed by the Guide movement as it has enabled Indian girls, who in the whole course of history had never been allowed to come out into the open, to take up camping. They are now as gay and busy in camp, as ready to sleep in tents, and as keen on any kind of campcraft, as any girl from the Canadian West or from the great sheep-farms of Australia.323 The Director of Education in Malaya, Richard Olaf Winstedt, possessed a similar awe for

the transformations that the Guider and school director Josephine Foss had achieved with her

Asian Guides. He described a camp at the Pudu School in the report he filed in 1928, “Several

whole days were spent out in the open, the Guides cooking their own meals, improvising shelter,

and drawing rough sketches of familiar localities.”324 By the 1930s, even Indian and Malay girls

107

who practiced purdah, a practice of seclusion that many Westerns saw as barbaric, had begun to

attend camps “where they move so freely and unaffectedly.” Usually sealed off inside in one

room of the house, these “purdah girls,” according a British Guider, “are particularly grateful for

the training they have received.”325

According to the white Guiders, camping not only promoted cooperation between girls

from different backgrounds and freed them from their previous lives of seclusion, but also

equipped them with the skills they need to be successful domestic mangers. During camp outs,

guiders created highly regimented schedules to develop efficiency and discipline in their Guides.

Mealtimes provided the ideal opportunities for Guiders to teach Western etiquette, introduce

Western foods, and demonstrate hygienic sanitation habits.326 Additionally, white Guiders

taught the importance of motherhood through nature study. The handbook described this proc-

ess,

The Guider can lead the girl on to a right understanding of biology and of her own posi-tion in the order of nature; to realise how she can be associated with the Creator in His work and how she can have her part in the romance of reproduction and the carrying On of the race; also that good motherhood is a wonderful gift of God, at once a sacred and a patriotic privilege and duty. Despite the importance of camping, few white Guiders took their colonized Guides

camping. In India and Malaya, the various dietary restrictions of Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims and

the common practice of purdah among colonized elite women and girls complicated the planning

of trips. In Nigeria until the fifties, most Guides came from the Christian elite of Nigeria who

had grown up in westernized families. Still, Guiders, who rarely knew of the area outside of the

school’s grounds where they worked, struggled to find appropriate locations for campsites.327

White Guiders in the colonies relied on four aspects of the Guiding program, camping

and sports, “native” traditions, imperial display, and service, to persuade colonized girls, if they

108

mastered Western conceptions of domestic management and community service, they would be-

come imperial citizens equal to their British counterparts. The point at which white Guiders be-

lieved colonized girls would join the imperial community as the equals often reflected their

status in the imperial community. Dependent wives saw imperial citizenship for the colonized as

decades away; missionary Guiders cited the actions and accomplishments of their Guides and

former Guides to show that some colonized people already belonged to the British imperial

community.

Conclusion: Effects of White Guiders Work With the Colonized

The opening anecdote, “stockingless” Asian girls marching in blue jumpers covered with

badges in honor of British royalty, demonstrates that the first white missionaries who organized

girls into companies looked to the metropole for guidance and inspiration but also adapted the

program to meet colonial conditions. This chapter argues that colonial Guiders, the missionaries

and the British wives, manipulated the maternal message of the program into often contradictory

technologies of imperialism. Moreover, their changes also propelled the metropolitan movement

to change. As noted in chapter one, the success of the early unofficial missionary guiders before

and during WWI convinced Robert to include colonized children in his movement.328 The con-

tinued success of Guiding among the colonized drove Robert to promote Scouting as the most

effective form of colonial education. In 1929, he advocated,

For natives, also, whose skulls are not constructed to the reception of modern Western school methods, the Scout and Guide training has been found efficacious in such places as Nigeria, Kenya Colony, the Gold Coast and New Guinea, as well as in the schools for the Red Indian children in Canada.329 The early efforts and idealism of missionary Guiders also convinced the colonial gov-

ernments in Nigeria, Malaya, and India to support the movement. The seemingly egalitarian ide-

ology of Baden-Powell’s program had initially led colonial officials to see colonized participa-

109

tion as subversive. The demonstrative loyalty of white Guiders and colonized Guides changed

their minds. Colonial officials approved of the feminine imperial citizenship white Guiders

strove to impart to their charges. It came loaded with responsibilities but specified few rights. It

bolstered rather than challenged British rule. However, it also implicitly acknowledged that

colonies had the right and capability for some level of self-government like the white dominions

had achieved.

Once the governments of Nigeria, Malaya, and India adopted the movement, British

wives began to volunteer in significant numbers in the thirties. Like the missionaries they be-

lieved colonized girls lacked the values, character, and skills to participate as equals in the imag-

ined imperial community. But whereas missionaries believed their Guides would grow up and

belong to the imperial community, these wives typically saw their exertions with colonized girls

as part of a long, slow process of civilization that would take generations for the colonized to

complete.

WAGGGS appropriated white colonial Guiders’ understanding of the British Empire and

its relationship to the colonized from the stories British wives and metropolitan visitors sent to

the The Council Fire and the occasional biennial reports of the colonial Guide associations.330

The stories and attitudes of colonial Guiders became fodder for the Western leadership of

WAGGGS to draw upon to authenticate the Empire and League of Nations as ideal models of

internationalism and neglect to address in a meaningful way the exclusion of colonized women

until after World War II. Moreover, when and how white Guiders included colonized women

within the national leadership drove WAGGGS own attitudes towards colonized leadership at the

international level.

110

Most white Guiders attempted to show colonized Guides how to fit into the boundaries of

Western gender norms. They showed an unquestionable faith that without their help colonized

girls would live confined lives bounded by tradition and neglectful of their responsibilities to the

imperial community.331 They believed the colonized girls could join white maternalists as mem-

bers and mothers of the imperial community once they learned the duties of citizenship through

service, camping and sport, native tradition, and imperial ceremony. White Guiders, predomi-

nately missionaries, established the foundation of Guiding among the colonized based on the

unequal relationship inherent to maternalism – the omniscient white mother and misguided colo-

nized daughter. Yet, they never had a monopoly on maternalism; other Guiders, both white and

colonized, used maternalism to create a female led alternative to the male dominated anti-

colonial nationalisms, which chapter three examines.

209 Mabel Marsh, Hard Scrabble (Kuala Lumpur, Malaya: Union Press, 1960), 49, 74; A Wagon That Was

Hitched to a Star (1917), 61. 210 Marsh, Hard Scrabble, 36, 126; Service Suspended (New York: Carlton Press, 1968), 48. 211 Mary Procida, Married to the Empire: Gender, Politics and Imperialism in India, 1883-1947 (Manches-

ter: Manchester University Press, 2002), 168; Margaret Martyn, Married to the Raj (London: BACSA, 1992), 28, 36, 48, 120; M. Oppenheimer, “The ‘Imperial’ Girl: Lady Helen Munro Ferguson, The Imperial Woman and Her Imperial Childhood,” Journal of Australian Studies 34, no. 4 (2010): 514; Joan Alexander, Voices and Echoes: Tales from Colonial Women (London: New York, 1983), 91. When World War II started Martyn taught at the New School for British children who could no longer attend school in the metropole and helped provide shelter and com-fort for British refugees. However, her resistance to work to improve the welfare of Indians remained resolute. When Lakshmi Mazumdar, an Indian woman, asked her to participate in the projects the All Bengal Women’s Un-ion sponsored, Martyn refused even though she was member of the executive committee. She explains, “I’m not really interested in her work and in any case I don’t want to be a “good worker” on a committee.

212 Margaret Jolly, “Other Mothers: Maternal ‘Insouciance’ and the Depopulation Debate in Fiji and Vanu-atu, 1890-1930,” in Maternities and Modernities: Colonial and Postcolonial Experiences in Asia and the Pacific, edited by Kalpana Ram and Margaret Jolly (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 178, 181.

213 Barbara Bush, Imperialism, Race and Resistance Africa and Britain, 1919-1945 (London: Routledge, 1999), 79-81, 90, 94, 97, 100-101, 108-110.

214 John Smith, Colonial Cadet in Nigeria (Durham: Published for the Duke University Commonwealth-Studies Center, Duke University Press), 1968; Bush, “Gender and Empire: The Twentieth Century,” in Gender and Empire, edited by Philippa Levine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 81, 108; Margaret Jolly, “Other Moth-ers,”181; Procida, Married to the Empire, 171; Tim Johnston, Berrice Johnston, and Carolyn Johnston, Harmattan, a Wind of Change Life and Letters from Northern Nigeria at the End of Empire (London: Radcliffe Press, 2010), 146-147; Janice Brownfoot, “Memsahibs in Colonial Malaya: A Study of European Wives in a British Colony and Protectorate, 1900-1940,” in The Incorporated Wife, edited by Hilary Callan and Shirley Ardener (London: Croom Helm, 1984), 199. Based on Brownfoot’s interviews of former British wives, wives of Malaya did not consider vol-untary work a social obligation.

215 Kristine Alexander, “Girl Guide Movement, Internationalism, and Imperialism in Interwar England,

111

Canada, and India,” (PhD diss., York University, 2010), 17, 96, 220-221, 228; Annette Roberts, Sister Eileen: A Life with the Lid Off (Bassendean, Western Australia: Access Press, 2002), 28, 40; Janice Brownfoot, “Sisters Under the Skin: Imperialism and the Emancipation of Women in Malaya, c.1891-1941,” in Making Imperial Mentalities: So-cialisation And British Imperialism, edited by J. A. Mangan (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), 64; Folarin Coker, A Lady: A Biography of Lady Oyinkan Abayomi (Ibadan, Nigeria: Evans Brothers, 1987), 68-73; Tammy M. Proctor, On My Honour Guides and Scouts in Interwar Britain (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2002), 145; Carey Watt, “‘The Promise of "Character’ and the Spectre of Sedition: The Boy Scout Move-ment and Colonial Consternation in India, 1908-1921,” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 22, no. 2 (1999): 55.

216 Tammy Proctor, On My Honour Guides and Scouts in Interwar Britain (Philadelphia: American Phi-losophical Society, 2002), 145; Alexander, “Girl Guide Movement, Internationalism, and Imperialism in Interwar England, Canada, and India,” 17, 96, 220-221, 228; Roberts, Sister Eileen, 40; Brownfoot, “Sisters Under the Skin,” 64; “Memsahibs in Colonial Malaya,” Watt, “The Promise of ‘Character’,” 55; Timothy Parsons, “The Limits of Sisterhood: The Evolution of the Girl Guide Movement in Colonial Kenya,” in Scouting Frontiers: Youth and the Scout Movement's First Century, edited by Tammy M. Proctor and Nelson R. Block (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cam-bridge Scholars Publishing, 2009), 144, 146. Carey Watt, a historian of colonial and post colonial South Asia, claims, “The girl guide movement and the question of Indian guides received almost no attention because guide work was restricted to the domestic sphere and was not considered a threat to British rule.” He fails to provide a footnote for this claim and evidence available fails to corroborate it. Timothy Parsons, who has written extensively about Scouting in Africa, confirms that the colonial government of Kenya considered African Scouts more problem-atic than African Guides.

Tammy Proctor, Kristine Alexander, and Janice Brownfoot, all women whose scholarship focuses on women, suggest that colonial governments understood both Guiding and Scouting as likely to provoke the colonized to demand greater civil rights or upset the relationships that colonial governments had built with indigenous rulers. Proctor explains,

In British colonies, race was a special concern because of the growth of nationalist movements. Just as co-lonial authorities were often ambivalent toward missionaries, who often as not created revolutionaries rather than docile workers in their mission schools, they also treated youth movements with some suspi-cion, figuring that they could perform a similar function. Alexander specifically critiques Watt’s claims “as far too simplistic” and offers numerous examples of the

public attention nationalist and reform publications gave to Indian Girl Guiding. 217 For more on Irish nationalists and the Girl Guide movement see Marnie Hay, “The Foundation and De-

velopment of Na Fianna ƒireann, 1909–16,” Irish Historical Studies, 36, no. 141 (May 2008): 61. 218 Watt, “The Promise of ‘Character’” 42. 219 Keith Watson, “Education and Colonialism in Peninsular Malaysia,” in Education in the Third World,

edited by Keith Watson (London: Croom Helm, 1982), 92-93; Timothy Parsons, Race, Resistance, and the Boy Scout Movement in Colonial Africa Athens (Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2004), 39, 65-66; Brownfoot, “Sisters Under the Skin,” 64; Rose Gough Kerr, The Story of a Million Girls; Guiding and Girl Scouting Round the World (London: The Girl Guides Association, 1937), 226; Mrs. Sen, “India,” The Council Fire 17, no. 4 (October 1932): 105; Coker, A Lady, 72-73; Ruth Compton Brouwer, Modern Women Modernizing Men: The Changing Missions of Three Professional Women in Asia and Africa, 1902-69 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2002), 26,27; Olave Baden-Powell, Guide Links (London: Pearson, 1936), 47-48; Margaret Shennan, Out in the Midday Sun: The British in Ma-laya, 1880-1960 (London: John Murray, 2000), 196; Nigeria, The Nigeria Handbook Containing Statistical and General Information Respecting the Colony and Protectorate (London: West Africa Publicity Ltd, 1936), 67.The colonial government in Malaya began to financially support the movement with annual grants and property dona-tions beginning in 1928. When Olave Baden-Powell visited in Kuala Lumpur 1934, she attended a tea with Asian and European Guides and Guiders in a Guide House that the colonial government of Malaya donated to the move-ment.

220 Parsons, “The Limits of Sisterhood: The Evolution of the Girl Guide Movement in Colonial Kenya,” 143, 149-155. In Kenya, colonial officials refused to fund Guiding for Africans until after World War II because they feared anti-colonial forces could easily usurp the movement in regions with little white supervision. Because of the government’s opposition, the Kenyan Association of Guiding did not allow African membership until 1935. Even then it continued to spend all funding received from the government on white Guide companies until the gov-ernment granted them the funds to promote “the advancement of African womanhood.” The government increased

112

its support during the Mau Mau Emergency and white Guiders attempted to use Guiding to transform the Kikuyu women prisoners in the “family settlement villages” from rebels to upstanding citizens of Empire.

221 Conference on African Education, African Education: A Study of Educational Policy and Practice in British Tropical Africa (Oxford: University Press, 1953), 179; Folarin Coker, A Lady: A Biography of Lady Oyinkan Abayomi (Ibadan, Nigeria: Evans Brothers, 1987), 68-73; Parsons, Race, Resistance, and the Boy Scout Movement, 6-10; Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism (Prince-ton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996), 18; Brouwer, Modern Women Modernizing Men, 97. The Nigerian co-lonial government enthusiastically embraced indigenous Boy Scouting as a way to stymie the nationalist impulses of Western educated African boys. Because the colonial government of Nigeria lacked the manpower and financial resources to govern all Africans directly, they had developed a system of “decentralized despotism” where they fo-cused British manpower on urban areas and markets and used complicit “tribal authorities” to extend their control into the rural areas. To avoid unnecessary strife and controversy with the tribal authorities, the British government officials neglected all manifestations of girls’ education including Guiding.

222 Patrick Wolfe, “Land, Labor, and Difference: Elementary Structures of Race,” The American Historical Review 106, no. 3 (June 2001): 871.

223 Wolfe, “Land, Labor, and Difference: Elementary Structures of Race,” 868-874,890-893; Christine Cheater, “Stolen Girlhood: Australia’s Assimilation Policies and Aboriginal Girls,” in Girlhood: A Global History, ed. Jennifer Helgren and Colleen A. Vasconcellos (New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2010), 251-254, 265; Russell McGregor, Imagined Destinies: Aboriginal Australians and the Doomed Race Theory, 1880-1939 (Carlton, Vic: Melbourne University Press, 1997), 146-151. During the nineteenth century, the doctrine of terra nullius had permitted Europeans to take the lands Aborigines inhabited and needed to maintain their nomadic lifestyle. As large numbers of Aborigines died from disease, starvation, and homicide, many colonial official labeled Aborigines a dying race and attempted to contain the increasingly small numbers on missions and reserves. Unions between European men and Aboriginal women, however, had produced a large population of lighter skinned Aborigines and thus precluded the total disappearance of the Aboriginal people. The percent of Aboriginal population of mixed de-scent rose from 27 percent in 1880 to 55 percent in 1900.

224 Wolf, “Land, Labor, and Difference: Elementary Structures of Race,” 871-874; Heather Goodall, “Sav-ing the Children: Gender and Colonization of Aboriginal Children in New South Wales, 1788-1990,” Aboriginal Law Bulletin Special Issue on Juvenile Justice 2, no. 44 (1990): 6-9; Cheater, “Stolen Girlhood: Australia’s Assimi-lation Policies and Aboriginal Girls,” 254-257, 266; T. A Coghlan, A Statistical Account of the Seven Colonies of Australasia, 1901-1902 (Sydney: William Applegate Gullick, Government Printer, 1902), 550. Western Australia’s chief protector of Aborigines, A. O. Neville, fully outlined how Australia would breed out color in his Australia's Coloured Minority, Its Place in the Community (Sydney: Currawong Pub. Co, 1947). The government of Australia created a racial classification system that defined race according to the percentage of Aboriginal blood -- half caste (50%); quadroon (25%), and octoroon (6.25%) -- but defined individuals with less 3.125% of Aboriginal blood as white.

225 I have found no record of Aborigines involved in Scouting activities before 1930. Before 1933, there were only a few Scout Troops. Katherine Clutterbuck or Sister Kate started the first Guiding company among Abo-riginal girls at her Queen’s Park Children’s Home for quarter-caste children in 1933. For Guiding among Aboriginal girls after 1933 see Olave Baden-Powell, Guide Links, 63-64, 70-71,74, 93; Ann Rylah, Australian Adventure; Girl Guiding Under the Southern Cross. (Melbourne: Lansdowne Press, 1963), 52, 58, 96, 123, 128; Kerr, Story of a Million Girls, 192-193, 202; “Australia,” The Council Fire 28, no. 3 (July 1953) : 92; Daphne Carpenter, “Frangi-pani Crowns on Thinking Day,” The Council Fire 29, no. 3 (July 1954): 85-86; “New and Notes: Western Austra-lia,” The Council Fire 29, no. 4 (October/November 1954):173; “News and Notes: Queensland,” ,” The Council Fire 29, no. 4 (October/November 1954): 173; “A Birthday Treat,” The Council Fire 30, no. 1 (January 1955): 24-25; Marcy C. Hodkin, “The Land of the Black Swans,” The Council Fire 30, no. 1 (January 1956): 17-19; “Tasmania,” The Council Fire 30, no. 2 (April 1956): 73-74; “Notes and News: Western Australia,” The Council Fire 31, no. 4 (October 1956): 160; “The World Chief Guide in Australia,” The Council Fire 33, no. 2 (April 1958): 47-49; “Ta-tana,” The Council Fire 34, no. 1 (January 1959): 11-13; “From Papuan to Sydney” The Council Fire 35, no. 4 (Oc-tober-December 1960): 133; Leslie E. Whateley “The Director’s Travels,” The Council Fire 29, no. 1-2 (January-April 1954): 6-11; Anna Haebich, Broken Circles: Fragmenting Indigenous Families, 1800-2000 (Fremantle, W.A.: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2000), 280-290; Vera Whittington, Sister Kate: A Life Dedicated to Children in Need of Care (Nedlands, W.A.: University of Western Australia Press, 1999), 307, 330-336; Roberts, Sister Eileen,70-74, 80-82, 121-133, 143, 247; Susan Maushart, Sort of a Place Like Home: Remembering the Moore River Native Set-tlement (South Fremantle, W.A.: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1993), 197-198; Fiona Paisley, “Childhood and Race:

113

Growing Up in the Empire,” in Gender and Empire, edited Philippa Levine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 240-259.

226 Margaret D. Jacobs, White Mother to a Dark Race: Settler Colonialism, Maternalism, and the Removal of Indigenous Children in the American West and Australia, 1880-1940 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009), 31-39,313, 417; Russell McGregor, “‘To Breed Out the Colour’ or the Importance of Being White,” Austra-lian Historical Studies 33, no. 120 (2002): 286-302.

227 Susan Maushart, Sort of a Place Like Home, 199; Myra Willard, History of the White Australia Policy to 1920 (London: Cass, 1967), 182-86; Wolfe, “Land, Labor, and Difference: Elementary Structures of Race,” 872; Roberts, Sister Eileen, 80, 88-90, Jacobs, White Mother to a Dark Race, 245, 252-259.

228 Nigeria, The Nigeria Handbook Containing Statistical and General Information Respecting the Colony and Protectorate, 67; J. M. Gullick, Josephine Foss and the Pudu English School (Petaling Jaya: Pelanduk Publica-tions for Pudu English School Old Girls Association, 1988), 43, 62, 73-74,96, 108, 165-171.

229 Bush, “Gender and Empire: The Twentieth Century,” 89, 97; Allen Warren, “Citizens of the Empire: Baden-Powell, Scouts and Guides, and an Imperial Ideal,” in Imperialism and Popular Culture, ed. by John M. MacKenzie (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1986), 235.

230 Barbara N. Ramusack, “Cultural Missionaries, Maternal Imperialists, Feminist Allies: British Women Activists in India, 1865-1945,” in Western Women and Imperialism Complicity and Resistance, edited by Nupur Chaudhuri and Margaret Strobel (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), 119-136.

231 Rose Kerr, “Guides in Countries Which Are Not Yet Members of the World Association,” in Second Bi-ennial Report, 1930-1932, edited by WAGGGS, 23. Rose Kerr, the official historian of Guiding during the interwar period and a leader in the World Association, explained,

It must sometimes seem as if British Guiders were monopolising Guiding in some of the countries remote from Europe. At the present moment British Guiders certainly are running companies in a great number of countries abroad, simply because the Guide Movement in Great Britain being older and more widely ex-tended than in most countries, British girls and women are more likely to have been in contact with Guid-ing at some moment of their lives.

232 Smith, Colonial Cadet in Nigeria, 58; Procida, Married to the Empire,16-20, 171,175-176; Johnston, Harmattan, 146-147; “Lady Guillemard Opens Malacca Schoolbuildings,” The Malaysia Message 36, no. 7 (April 1927): 18; Coker, A Lady,74; WAGGGS, Second Biennial Report, 1930-32, 71; WAGGGS, Third Biennial Report, 1932-34, 89, 141; “Memories of Early Days Guiding in India,” The Council Fire 35, no. 4 (October-December 1960): 208-210; Lillian Picken, “Guiders’ Training Camp, Panhala: November 1931,” Lillian Picken Papers, Record Group No. 159, Special Collections, Yale Divinity School Library; MacMillan, Women of the Raj, 11-15, 220, 223; E.M. Collingham, Imperial Bodies: The Physical Experience of the Raj, 1800-1947, 154-155, 163-164, 181; Bush, Imperialism, Race and Resistance Africa and Britain, 1919-1945, 52, 73-76 100; Helen Callaway, Gender, Culture, and Empire: European Women in Colonial Nigeria (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 10-11; Sylvia Leith-Ross, African Women: A Study of the Ibo of Nigeria (New York: F. A. Praeger, 1965), 253-266; Most of the British elite took on symbolic positions within the movement, in which they made appearances at camps and rallies, donated land and laborers to help set up and run camps, occasionally organized fundraisers, and pressured the wives beneath them in rank to take on the more demanding task of leading the companies. When wives of government officials faced the pressure from wife of senior official to her husband to become a Guider, most succumbed to the pressure.

233 Cheryl Johnson-Odim, “Lady Oyinkan Abayomi,” in Nigerian Women in Historical Perspective ed. by Bolanle Awe (Lagos: Sankore Publishers, 1992), 155-56; Coker, A Lady, 28; Marsh, Hard Scrabble, 53-71; Procida, Married to the Empire, 16-17, 18, 20. 31, 38; Margaret MacMillan, Women of the Raj (New York, N.Y.: Thames and Hudson, 1988), 8, 11-15, 23, 60, 220, 223; Brownfoot, “Memsahibs in Colonial Malaya,”189, 204; E.M. Coll-ingham, Imperial Bodies, 154-155, 163-164, 181; Bush, Imperialism, Race and Resistance Africa and Britain, 1919-1945, 52, 73-76 100; Callaway, Gender, Culture, and Empire, 10-11; Leith-Ross, African Women: A Study of the Ibo of Nigeria, 253-266; Most white women in the colonies came as the wives of colonial officials and private busi-nessmen or quickly became such wives upon their arrival. No matter their original background, these women en-tered a class of elite colonizers who despite World War I, remained convinced that Western culture and governance represented the most advanced civilization and opposed the increasing the involvement of the colonized in the gov-ernment. MacMillan suggests that white women who lived in the British colonies never had to face the sense of de-spair and failure that beset the metropole during the First World War. Consequentially, she explains, “They re-mained secure in their sense of superiority, while at Home thoughtful people were beginning to wonder whether Western civilization had any value at all.”

114

234 Macmillan, Women of the Raj, 253; Gullick, Josephine Foss, 85. 235 Procida, Married to the Empire, 168-171; Marsh, Service Suspended, 34; Gullick, Josephine Foss, 85,

103-108; T. N. Harper, The End of Empire and the Making of Malaya (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 314.

236 Sheila Bridges, “Guiding in Nigeria,” The Council Fire 16, no. 2 (April 1941): 24-25; Mrs. Sen, “India,” The Council Fire 17, no. 4 (October 1932): 106; Roberts, Sister Eileen, 70-73; Whittington, Sister Kate: A Life Dedicated to Children in Need of Care,1-4; WAGGGS, Second Biennial Report, 1930-32, 103, 41l; WAGGGS, Third Biennial Report, 1932-1934, 141.

237 Mary Ann Lind, The Compassionate Memsahibs: Welfare Activities of British Women in India, 1900-1947 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1988), 79-80, 80-85; John G. Butcher, The British in Malaya, 1880-1941: The Social History of a European Community in Colonial South-East Asia (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1979), 168; Marsh, Service Suspended, 49, 62. Marsh, the Guider whose company performed to welcome the Prince of Wales to Kuala Lumpur in 1921, whom I reference in the introduction, is typical. In a letter to a high school classmate, she credited the British government with building an interracial utopia in Asia. She waxed lyrically,

It is amazing when you think of what the British have accomplished in this tiny out of the way jungle cov-ered corner of Asia. …. Today five million people enjoy most of the benefits of modern civilization; dis-ease has practically been driven out; racial prejudices reduced to a minimum, poverty-stricken people of India and China have been permitted the privilege of earning their chosen occupation; and education is within easy reach of all.

238 Callaway, Gender, Culture, and Empire, 124-126, 185; Lind, The Compassionate Memsahibs, 79; Pro-cida, Married to the Empire, 18, 53, 131,219; M. Oppenheimer, "The 'Imperial' Girl,” 514.

239 Saroja Dev Param, A Guiding Light: The Life and Work of Datuk Hajah Hendon Din (Selangor Darul Ehsan: Pelanduk Publications, 2004), 9; Callaway, Gender, Culture, and Empire 124-126, 185; Lind, The Compas-sionate Memsahibs, 79; Procida, Married to the Empire, 18, 53, 131,219; Eileen Sandford, “Guiding in Nigeria,” The Council Fire 31, no. 4 (October 1956): 146-148. A white Guider in Nigeria married to a colonial bureaucrat explained,

One of the greatest handicaps to real progress in all the voluntary organizations in Nigeria, is the frequency with which people are transferred and go on leave. No sooner has a Company or Pack become established and the Guider warranted, or a Commissioner become known to her Guiders, than she is moved perhaps hundreds of miles away and no one is trained to take her place.

240 Gullick, Josephine Foss, 73-74, 77, 85, 96; Letterbook of Secretary, Darjeeling, Calcutta and Madras, 149; Others, like J. M. Josephine Foss, the British director of the Pudu English School in Kuala Lumpur from 1926-1941 and an avid Guider, excelled in multiple languages. She spoke Malayan and several dialects of Chinese.

241 Callaway, Gender, Culture, and Empire; Macmillan, Women of the Raj, 140, 156; Brownfoot, “Sisters Under the Skin,” 70; Lillian Picken, “Letter February 5, 1932 to Olave Baden-Powell;” Helen McSwiney, “Interna-tional Gathering at Edith Macy Training School,” The Council Fire 31, 4 (October 1956):151-152; WAGGGS Tenth Biennial Report, 1946-48, 52. WAGGGS, Fourth Biennial Report, 1934-1936, 45-46; “Untitled,” The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, August 24 1925, 8; WAGGGS, Second Biennial Report, 1930-1932, 49; “West Australia,” The Council Fire 38, no. 2 (April 1958): 93; “Lady Baden-Powell, Chief Guide of the World,” Mary Johnson Collection, 1930-1950, Cambridge University Library: Royal Commonwealth Society Library; Eliza-beth Buettner, Empire Families: Britons and Late Imperial India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 98-99. In Nigeria, the government forbade British officials to keep their children in the colony. In India, only a minority of children went “Home” for school. Because British families prioritized the education of sons, boys were more likely to be sent Home. British expatriates, who could not afford sending their children back to the metropole for school, often sent their children away to British schools in the colony.

242 Quoted in Brownfoot, “Sisters Under the Skin,” 63; B. H. C. Thomas, “Guiding in Malaya,” St. An-drew’s Outlook 83 (December 1935): 45; Shennan, Out in the Midday Sun, 194.

243 Vera Laughton Mathews, “International Companies,” The Council Fire 2, no. 4 (February 1927): 4-5. For other examples see Eva Tatham, “Guiding with Africans in the Transvaal,” The Council Fire 22, no. 1 (January 1947): 10; Pamela Dalton, “Tropical Camp in Singapore,” The Council Fire 34, no. 3 (July 1959): 99-102; Sheila Bridges, “Guiding in Nigeria,” The Council Fire 16, no. 2 (April 1941): 24-25.

244 Procida, Married to the Empire, 68; “Girl Guide Activities in Nigeria,” Mary Johnson Collection, Cam-bridge University Library: Royal Commonwealth Society Library; Vera Laughton Mathews, “International Compa-nies,” The Council Fire 2 no. 4 (February 1927):4-5. Matthews, the Commissioner of British Guides in Japan, wrote,

115

“Too often adults are bound together in narrow national cliques and never make use of the opportunities at hand to expand their mental horizons.”

245 Eileen Sandford, “Guiding in Nigeria,” The Council Fire 31, no. 4 (October 1956): 146-148. “The regu-lar holdings of Courts of Honour, the Pow-wow, and the keeping of good records are still rare things to find.”

246 Sheila Bridges, “Guiding in Nigeria,” The Council Fire 16, no. 2 (April 1941): 24; For complete re-quirements of Second Class Test, see Baden-Powell, Girl Guiding, 59-60.

247 This is a simplified version of the political situation in 1950s Nigeria. For details, see Toyin Falola, The History of Nigeria (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1999), 146-160.

248 For an Indian example see Margaret Martyn, Married to the Raj, 36; For an Malayan example see Joan Alexander, Voices and Echoes: Tales from Colonial Women. (London: New York, 1983),152-158.

249 B. H. C. Thomas, “Guiding in Malaya,” St. Andrew’s Outlook 83 (December 1935): 45. 250 Examples include Mabel Marsh and Josephine Foss from Malaya, Lillian Picken from India, and Kath-

erine Mary Clutterbuck, known as Sister Kate, and Eileen Heath in Australia. 251 Eileen Sandford, Come On, Eileen! (Shrewsbury: Shrewsbury Words, 2010), 180; Lillian Picken,

“Guiders’ Training Camp, Panhala: November 1931,” Lillian Picken Papers, Record Group No. 159, Special Collec-tions, Yale Divinity School Library; Anasuya Karkare, “Land of the Blue Mountain and Red River,” The Council Fire 35, no. 2 (April-June 1960): 73-74; Kerr, The Story of a Million Girls, 225; Gullick, Josephine Foss,74; J. S. Wilson, Scouting Round the World (London: Blanford Press, 1959), 100; “Memories of Early Days Guiding in In-dia,” The Council Fire 35, no. 4 (October-December 1960): 208-210. Examples of radical adaptations include mis-sionary Guiders in India who arranged for their companies to be transported to rallies in police vans so that the girls would not be subjected to public view.

252 Gullick, Josephine Foss, 85. 253 Marsh, A Wagon That Was Hitched to a Star, 58, 63; Hard Scrabble, 64,124- 125; Gullick, Josephine

Foss, 73, 114; A.S. Hellier, “The Guides Grow Up (South India),” The Council Fire 17, no. 1 (January 1942): 10-11. Miss Agatha S. Hellier, a missionary from the Methodist Missionary Society in London principal of the Gnanodhaya Training School in Madras, reported, ““The Guides who belonged to my first Indian company have gone on to many fields of work; many are married, many have become teachers, at least fifteen of them are Guiders. One small Guide whom I remember as a good netball shooter was later on seen walking about with a stethoscope in a women’s hospital. Not long afterwards I was present at a party given to welcome her on taking charge of the women’s side of country mission hospital. Now I hear that she has assumed complete charge of the hospital when the Indian man doctor went on his holiday.

254 Marsh, Hard Scrabble, 34, 60; Maina Chawla Singh, Gender, Religion, and "Heathen Lands": American Missionary Women in South Asia, 1860s-1940s (New York: Garland Pub, 2000), 270-271; A.S. Hellier, “The Guides Grow Up (South India),” The Council Fire 17, no. 1 (January 1942): 10-11. Hellier claimed women initiate and fund their family to modernize: “It is almost always the woman earning a salary, educated, mature and unselfish, who is the mainstay of the family. It is she who pays her brother’s school fees and buys the outfit for her sister go-ing to school. It is she who convinces her mother to go to the hospital, and pays for the tonic ordered. It is she who provides pocket money and school books for her nephews and nieces, even if she does not actually pay the fees. Her advice and influence count for much among parents and married relatives, who have less education than she has. Such women carry untold burdens, and live the Guide Law in a truly practical way.”

255 Lillian Picken, “Guiders’ Training Camp, Panhala: November 1931,” Lillian Picken Papers, Record Group No. 159, Special Collections, Yale Divinity School Library; Sheila Bridges “Guiding in Nigeria,” Council Fire 16, no. 2 (April 1941): 24-25.

256 For details regarding the debate regarding whether absorption ever became official government policy see Anna Haebich, For Their Own Good: Aborigines and Government in the Southwest of Western Australia, 1900-1940 (Perth: University of Viiestern Australia Press, 1988) 348-51; McGregor, “‘To Breed Out the Colour,’” 288-290.

257 Haebich, Broken Circles, 280- 286; Whittington, Sister Kate, 318-319, 328, 333, 344; Roberts, Sister Eileen, 70-74, 88-97, 109-111, 121-133.

258 Maushart, Sort of a Place Like Home, 198; Roberts, Sister Eileen, 70-74. 259 Roberts, Sister Eileen, 153-154; Jacobs, White Mother to a Dark Race, 128, 147; Haebich, Broken Cir-

cles, 280- 286; Whittington, Sister Kate, 328, 333 260 A.S. Hellier, “The Guides Grow Up (South India),” The Council Fire 17, no. 1 (January 1942): 10-11.

“Notes and News: Australia,” The Council Fire 21, no. 4 (October 1946). For an example, an Australian missionary working with Aboriginal girls in Ernabolla, South Australia had to learn Pihinjarra, the local language, to communi-

116

cate with her Guides. When her Guides began earning badges, she made bags to display them because her Board of Missions did not allow the children there to wear any clothing, even a Guide uniform.

261 Janaki Nair, “Uncovering the Zenana: Visions of Indian womanhood in Englishwomen's Writings, 1813-1950,” in Cultures of Empire: Colonizers in Britain and the Empire in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centu-ries: A Reader, edited by Catherine Hall (New York: Routledge, 2000), 224-225; Procida, Married to the Empire, 5.

262 Procida, Married to the Empire, 5. 263For another example see “Malayan Girl Guides Report,” The Straits Times, May 13 1932: 16. Commis-

sioner Jean Cavendish reported, “In spite of the troubles and trials this country is going through, Guiding has on a whole made good progress during 1931 and our numbers have increased.”

264 Callaway, Gender, Culture, and Empire,16; E. M. Collingham, Imperial Bodies: The Physical Experi-ence of the Raj, C. 1800-1947, 15-17, 128-138; Eileen Kirkpatrick Wade, Olave Baden-Powell: The Authorised Bi-ography of the World Chief Guide (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1971), 19-20; Kitty Barne, Here Come the Girl Guides (London: Girl Guides Association, 1946), 92-92; “Country Reports: India,” The Council Fire 11, no. 4 (Oc-tober 1936): 35. The largest Rally in India before Independence occurred to honor the H. R. H. Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone who visited Bombay.

265 Bush, Imperialism, Race and Resistance Africa and Britain, 1919-1945, 97; Marsh, Service Suspended, 78. For other elaborate displays of imperial authority see “Country Reports: India” The Council Fire 11, no. 4 (Oc-tober 1936): 35; “Rally at King’s College Lagos, 1936,” Mary Johnson Collection, 1930-1950, Cambridge Univer-sity Library: Royal Commonwealth Society Library.

266 “Reports From Countries: India,” The Council Fire 4, no. 4 (October 1934): 144; “Memories of Early Days Guiding in India,” The Council Fire 35, no. 4 (October-December 1960): 208-210; Kerr, The Story of a Mil-lion Girls, 226.

266 J.S. Wilson, Scouting Round the World (London: Blanford Press, 1959), 100. 267 Shaharyar M. Khan, The Begums of Bhopal: A Dynasty of Women Rulers in Raj India (London: I.B.

Tauris, 2000), 172; Siobhan Lambert Hurley, “Out of India: The Journeys of the Begam of Bhopal, 1901-1930,” Women’s Studies International Forum 21, no. 3 (1998): 273; Shennan, Out in the Midday Sun, 194; “Malay Brown-ies,” The Straits Times, February 4, 1932, 18; The Imam of the Socio-Economic Revolution: Hazrat Imam Sultan Muhammad Shah (Ottawa: Simerg Incorporated, 2011), 43.

268 Alexander, “Girl Guide Movement, Internationalism, and Imperialism in Interwar England, Canada, and India,” 97, 100, 310; Mrinalini Sinha, Specters of Mother India: The Global Restructuring of an Empire (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006); Lind, The Compassionate Memsahibs, 79-80; Lillian Picken, “Guiders’ Training Camp, Panhala: November 1931,” Lillian Picken Papers, Record Group No. 159, Special Collections, Yale Divinity School Library; The Imam of the Socio-Economic Revolution, 43, 176.

269 Gurmukh Ram Madan, Indian Social Problems (Ahmedabad: Allied Publ, 1987), 155; Sinha, Specters of Mother India: The Global Restructuring of an Empire, 9-17; Atiya Begum Fyzee-Rahamin, Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, and Sunil Sharma, Atiya's Journeys: A Muslim Woman from Colonial Bombay to Edwardian Britain (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2010), 165; The Imam of the Socio-Economic Revolution,43.

270 WAGGGS, Fourth Biennial Report, 1936-1938, 81; Alexander, “Girl Guide Movement, International-ism, and Imperialism in Interwar England, Canada, and India,” 310; Reports From Countries: India,” The Council Fire 4, no. 4 (October 1934): 144

271 WAGGGS, Fourth Biennial Report, 1936-1938, 81; Alexander, “Girl Guide Movement, International-ism, and Imperialism in Interwar England, Canada, and India,” 310.

272 Deepa S. Reddy, “The Ethnicity of Caste,” Anthropological Quarterly (2005): 549. 273 “Reports From Countries: India,” The Council Fire 4, no. 4 (October 1934): 144 274 WAGGGS, Fourth Biennial Report, 81; “Guide News: Princess Of Mysore Becomes A Brownie.” Ot-

tawa Citizen May 25, 1935, 14; Yuvarani’s older daughters, Rajkumaris Jaya and Vijaija Jaya had been active Guides for years.

275 Alexander, “Girl Guide Movement, Internationalism, and Imperialism in Interwar England, Canada, and India,” 97, 100, 310.

276 Gullick, Josephine Foss, 96; Kerr, The Story of a Million Girls, 225. 277 Watson, “Education and Colonialism in Peninsular Malaysia,” 94-97. 278 Mahani Musa, “The ‘Woman Question’ in Malayan Periodicals,” Indonesia and the Malay World 38,

no. 111 (July 2010): 250-270; Janice N. Brownfoot, “Sisters Under the Skin,” 63-64; Nazreen Tajul Arif, “Ibu Zain - The Champion for Women,” Virtual Malaysia E-Tourism Portal http://www.virtualmalaysia.com/news/ibu%20zain%20-%20the%20champion%20for%20women.html (Accessed

117

March 8, 2012); Sushaini Aznam, “Tan Sri Zainun Sulaiman, A Pioneer for Malay women in Education and Politics, Spoke up Bravely for the Independence Cause,” The Star online, Sunday January 28, 2007, News http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2007/1/28/nation/16709039&sec=nation. (accessed February 24, 2012); Christine Heward and Sheila S. Bunwaree, Gender, Education, and Development: Beyond Access to Empowerment (London: Zed Books, 1999); Harper, The End of Empire and the Making of Malaya, 29, 158; John Butcher, The British in Malaya, 1880-1941: The Social History of a European Community in Colonial South-East Asia (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1979), 9; Keith Watson, “Education and Colonialism in Peninsular Malaysia,” 97. The British set up the village school system for Malay children in the late nineteenth century. Frank Swetten-ham, the first Resident General of the Federated Malay States explained why they set up a school system that ne-glected academics. He claimed it was imprudent “to attempt to give children of an agricultural population an indif-ferent knowledge of a language that to all but a very few would only unfit them for the duties of life and make them discontented with anything like manual labor.”

279 Gullick, Josephine Foss, 96; Joan Alexander, Voices and Echoes, 152-152; “Malaya Has 200 More Guides,” The Straits Times, May 18, 1931: 19.

280 Callaway, Gender, Culture, and Empire, 112-117; Coker, A Lady, 67-68,75; Misty L. Bastian, “Young Converts: Christian Missions, Gender and Youth in Onitsha, Nigeria, 1880-1929,” Anthropological Quarterly (2000): 145-158; Gloria Chuku, “From Petty Traders to International Merchants: a Historical Account of Three Igbo Women of Nigeria in Trade and Commerce, 1886 to 1970,” African Economic History, no. 27 (1999): 13-15; Peter Kazenga Tibenderana, “The Beginnings of Girls' Education in the Native Administration Schools in Northern Nige-ria, 1930-1945," The Journal of African History 26, no. 1: 93-96; Johnson-Odim, "Lady Oyinkan Abayomi,”153. Because the colonial government limited missionary activities in Northern Nigeria and prohibited their presence in Muslim dominated portions of Northern Nigeria until 1927, Guiding had no presence in the North until the colonial government helped to fund two girls’ schools with European teachers in Kano and Katsina. With the government’s prompting two other sultans funded European run girls schools in Birnin Kebbi and Sokoto. Before Guiding could catch on among their elite Muslim students, the colonial government abandoned the separate sex education model in the North and put their total support behind coeducational elementary schools. Coeducation reinforced Muslim Ni-gerians’ belief that Western education violated traditional codes of conduct and effectively ended the Guiding movement in the North until after WWII. In the fifties, sultans and chiefs began to support Guiding not to ingratiate themselves to colonial officials but rather in response to the creation of regional governments of elected Nigerians and the new image that the Nigerian Guiding Association projected upon the appointment of their first Nigerian Deputy Commissioner in 1949.

281 Hugh H. Smythe and Mabel M. Smythe, The New Nigerian Elite (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1960), 56; “Thinking Day in Africa and Asia” The Council Fire 35, no. 2 (April-June 1960): 88-90; Ade-towun Ogunsheye, “The Women of Nigeria,” Présence Africaine (1960): 33-49; Conference on African Education, African Education,180. Few Nigerians wanted their daughters to learn the Western values and skills that Guiding taught. Only the Christian elite and Nigerians who hoped to marry their daughters into the Christian elite sought out Western education. This meant that most Guides attended English-language missionary schools in Lagos, Onitsha, and Calabar run by European women or village missionary schools run by African graduates of missionary schools. Southern Nigerian rulers saw little benefit in supporting a movement that only touched the lives of Christian elites.

282 Conference on African Education, African Education, 179; Callaway, Gender, Culture, and Empire, 112-117; Coker, A Lady, 72; LaRay Denzer, “Yoruba Women: A Historiographical Study,” The International Jour-nal of African Historical Studies 27, no. 1 (1994): 19, 29-30; Andrew E. Barnes, “‘Some Fire Behind the Smoke:’ The Fraser Report and Its Aftermath in Colonial Northern Nigeria,” Canadian Journal of African Studies 31, no. 2: 214; Bastian, “Young Converts,” 148, 150. Colonial officials felt that missionary education often bred anti-colonial attitudes. The Director of Education in Northern Nigeria claimed that “book learning” led to "unreliable and lack in integrity, self control and discipline."

283 Julia Messner, “Good, Upright Young Citizens: Lived Experiences of Boy Scouts and Girl Guides in Australia,” (University of Technology, Sydney. M.A. Thesis, 2004), 28-32, 85-99; Ann Rylah, Australian Adven-ture; Girl Guiding Under the Southern Cross (Melbourne: Lansdowne Press, 1963); Gwendoline Hamer Swinburne, Among the First People, 1908-1936: The Baden-Powell Girl Guide Movement in Australia ()Sydney: Girl Guides Association of Australia, 1978; Rosemary van den Berg, “Black Thoughts on Whiteness: Perspectives from an Abo-riginal Woman,” Journal of the European Association of Studies on Australia 2, no. 2 (2011): 53-59.

284 “The Centenary Camp in South Australia,” The Council Fire 7, no. 2 (April 1937): 14; Neville Meaney, “Britishness and Australia: Some Reflections,” in The British World: Diaspora, Culture, and Identity, edited by Carl Bridge and Kent Fedorowich (London: F. Cass, 2003), 126; “New and Notes: Western Australia,” The Council Fire

118

29, no. 4 (October/November 1954):173; Sheila Bridges “Guiding in Nigeria,” The Council Fire 16, no. 2 (April 1941): 24-25; Olave Baden-Powell, Guide Links (London: Pearson, 1936), 78. Until the fifties, most Aborigines who attended interstate camps and rallies were laborers who served the white Guides who attended or performed the menial labor to set up such events. Olave noted one Aboriginal girl in attendance at the 1937 Brisbane Rally, a re-gional rally. The next account of Aboriginal Guides attending a official Guiding event is in 1954 when the Guiding press first noted the presence of an Aboriginal company at a nationwide event, the visit of the Queen.

285 Maushart, Sort of a Place Like Home, 198; “New and Notes: Western Australia,” The Council Fire 29, no. 4 (October/November 1954):173. “Rally at King College, Lagos, 1936,” Mary Johnson Collection, 1930-1950, Cambridge University Library: Royal Commonwealth Society Library; Sheila Bridges “Guiding in Nigeria,” The Council Fire 16, no. 2 (April 1941): 24-25; See plates in Wade, Olave Baden-Powell: The Authorised Biography of the World Chief Guide.

286 Sheila Bridges “Guiding in Nigeria,” The Council Fire 16, no. 2 (April 1941): 24-25; Isabel Brown Rose, The Star of India (New York: Friendship Press, 1930), 85; Marsh, Hard Scrabble, 71; Service Suspended 43, 56, 64-65, 68 91, 97, 146; Pamela Dalton, “Tropical Camp in Singapore”, The Council Fire 34, no. 1 (April 1959): 99-102;

287 Lillian Picken, “Guiders’ Training Camp, Panhala: November 1931,” Lillian Picken Papers, Record Group No. 159, Special Collections, Yale Divinity School Library; Gullick, Josephine Foss, 72-73; Alexander, “Girl Guide Movement, Internationalism, and Imperialism in Interwar England, Canada, and India,” 142; Roger Cooter, In the Name of the Child Health and Welfare, 1880-1940 (London: Routledge, 1992), 233; Maushart, Sort of a Place Like Home, 198; Mabel Marsh, Hard Scrabble (Kuala Lumpur, Malaya: Union Press, 1960), 49, 74; A Wagon That Was Hitched to a Star, 61; Betty Compton, “…Into a Wider World” The Council Fire 18, no. 1 (Jan. 1943): 11; Haebich, Broken Circles, 284.

288 Param, A Guiding Light, 40; Bastian, “Young Converts,” 145-158; Gullick, Josephine Foss,74; Mazum-dar, “The Girl Guide Movement in India,” 124; Gurmukh Madan, Indian Social Problems (Ahmedabad: Allied Pub-lishing, 1987), 134; Kerr, The Story of a Million Girls, 225; Lind, The Compassionate Memsahibs, 81. Colonized parents and elites responded to the imperial messages of these performances either with hesitance or enthusiasm. Some Asian and African parents felt public performance was an unfeminine activity. Indian parents sympathetic to the nationalist cause remained wary of their daughters joining an organization with such manifest ties to the colonial government. In the twenties, Muslim Malays and non-Christian Nigerians perceived the movement as incompatible with their values and traditions.

289 Quoted in Proctor, “Scouts, Guides, and Fashioning the of Empire, 1919-39,” in Fashioning the Body Politic: Dress, Gender, Citizenship, edited by Wendy Parkins (Oxford: Berg, 2002), 139.

290 Maushart, Sort of a Place Like Home, 178-205; Ruth Ho, Rainbow Round My Shoulder (Singapore: Eastern Universities Press, 1975), 28, 79, 81-86, 108, 111-112; Marsh, Wagon Hitched to A Star, 141; Ashoka Gupta, Sipra Bhattacharya, and Ranjana Dasgupta, In the Path of Service: Memories of a Changing Century (Kol-kata: STREE, 2005) 24; Anne Bloomfield, “Drill and Dance as Symbols of Imperialism,” in Making Imperial Men-talities: Socialisation And British Imperialism, edited by J. A. Mangan (Manchester: Manchester University Press , 1990), 93; L. H. Lees, “Being British in Malaya, 1890-1940,” Journal of British Studies 48, no. 1 (2009): 89-92; LaRay Denzer, “Yoruba Women,” 33-34; Bhattacharyya Rajlakshmi, “Adventure of Knowledge: Evelyn Norah Shullai,” The Telegraph, Thursday, October 23, 2003, Calcutta India, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1031023/asp/northeast/story_2488487.asp (accessed February 9, 2011); Brownfoot, “Sisters Under the Skin,” 46; Leslie A. Flemming, “A New Humanity: American Missionaries' Ideals for Women in North India, 1870-1930,” in Western Women and Imperialism Complicity and Resistance, eds. Nupur Chaudhuri and Margaret Strobel (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), 191-206. The lack of evidence makes it difficult to determine the effects of performances of the colonized girls who participated. They enjoyed the public plays, im-perial songs, rallies, and parades as opportunities to stand out among their peers, dress in uniform, and travel. For example in her memoir Ashoka Gupta, who later became a officer in the Indian Guiding movement in the fifties, recalls that she liked the sense of authority that came with performing in uniform at baby shows and health exhibi-tions in front of hundreds of women and children. Ruth Ho, a Chinese Malayan girl, liked Guiding as it exposed her to ideas and experiences she would not have access to otherwise. Just because colonized Guides did not appreciate the imperial implications of their performances, however, does not mean white Guiders failed to instill in their charges the importance of demonstrative patriotism. Anne Bloomfield describes the unconscious effects of public ritual on participants: “The participation in ceremony with color, rhetoric and dance meant that the ideals of imperi-alism were experienced bodily and that its fundamental message was absorbed, remembered, and often cherished into old age.” Though many western-trained colonized Guides went on to became part of the powerful educated

119

elite, who pushed their countries to acknowledge educated, physically-fit Western-educated women as essential to the national agenda, they never adopted an aggressive anti-imperialism and publicly acknowledged their people’s debt to Britain.

291 Siobhan Lambert Hurley, “Out of India,” 273; ‘Reports From Countries: India,” The Council Fire 4, no. 4 (October 1934): 144.

292 Kerr, The Story of a Million Girls, 224-228; “Country Reports: India,” The Council Fire 11, no. 4 (Oc-tober 1936): 35.

293 “Guides Gathering,” Mary Johnson Collection, 1930-1950, Cambridge University Library: Royal Com-monwealth Society Library; International Committee on Christian Literature for Africa, Listen, 1932-1948, Pitts Theology Library, Emory University, Atlanta; Ruth Compton Brouwer, “Margaret Wrong's Literacy Work and the 'Remaking of Woman' in Africa, 1929-48,” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 23, no. 3 (1995): 433 Sally Stanhope, e-mail to Ruth Compton Brouwer, March 2, 2011; Ruth Compton Brouwer, e-mail message to Sally Stanhope, March 2, 2011.

294 Beinart, “Darkly Through a Lens,” 236; A.S. Hellier, “The Guides Grow Up (South India),” The Coun-cil Fire 17, no. 1 (Jan 1942): 10-11. Hellier, principal of the Gnanodhaya Training School in Madras describes the larger effects of Guiding on the Indian community:

It is almost always the woman earning a salary, educated, mature and unselfish, who is the mainstay of the family. It is she who pays her brother’s school fees and buys the outfit for her sister going to school. It is she who convinces her mother to go to the hospital, and pays for the tonic ordered. It is she who provides pocket money and school books for her nephews and nieces, even if she does not actually pay the fees. Her advice and influence count for much among parents and married relatives, who have less education than she has. Such women carry untold burdens, and live the Guide Law in a truly practical way.

295 “Walter Donald Ross Trophy,” The Council Fire 27, no.2 (April 1952): 51-53. Each Guide had to serve multiple three hour shifts while also completing her exams; teachers who also served a Guiders did the same while grading exams.

296 Marsh, Service Suspended, 100. 297 Whittington, Sister Kate, 332, 337; Jacobs, White Mother to a Dark Race, 292-293. 298 Ho, Rainbow Round My Shoulder, 92; Ashoka Gupta, Sipra Bhattacharya, and Ranjana Dasgupta, In the

Path of Service, 24; Mahani Musa, “The ‘Woman Question’ in Malayan Periodicals,” Indonesia and the Malay World 38, no. 111 (July 2010): 247–271; Roberts, Sister Eileen, 150-153; Haebich, Broken Circles, 280-285; A.S. Hellier, “The Guides Grow Up (South India),” The Council Fire 17, no. 1 (Jan 1942): 10-11; Marsh, Wagon That Was Hitched to a Star, 63; Service Suspended, 48, 98-100; Hard Scrabble, 124-125; Ruth Frances Woodsmall, Women and the New East (Washington: Middle East Institute, 1960), 405; Rajlakshmi Bhattacharyya, “Adventure of Knowledge: Evelyn Norah Shullai,” The Telegraph, Calcutta India Thursday, October 23, 2003, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1031023/asp/northeast/story_2488487.asp. (Accessed April 27 2011); WAGGGS, Third Biennial Report, 1932-1934, 142; Brownfoot, “Sisters Under the Skin,” 64; Proctor, Scouting for Girls, 114.

299 WAGGGS, Seventh Biennial Report, 1940-1942, 39-40; “News from Our Scattered Family: India,” The Council Fire 15, no. 4 (October 1940):57

300 Maushart, Sort of a Place Like Home, 178-205; Ashoka Gupta, Sipra Bhattacharya, and Ranjana Das-gupta, In the Path of Service, 24; Ho, Rainbow Round My Shoulder, 79, 81-86, 108

301 Roberts, Sister Eileen, 73,91. 302 K. M. Briggs, “Folk Lore and the Brownies,” The Council Fire 14, no. 2 (April 1939):21-22. 303 Renato Rosaldo, Culture & Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989), 69-

74. 304 Eric Hobsbawm, “Introduction: Inventing Traditions,” in The Invention of Tradition, edited by E. J.

Hobsbawm and T. O. Ranger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 1-14; Hobsbawm, “Mass-producing traditions: Europe, 1870-1914,” in The Invention of Tradition, edited by E. J. Hobsbawm and T. O. Ranger (Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 263-307.

305 Fiona Paisley, Glamour in the Pacific (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2009), 13-14, 85-86, 170; Michael Adas, Machines As the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), 390. Though this attitude superficially seems more respectful, Fiona Pais-ley, a cultural historian, clarifies, “White women claimed that native culture was progressive in its attachments to cultural and spiritual life but backward in its treatment of women, and thus required the discriminating judgment of women like themselves as it moved into modernity.”

120

306 “The Pax-Ting Camp,” The Council Fire 14, no. 4 (October 1939): 55-57. For example, delegations

from India rarely participated in the performance events at World Conferences as they could not bring a contingent of Guides to perform and white Guiders had no traditional costume to wear. Though India participated in many of international craft exhibition held in Europe before 1960, their entries elicited no comment or prizes.

307 “Traditional Games of Western India,” The Council Fire 15, no. 2 (April 1940): 23. 308 B. H. C. Thomas, “Guiding in Malaya,” St. Andrew’s Outlook 83 (December 1935): 45; Shennan, Out in

the Midday Sun,194. 309 “A Birthday Treat,” The Council Fire 30, no. 1 (Jan. 1955): 24-25; Mary Montgomerie Bennett, The

Australian Aboriginal As a Human Being (London: Alston Rivers, 1930), 52, 62, 123-129; Bennett and Mount Mar-garet Mission (W.A.), Teaching the Aborigines: Data from Mount Margaret Mission, Western Australia,1935 (Western Australia: City and Suburban Print, 1935).

310 Flora L. Robinson, “The Girl Messenger Service,” in Woman’s Missionary Friend volumes 46-48, ed-ited by Methodist Episcopal Church Society (Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1913): 232-233.

311 “Guiding in Uganda,” The Council Fire 11, no. 2 (April 1936): 2; Parsons, “The Limits of Sisterhood: The Evolution of the Girl Guide Movement in Colonial Kenya,” 144, 148; Sheila Bridges “Guiding in Nigeria,” The Council Fire 16, no. 2 (April 1941): 24-25; Eileen Sandford, “Guiding in Nigeria,” The Council Fire 31, no. 4 (Oct 1956): 146-148. Nigerian Guiding stands out its refusal to seek out virtuous native traditions when compared not only to Malaya, India, and Australia but also to other British colonies in Africa such as Kenya and Uganda. In Kenya, the Association encouraged white and African Guiders to incorporate African values and cultural traditions into the program. Parsons concludes, “In theory, adapting Guiding would allow the movement to co-opt and social-ize African girls while respecting the hierarchical racial order of the colony.” In Uganda, Guiders rewrote Robert Baden-Powell’s yarns as African stories and incorporated African dance and music into Guiding ceremonies.

Though colonial society in Nigeria had the same color bar that Parson identifies in Kenya. Furthermore, colonial governments in Uganda, Kenya, and Nigeria all relied on “traditional” rulers to maintain order. Yet, the white Guiders who controlled the policy of the Nigerian Association refused to change any of the original elements of Baden-Powell’s program until after World War II. They insisted that Guides recite the Promise and laws in Eng-lish no matter their vernacular language, perform European reel dances, and satisfy the skills that badges required. Eileen Sandford, a white Guider, explained, “The question of adaptation of tests has occupied many a Council meet-ing, but it is perhaps surprising how few changes from the tests laid down for Great Britain it has been found neces-sary to make.”

312 Julia Martínez, “Problematising Aboriginal Nationalism,” Aboriginal History 21 (1997): 142; Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial Masculinity: The 'Manly Englishman' and The' Effeminate Bengali' in the Late Nineteenth Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), 20-21; Robert Collis, Nigeria in Conflict (London: Secker & Warburg, 1970), 93; Callaway, Gender, Culture, and Empire,114; Michael Adas, Machines As the Measure of Men, 273; Bennett, The Australian Aboriginal As a Human Being, 112-113,133; Leith-Ross, African Women; A Study of the Ibo of Nigeria, 294.

313 Leith-Ross, African Women; A Study of the Ibo of Nigeria, 132-133, 289; Callaway, Gender, Culture, and Empire, 112-113. Leith-Ross hoped to implement the vision of girls’ education that Frederick Lugard had pro-posed during his reign as Governor from 1914-1919 but never funded. To prevent the anti-colonial nationalisms like those emerging in India at the turn of the century and promote ethnic unity, Lugard had advocated that colonial edu-cators carefully monitor the content of their lessons to insure that they instilled students with a sense of loyalty to the British Empire and prepared them to become the wives of Western educated Nigerians. Lugard specifically stipu-lated that African girls should only read books authored by qualified white women.

314 Bush, Imperialism, Race and Resistance Africa and Britain, 1919-1945, 97; LaRay Denzer, “Yoruba Women,” 22; Martins Fabunmi, “Historical Analysis of Educational Policy Formulation In Nigeria: Implications For Educational Planning And Policy,” International Journal of African & African American Studies 4, no. 2 (July 2005): 3.

315 Marsh, Service Suspended, 48-49; Hard Scrabble, 34. 316 Marsh, Hard Scrabble, 75-78; G. Mary Bowers, “The Joys of Guiding in Malaya,” The Council Fire 32,

no. 2 (April 1957): 92-94; “Reports From Countries: India,” The Council Fire 4, no. 4 (October 1934): 144. Guider Bowers described, ““Games in meetings and at trainings were enthusiastically received and played with great ex-citement, especially as the average Malayan girls does not play games in her childhood.”

317 Sheila Bridges “Guiding in Nigeria,” The Council Fire 16, no. 2 (April 1941): 24-25; Anna Haebich, Broken Circles, 102, 154, 223, 225, 284.

121

318 Kerr, The Story of a Million Girls, 223-225; C. Bilqees Taseer, “East to West in Pakistan,” The Council

Fire 28, no. 4 (October 1953): 116-118 319 “India: Extract from Miss Picken’s Letter from Mahableshwar,” The Council Fire 6, no. 3 (April 1931):

20. 320 Brownfoot, “Sisters Under the Skin,” 61-65; “Guiding in Nigeria,” The Council Fire 16, no. 3 (July

1941): 45. 321 “The Centenary Camp in South Australia,” The Council Fire 7, no. 2 (April 1937): 14. 322 Maushart, Sort of a Place Like Home, 198-199. 323 Kerr, The Story of a Million Girls, 224. 324 Gullick, Josephine Foss,73. 325 “News from Overseas: From India, Paris, Germany,” The Age, May 12, 1936, 5. 326 Pamela Dalton, “Tropical Camp in Singapore,” The Council Fire 34, no. 1 (April 1959): 99-102; Alex-

ander, “Girl Guide Movement, Internationalism, and Imperialism in Interwar England, Canada, and India,” 118; Robert Baden-Powell, Girl Guiding: A Handbook for Guidelets Guides, Rangers and Guiders (London: C. Arthur Pearson, 1925),198; Lind, The Compassionate Memsahibs, 80; Eileen Sandford, “Guiding in Nigeria,” The Council Fire 31, no. 4 (October 1956): 146-148.

327 Callaway, Gender, Culture, and Empire, 130-136. 328 Robinson, “The Girl Messenger Service,” 231-233; Watt, “The Promise of ‘Character,’” 30-45; Barne,

Here Come the Girl Guides, 92; Mark Mazower, “An International Civilization? Empire, Internationalism and the Crisis of the Mid-Twentieth Century,” International Affairs 82, no. 3 (May, 2006), 559. Naturally, official histories of the movement stress the central role Robert and Olave Baden-Powell played in the international expansion of Guiding. The presence of colonized Guides at nearly all imperial displays of authority and the Baden-Powells’ pro-motion of Guiding as a tool to civilize the colonized during the twenties and thirties has led most historians to ne-glect the ingenuity of the pioneer Guiders and to ignore the divisions among white Guiders in the colonies.

329 Robert Baden-Powell, Scouting and Youth Movements (London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1929) 28. 330 Lillian Picken, “Letter February 5, 1932 to Olave Baden-Powell;” Helen McSwiney, “International

Gathering at Edith Macy Training School,” The Council Fire 31, 4 (October 1956):151-152; WAGGGS, Tenth Bi-ennial Report, 1946-48, 52, WAGGGS, Fourth Biennial Report, 1934-1936, 45-46; “Untitled,” The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser, August 24 1925, 8; WAGGGS, Second Biennial Report, 1930-1932, 49; “West Australia,” The Council Fire 38, no. 2 (April 1958): 93; “Lady Baden-Powell, Chief Guide of the World,” Mary Johnson Collection, 1930-1950, Cambridge University Library: Royal Commonwealth Society Library; Gwendolen Wilkinson, “Melbourne Centenary Camp,” The Council Fire 10, no. 3 (July 1935): 3.

331 Procter, Scouting for Girls, 36.

122

CHAPTER 3: GIRL GUIDING: MATERNAL NATIONALISM AND THE ABORIGI-

NAL EXCEPTION, 1910-1960

The participation of nationalist heroines like Ammu Swaminadhan, Lady Oyinkan

Abayomi, and Puan Sri Janaky Athi Nahappan in the Guiding movement suggests colonized elite

women in India, Nigeria, and Malaya transformed the imperial maternalism of the Guiding pro-

gram and harnessed it to promote maternal nationalism. Swaminadhan, who married at thirteen

had little formal education, committed her life to women of India. Historians acknowledge the

instrumental role she played in the creation of the Women's India Association in 1917, one of the

first organizations dedicated to improving the lives of Indian women, and the Indian National

Congress during the thirties. They occasionally mention her participation in the Quit India

movement during the early forties or the provincial government of Madras in the late forties and

early fifties.332 Yet, they dismiss her Presidency of The Bharat Scouts and Guides from 1960-

1965 as irrelevant. Historians have treated Lady Oyinkan Abayomi’s involvement in Guiding in

the same manner. Though Cheryl Johnson-Odim mentions her in an article-length biography, no

historian has connected Abayomi’s involvement in multiple nationalist movements with her po-

sition as the First Nigerian Chief Commissioner.333 Likewise, historians mention Puan Sri

Janaky Athi Nahappan, a Malayan Indian woman, in the context of Subhas Chandra Bose, the

radical Indian nationalist that led the Indian National Army to fight against the British during

World War II and John Thivy, whom she worked with to establish the Malayan Indian Congress.

That she dedicated her adult life to the Malayan Guiding movement has passed unexamined.334

These women dedicated their time and resources to a British movement because it provided them

the discourse to be both feminists and nationalists.

123

Third World nationalist movements demanded women to perform an impossible balanc-

ing act: women had to be modern while preserving pre-colonial traditions.335 Guiding’s mater-

nalist framework provided an ideal vehicle for women in India, Malaya, and Nigeria, both colo-

nized and white, to promote a national feminine citizenship that infused Western modernity with

traditional customs. In the decades preceding independence, Guiders in Nigeria, Malaya, and In-

dia disagreed over which ideal of maternal citizenship the program should encourage. Most

white Guiders believed imperial citizenship to be more global and inclusive than national citi-

zenship; Western-educated colonized Guiders and a few white Guiders wanted the program to

encourage girls embrace a national rather than communal or imperial identity. Because partici-

pants in the movements of Nigeria, Malaya, and India had already connected Guiding with na-

tionalism before independence, they seamlessly transitioned from symbols of imperial authority

to symbols of national independence with formal independence.336

Australia, a white Dominion that attained self-government in 1901, maintained cultural

ties to the Empire. Recently, many historians of the “New British History” allege that Australia

only developed a distinct nationalism separate from a pan-British identity in the 1970s. The de-

velopment of Australian Guiding movement confirms that Australians maintained an imperial

identity based on British race patriotism. Whiteness remained an essential element of the Austra-

lian imperial identity.337

As in other settler colonies, the logic of elimination replaced the civilizing mission as the

ruling ethic of the colonizers. Until recently, most Westerners never considered decolonization or

self-government as potential outcomes for Aborigines. In the early twentieth century, the major-

ity of Western experts agreed that Aborigines would die out. When Aborigine numbers grew

instead, the government adopted an assimilation strategy that sanctioned authorities to take

124

lighter skinned Aboriginal children from their families without consent to be raised in state insti-

tutions.338 Most Aboriginal Guides participated in the Guiding while at institutions under the

direction of white missionary Guiders and rarely sought to continue their involvement when they

left. Furthermore, Aboriginal nationalists, who began to gain the public’s attention in the sixties

and seventies, never embraced the Western conceptions of maternalism that pervade the Guiding

program. Many of those who had been raised apart from their mothers or had their children sto-

len by the government sought to reclaim Aboriginal family structures rather than adopt Western

models of femininity. Even in the twenty-first century, Aboriginal girls and women remain mar-

ginalized from the Guiding movement.339

This chapter compares the ways colonial women, colonizers and colonized, used Guiding

to imagine feminized nationalist projects that provided women a role in the male-dominated na-

tionalist movements of India, Nigeria, and Malaya.340 Such Guiders rejected the Western mater-

nalism of the metropole where white mothers guided colonized women and girls into an imperial

modernity. Instead, nationalist Guiders proposed a maternalism of colonized women who trans-

formed colonized Guides into the wives and mothers of great nationalist leaders or the figurative

mothers of the uneducated villagers. Because nationalists Guiders never resorted to anti-colonial

nationalism and left the political details of their future nation undefined, historians have over-

looked the role they played in the independence of Malaya, Nigeria, and India. After independ-

ence, because nationalist Guiders already had chipped away at the imperial jargon and symbol-

ism of the movement, national governments eagerly appointed Guide companies to serve as

agents of decolonization and national independence among village women who had yet to iden-

tify with the nation. In Australia, the logic of elimination and the legacy of the White Australia

125

Policy prevented the Guiders of Aboriginal girls from imagining the program as means to pro-

mote Aboriginal nationalism.341

India: Conflicting Ideas of Citizenship, 1911-1960

India provides the earliest example of nationalists demanding that the Guiding movement

shift from ideas of imperial to national citizenship. The friction between maternal imperialists

and maternal nationalists emerged at the inception of the movement. Though maternal imperial-

ists were predominately white Guiders and maternal nationalists predominately colonized

Guiders, the exceptions testify to the complexity of colonial history and support Anne Stoler’s

assertion that “The Manichaean world of high colonialism which we have etched so deeply in

our historiographies was thus nothing of the sort.”342 The disagreement between maternal nation-

alists over who belonged to the imagined community of the nation challenged the secular nature

of Guiding and further impaired cooperation between colonized Guiders before and immediately

after independence despite their similar goals to educate girls in the duties of modern feminine

citizenship. By the late 1930s, many colonized Guiders had abandoned the idea of an inclusive

Indian nation open to both Muslims and Hindus and began to advocate a more parochial citizen-

ship.343

Scouting came to Indian girls before Agnes and Robert Baden-Powell had quelled the

controversy that erupted over the creation of Girl Guides in the metropole (where many vocal

opponents insisted that it was unfeminine and harmful to girls’ health). Miss Davies, a teacher at

Isabella Thoburn, an American Mission School in Lucknow, India, began a scouting movement

for girls based on Robert Baden-Powell’s Boy Scout program but oriented towards the imagined

community of India rather than the British Empire.344 Most likely unaware that Girl Guides had

arrived to Jabalpur, India for European girls, Davies called her girls’ scouting organization the

126

Girl Messenger Service. Through activities she adapted from Baden-Powell’s Scouting for Boys,

she hoped to invest girls in the future of India rather than their religious or ethnic community.345

Agnes Baden-Powell had not even begun writing the official handbook when Davies published

her own handbook, Girl Messenger Handbook.346

Despite the nationalist orientation of her girls’ scouting program, Miss Davies exempli-

fies many of the characteristics and goals of the first white Guiders in the British colonies. She

was an American missionary who wanted to impart Western habits and values to her students.

Davies believed that the “parliamentary” meetings, fundraisers for community service projects,

and lessons in first aid, domestic science, and personal hygiene would overcome what her col-

league, Flora Robinson, identified as “centuries of snobbish scorn” that Indians had for manual

labor, earning money, and diversity. Robinson helped Miss Davies start scouting at Isabella

Thoburn and during her watch as principal from 1919-1921 heavily promoted it. An article she

composed for Woman’s Missionary Friend remains the only first-hand participant account of the

Girl Messengers. In it, Robinson, affirmed the benefits scouting brought to Indian participants:

“In a country where even Westerners and Christians are sometimes tempted to cater to caste and

sect feeling, Mohammedans, Hindus of different castes, and Christians alike promise to try ‘to be

a friend to all and a comrade to every other Messenger.”347 The Fourth Law of Scouting reinter-

preted as the Fourth Law of the Girl Messengers created the possibility for a multiethnic inter-

faith Indian nationalism that Davies promoted.

Unlike other missionary guiders, Davies saw her Messengers as the future citizens of In-

dia. When headquarters Britain sanctioned the prohibition of Indian members, Davies’s views

appear to have become uncompromising. Thus, the activities and ideals Davies shared with other

missionary Guiders had very different intentions. Most white missionary Guiders hoped to create

127

imperial citizens that belonged to the transnational British Empire on equal footing as their Brit-

ish sisters. Davies wanted girls to belong to an Indian national community, one that honored In-

dian and Western traditions.

Such different perspectives changed the purpose of activities and goals Davies had ap-

propriated from Robert Baden-Powell’s Scouting program. Nearly all white Guiders endorsed

Scouting activities as an ideal way to preserve native arts. Most understood their efforts through

the lens of civilization hierarchies; keeping only the elements from colonized cultures that com-

plemented British culture and protected Guides from the temptations civilization brought as em-

bodied in the Modern Girl.348 Davies believed that tradition laid the groundwork for a sense of

belonging to an imagined community of Indians that included men and women from all faith tra-

ditions and classes. Her colleague, Robinson described how this worked: “In a community, too,

where the tendency to discard native customs and become Westernized as fast as possible, the

girls vie with one another in making collections of Indian stories, and learning Indian songs,

playing Indian games, and showing why they love their country.”349 The national orientation of

the Girl Messenger Service insured its popularity, expansion, and imitation. However, the na-

tionalism advocated by Davies and other leaders of the Girl Messengers never expressed the anti-

colonial sentiment that had only begun to emerge in India after the partition of Bengal in 1905.

In 1916, Annie Besant, whom Baden-Powell’s daughter Heather described as “the nota-

ble Englishwoman and disciple of Gandhi,” started her own scouting organization just for Indian

children.350 She called members Boy Scouts and Sister Scouts and envisioned them as the first

citizens of India. Scouting was just one of the venues within which she advocated on behalf of

Indian Home Rule during the First World War. Most of her efforts specifically targeted women

and girls, as she believed educated women essential to the national movement. Without citizen-

128

ship education, Besant believed women would impede nationalist efforts insisting that their fami-

lies adhere to backwards traditions: “The Indian woman has more power than almost any other in

the world. Inside the house at least she is supreme, and the men bow down before her and do all

she wants. There, in fact, lies the great difficulty of reform.” Seen in government circles as a

subversive nuisance, Besant spoke out against the British Empire in favor of labor rights, self-

rule in India and Ireland, and Theosophy in her books, speeches, newspaper (New India), and in

many endeavors, including Sister Scouts.351

Like Davies, Besant took the imperial maternalism of Baden-Powell’s movement and

made it align to contemporary ideals of Indian nationalism. Most Indian girls, according Besant,

would grow up to serve the nation of India as mothers and wives and would need only primarily

the skills and characteristics scouting provided: physical fitness, domestic science, arts, basic

English, and vernacular literacy. Only a few, those “women of the most noble and most self-

sacrificing character” who planned not to marry needed a formal education in order to become

“mothers of the motherless, the nurses of the sick, the helpers of the miserable.”352 Besant saw

Sister Scouts as an inexpensive way to extend basic education to all women and girls. Through

song, camping, and drill, the same skills that the official movement offered, she hoped to achieve

a different goal. Her Sister Scouts would serve the nation as citizens rather than the Empire.353

In 1916 when Mrs. Maurice Bear, the wife of a British bureaucrat stationed in Calcutta,

became president of the newly created governing association for all official Guide companies in

the Indian Empire known as All-India Girl Guiding Association, she immediately petitioned

headquarters to grant her permission to accept Indian members. Many Indian girls had already

joined the Girl Messenger Service, Besant’s Sister Scouts, or an unofficial guide company that

white missionaries and Indian women had started across India.354 Bear realized that Indian

129

women had not only gained leadership positions in the Girl Messenger Service and Besant's Sis-

ter Scouts, but also had created an unofficial network of Indian scouting companies complete

with regional councils that offered girls everything official Guiding promised. These organiza-

tions also provided Indian women with positions of leadership and influence, and as a result In-

dian women would not join the official All-India Girl Guide Association if they had to hand over

their authority to an all-white women officer corps. The Indian women who had taken up the

cause of girl scouting were highly educated and included Hindu and Muslim women. The intel-

lectual elite of Bengali society respected these women’s dedication to girls’ education. To con-

vince Indians that the Girl Guide Association would not thwart Indian involvement and influence

within the organization and to demonstrate the movements appeal to all Indian girls, Bear re-

cruited four of the leading Bengali reformers who had already begun to use Guiding to improve

girls’ education: Prabha Ghoshal, who went on to become the State Secretary of West Bengal in

the fifties; Lady Abala Bose, who would become the first Indian Commissioner in 1920 and

founder of the Brahmo Girls School in Calcutta in 1919; Sarala P.K. Roy, a Brahmo Samajist

who directed the prestigious Chokale Memorial School Girls’ School; and, Mrs. Hossein, who

started one of the first Muslim girls’ schools.355

Though they left a only a few small marks on the historical record, these four women led

efforts to transform Guiding from a British import into a tool to train Indian girls to be more than

mothers and wives of their children and husbands. All embraced the ideal of maternal Indian

citizenship where women took on the role of mothers of the nation of India. They saw Guiding as

a means to align Western models of childrearing, first aid, physical fitness, fundraising, and com-

munity involvement with “Indian” concepts adapted from Islamic and Hindu faith traditions. All

remained active in the movement until the late fifties.356 In addition to Girl Guides, all were

130

involved in multiple women’s organizations and participated actively in debates over Indian in-

dependence. Unlike male nationalists, they cared more about welfare issues and women’s rights

than issues regarding level of independence of the Indian nation. For example, shortly after Bose

had become active in the official movement, Bose was part of a delegation of women to the min-

ister of India who felt that the all male national leadership who had negotiated government re-

forms had failed to address the issues they considered most important: compulsory free educa-

tion for all Indian children, professional training programs for women, and improved healthcare

for women and children.357 As the independence movement became anti-British and more sectar-

ian in the thirties these women distanced themselves from formal politics and instead pursued

their nationalist visions through Guiding and other outreach programs for women. Their in-

volvement insured that most unofficial Guide companies joined the official movement. The Ni-

gerian movement experienced as similar incorporation of unofficial companies in the late forties

when a colonized Guider assumed the position Deputy Commissioner and allowed Nigerian

women to volunteer as Guiders. The early involvement of prominent Indian women also helped

popularize the movement among Indian reformers and draw many other prominent Indian

women to the movement. In Malaya and Nigeria, this occurred decades later after Indian and

Pakistan had already gained independence. In the hands of Ghosha, Bose, Roy, and Hossein,

Guiding, for Indian girls, nearly from its inception, stressed service work as a natural extension

of motherhood and as a forge to a unified Indian identity that girls from all religions, regions,

and castes shared.358

As Bear worked to incorporate the disparate scouting associations under the supervision

and organization of the All-India Guiding Association, three Hindu scholars, Pandit Sriram Ba-

jpai, Pandit Hridayanath Kunzru, and Pandit Madan Mohan Malavya organized the Seva Samiti

131

Boy Scouts Association which included Seva Samiti Guides in 1918. Carey Watt, who is occa-

sionally referred to as “the historian of the boy scouts of India,” demonstrates in his 2005 Serv-

ing the Nation: Cultures of Service, Association, and Citizenship that Seva Samiti Scouts was

among the institutionalized social service organizations that proliferated among the Hindu elites

and middle classes during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Like its adult prede-

cessors, the Allahabad Seva Samitis, the Arya Samaj, and the Servants of India, Seva Samiti

Scouts drew from Hindu religious concepts to “Hinduise” scouting. They connected the Hindu

concept of dana or generosity to Scouting’s emphasis on daily service. The maternal focus on

domestic skills and mothercraft of the original Guiding program complemented the Indian con-

cept of pati seva, or women’s inherent domestic obligations. Dharma, a Hindu concept of duty,

corresponded with Scouting’s portrayal of active citizenship as set of responsibilities with no

guaranteed rights.359

By 1919, Seva Samiti Scouts had expanded across northern India and had become “the

biggest of the Indian scout associations.” Its membership was predominately male. Because the

official Indian Boy Scout Association prohibited Indian membership till 1921, Indian boys and

scout leaders had to join the Seva Samiti Scouts or Besant’s Boy Scouts. Indian women and girls

had more options. After 1916 Indian women who decided to lead a troop of girl scouts had a va-

riety of scouting organizations to choose from. Thus, only a few companies joined the Seva Sa-

miti Scouts. Many women objected to the distinctly Hindu nationalism Seva Samiti Scouts

schooled it members in. Other chose the Messengers, Sister Scouts, or official Girl Guides for

more practical reason: Girl Guides and the Girl Messenger Service already had literature in some

Indian languages; all were female directed; and all had established networks of support.360

For almost four years, Bear as President of the All-India Association struggled to con-

132

vince the Girl Messenger Service, Seva Samiti Guides, and Besant’s Sister Scouts to join the of-

ficial movement. All objected to the aspects of the program that required girls to demonstrate

allegiance to the King or Empire.361 Bear described her frustration with Davies, the founder of

the Girls Messenger Service:

At present, this attempt [to incorporate Girl Messengers into the Guiding movement] is in abeyance, until the opinion of the founder of the Messengers who is at present in America can be obtained, she having opposed affiliation at a former date chiefly on the ground that the Guiders teach loyalty to the British Empire while the Messengers are taught loyalty to their own country, India.362

Bear did not give up. She appointed Indians to prominent leadership positions in the organization

and created a Guiding handbook that she believed to be particularly geared towards local condi-

tions. She published it in 1918 as Steps to Girl Guiding with Robert Baden-Powell as the listed

author to increase sales. Bear’s handbook essentially reproduces Baden Powell’s 1918 Girl

Guiding: A Handbook for Guidelets Guides, Rangers and Guiders without the sections that bla-

tantly address only white British girls. Bear may have also abridged the handbook so that its

translation would be faster and cheaper.363 Bear’s efforts proved fruitful. Many princely states

that had started their own scouting movements joined the larger movement, and the popularity of

Girl Guides in India began to expand beyond the educated elite. With the larger scouting asso-

ciations, Seva Samiti Guides, Besant’s Sister Scouts, and the Girl Messenger Service, Bear made

little progress.

Finally in 1921, upon invitation of Lord Chelmsford, the Viceroy of India, Robert and

Olave Baden-Powell came to India to negotiate a merger between the many scouting associa-

tions. In his 1933 memoir, Lessons from the ‘Varsity of Life,’ Robert portrays the divisions

among the official movement, the Seva Samiti Guides, the Girl Messenger Service, and Besant’s

Sister Guides as a misunderstanding that he successfully solved. He claimed, “Eventually Mrs.

133

Annie Besant, who headed a very considerable contingent, agreed to join up with the parent

Movement, and as she commanded the respect of the Indians generally, there was little doubt

that her action in doing so would prove a very persuasive example to the remainder.”364 Official

histories of the international Guiding movement confirm Robert’s versions of events. To admit

otherwise would have revealed the limitations of Guiding’s international focus and the failure of

the movement to fully recognize India as an equal in the imperial family of Dominions and de-

pendencies.365

Lakshmi Mazumdar, a leader of the Indian Guiding movement who published a history of

the movement in India in 1955, contests Robert’s version. She documents that the Seva Samiti

Guides dropped out of the merger because Robert insisted they adopted the original Promise that

required members recite “To do my duty to God and the King.”366 Olave’s diary and correspon-

dence with the Chief Commissioner of Guiding of India in the thirties confirms that Seva Samiti

Guides remained unaffiliated with the international movement and firmly entrenched in national-

ist politics. During her visit to India in 1937, Olave recorded that she spent one afternoon “plot-

ting with Lady Haig & Mrs. Kharepat (U.P.) as to how to tackle the imitation Seva Samiti

Guides run by ‘Congress.’”367 To Olave and other WAGGGS leaders, Seva Samiti seemed a

politicized version of the original program as misled as fascist youth organizations in South Af-

rica, Germany, and Italy. Her word choice, specifically “plotting,” “tackle,” and “imitation,” de-

monizes the Seva Samiti Guides as well as the idea of independent India.368

That the Seva Samiti Guides refused the Baden-Powells’ offers of inclusion suggest that

colonized contemporaries questioned the commitment of global sisterhood that Girl Guiding pro-

jected. They admired the program for its focus on character development, physical training, and

domestic science, but interpreted the symbolic acts of loyalism to the British crown as evidence

134

that the program was more imperial than international.369 A subsequent public statement Robert

Baden-Powell made during his 1937 visit to India confirmed the doubts of the Seva Samiti and

led many Indian Scout leaders and possibly Guiders to leave the official movement. In a discus-

sion May 8, 1937, with journalists, Robert explained, “India at present suffers from three main

handicaps as a Nation - Lack of Character, Lack of Health and Lack of Unity. Scout training,

however, aims at producing these qualities which India now lacked.” Though Robert apologized

publicly, most Indian Boy Scout companies, according to Mazumdar, defected to Seva Samiti,

which renamed itself the Hindustan Scout Association in 1938.370 Mazumdar and the academic

historians of Scouting fail to specify how Robert’s words affected the Indian Guiding movement.

The Fourth Biennial Report of WAGGGS (1936-1938) suggests that the movement lost a num-

ber of leaders and Guides during this period. The report blames the loss of Indian members on

“changes taking place in Government”; the timing implies that it is equally likely that Indian

Guiders left in response to Robert’s racist remarks.371

After Besant pledged her support to Robert, she became a committed advocate of Scout-

ing as the most effective way to prepare children for the multiethnic, interfaith nation they would

join when the British consented to Home-Rule or self-government for India that resembled that

of white Dominions. Unlike the Sister Scouts or Seva Samiti Guides, Girl Guides had attracted

prominent Muslim women to volunteer and promote the movement.372 Besant, who regretted the

failure of Theosophy to attract Muslims, saw the potential of a mixed religious movement and

claimed, “If I had a dozen sons -- I would send them all into the Scout Movement, as soon as

they could enter its lowest grade. And I would send the daughters into the Girl Guides, under

similar conditions.”373 Her confidence that Guiding gave girls and boys the skills they need as

citizens of an independent India convinced even the most prominent anti-imperialists like Jawa-

135

harlal Nehru and Rabindranath Tagore to become involved in the movement in the early

1920s.374 Robert rewarded Besant’s loyalty with the appointment as the Honorary Scout Com-

missioner for All India and shortly before her death with the prestigious Scouting honor, the Sil-

ver Wolf. Official Guiding histories and academic studies do not detail Besant’s involvement

with Scouting in the twenties, and evidence suggests she did little beyond promote the organiza-

tion.375 Even though her ideas about Indian nationalism lost prominence in the twenties to Gan-

dhi’s concept of complete Indian independence from Britain, the symbolic weight of her affilia-

tion with the movement led nationalists, both those who continued to advocate for Home Rule

like Muhammad Ali Jinnah and those who wanted total Indian independence like Jawaharlal Ne-

hru to consider the movement a viable method of training future citizens.376

Most white Guiders and a few Indian Guiders saw the nationalist rhetoric of Besant and

Indian Guiders as political and narrow-minded patriotism and thus antithetical to the Guide

movement that was explicitly nonpolitical (although self-consciously committed to Empire).377

The pledge to the King in the Promise remained the symbolic issue that divided women volun-

teers into those, mostly white, who wanted Guiding to encourage citizenship to the Empire and

those, mostly Indian, who wanted Guides to be trained as Indian citizens. Indian officers first ex-

pressed their dissatisfaction at national conferences and proposed a minor change, -- to change

King to country so the Promise would read, “To do my duty to God and country.” Most white

Guiders remained resolutely against any change. One explained, “As the loyal bonding together

of all daughters of the Empire, whether English, Canadian, South African, Australian or Indian,

etc., is a great asset and makes a great bond, this part of our service could not be abandoned

without rendering on the whole no use and indeed harmful [sic]...and shows the need of a Girl

Guide movement among Indian girls all the more.”378 Rather than compromise with their Indian

136

colleagues, many white officers agreed with the Guider quoted above and interpreted any expres-

sions of nationalism as signs of the deficits of Indian character. Because white women monopo-

lized the officer positions in the All-India Guiding Association and most saw Indian nationalism

as divisive, they held out until the mid-1940s when their small numbers and the inevitability of

Indian independence made their position untenable.

The intransigence of the predominately white officer corps did little to persuade Indian

officers of the merits of the original Promise and led some prominent Indian supporters of the

movement to start their own scouting movements.379 Once Indian officers realized that the ma-

jority white Executive Council would not consider their changes, they adopted various methods

to demonstrate their continued objections. Lady Abala Bose, after she had stressed the issue

within the Association to no avail, encouraged the Guides at her Brahmo Girls School to refuse

to recite the Guide’s Promise. After this protest went public, demands to change the promise be-

came pronounced. Some Guides and Guiders resigned; others ignored the policy.380 The well-

known Nobel Prize winning Bengali poet, Rabindranath Tagore, who had integrated Scouting

into his rural regeneration experiment at Sriniketana, dropped his affiliation with the move-

ment.381 The most prominent Indian and white women who supported Indian nationalism, how-

ever, remained committed to the movement, which insured that the Seva Samiti Guide remained

a marginal movement that moved increasingly towards a narrower form of Indian nationalism

that only included Hindus.

India stands out as the only movement from my case studies that successfully drew in a

large number of Indian Guiders outside of the English-speaking elite. Like Nigeria and Malaya, a

few well-educated elite colonized women worked directly with the predominately white officer

corps to influence the structure and policies of the movement. By 1931, 75% of the membership

137

was Indian.382 Outside of the core of politically engaged, well-educated Indian women, most

Indian Guiders came from more modest educational backgrounds and did not speak English. A

significant number were illiterate. Most of the non-elite Guiders retained a communal focus and

never sought to imbue their Guides with a conception of an imagined interfaith Indian commu-

nity. They came to the movement with a general goal to expose the girls in their communities to

first aid, physical challenges, and Western health habits.383 Nonetheless, the changes they im-

plemented to aspects of the program that felt impractical or foreign in many instances had rami-

fications for all of India and at times even affected the metropole’s policies.384

Non-elite Indian Guiders, because they spoke the vernacular language and understood the

various cultures of India, could better adapt the activities to correspond to the region. Lillian

Pickens, an American missionary who was the Commissioner of India from 1930-1935, ob-

served, “Their grasp of the aims and methods of Guiding and their ability to adapt it to the needs

of Indian village girls is truly amazing, especially in view of the fact that there is practically no

literature on Guiding in Marathi.”385 The changes they made to the program at the local level

cumulatively Indianized the movement.

By the 1930s, non-elite Guiders had reshaped local aspects of the program to reflect In-

dian “traditions” and accommodate for the cultural demands of their Guides. Because regional

camps and meetings operated along the parliamentary system and votes often fell along the color

line, Indians overruled white Guiders who hoped to stay true to the original movement. For ex-

ample at a council meeting at a training camp in Panhala, where 76 out of 81 participants were

Indian, participants voted to rename “Blue Birds,” the youngest Guide group named after a Bel-

gium play, The Blue Bird, to “Bulbuls,” the name of a bird indigenous to India, even though

three of the four Western Guiders disagreed.386 Committed at least discursively to the democratic

138

process, white Guiders had little choice but to accept changes in the program ranging from re-

cruitment tactics to uniforms to the issue of child marriage. As they gradually lost their power

and authority, more elite Indian Guiders gained leadership roles at the regional and All-India

level.

The elite Guiders who served the Association as officers placed the changes non-elite

Guiders made at local level in the context of nationalism. At the insistence of local Indian offi-

cers, Bulbuls eventually officially replaced Blue Birds as the official name of the youngest

branch of Indian Guides across all of India. When Guiders in Kashmir reported to the All-India

Association that they lost most of the members above the age of twelve to marriage, Indian offi-

cers changed badge requirements to stress what they considered most necessary elements of the

Guiding program to these young wives: mothercraft, nursing, and domestic skills. Nationalist

officers, who had little faith in the government to enforce the Child Marriage Restraint Act that

passed in 1929, pushed Guiders to focus recruiting efforts on younger girls who would be able to

participate in the movement long enough to master the skills they would need as wives and

mothers.387 As local Guiders adopted a range of uniforms to appeal to different the religious

communities in which they worked, elite Guiders insisted that Indians have a variety of authenti-

cally Indian uniforms in order to stand out from the khaki and navy blue jumpers of their West-

ern peers and reflect the diversity of Indian culture.388

Indian Guide officers successfully changed the program’s approach towards uniformity

not only at the national level but also at the international level. Though the founders of Guiding,

Robert, Agnes, and Olave Baden-Powell, initially had insisted that a common uniform unified all

members despite class or ethnicity, the innovations that Indian women made convinced Olave

and other white officers and Guiders that different uniforms could indicate the international di-

139

versity of the movement and its inclusion of non-Western customs.389 After World War II,

WAGGGS encouraged each national association to develop a unique uniform that represented

their country’s culture and past. In the 1946 Be Prepared: Handbook for Guides, the first at-

tempt to revise the Baden-Powell version, A.M Maynard emphasized this new policy: “Guides

and Girl Scouts of different countries, unlike the Boy Scouts do not all wear the same uni-

form.”390 Indian Guiders’ resolve to train girls to be proud of India and its non-Western policies

slowly changed the Indian Guiding program as well as international policy.391

Just as white Guiders had their Guides perform at imperial demonstrations of authority,

Guiders who wanted their Guides to identify primarily as Indians included them in demonstra-

tions of Indian nationality. For the first All-India Women’s Conference [AIWC] of 1927 on

Educational Reform, Rani Saheb, the State Guiding Commissioner of Sangli, recruited Indian

Guides to volunteer.392 Dressed in sari uniforms, Guides escorted delegates, who came from

across India, from the train station through Pune to their lodging and then to the Conference the

following mornings. During the Conference, they served as the honor guard for the Conference

President and delivered messages. After its inaugural conference, the AIWC remained an enthu-

siastic supporter of Guiding and often used Guides at its events.393

In the thirties, Indian Guiders began to submit articles to the The Council Fire that advo-

cated for a united India. Pushpam S. John, one of the first Indian contributors, explained, “It is

my strong belief that it only through the Guides of to-day that the vast land of India can come

together, can put aside all prejudices of caste or creed, and begin to understand and respect each

other religion and opinions in politics.394 Sherene Rustomjee, who became an Indian correspon-

dent for The Council Fire in the forties, spoke out against the increasingly exclusive expressions

of nationalism 1943 article entitled “Education in Patriotism.” She reminded Guides that India

140

included Hindus, Christians, and Muslims and advised Guiders to teach their Guides how to ana-

lyze the discourse of sectarian groups like the All-India Muslim League, Indian National Con-

gress, and Hindu Mahasabha political party critically.395 Other Indian Guiders submitted popular

Indian literary pieces that expressed nationalist sentiment. For example one Guider anonymously

submitted Gitanjali (Song Offerings) by Rabindranath Tagore that declared “Into that heaven of

freedom, my Father, let my country awake.”396

Not all Guiders imagined the future India as multiethnic and religiously inclusive. The

Arya Samaj, a Hindu social service association originally founded in 1875, avidly promoted

Guiding at its girls’ schools as a demonstration of swadeshi preeti (love for one’s country) and

used it to build a sense of community among Hindus of different castes. Their Guides regularly

performed and volunteered at melas (fairs and festivals) and took on public health projects in vil-

lages. However, all activities stressed a Hindu conception of feminine citizenship that used

Hindu concepts to promote maternalism and Hindu insigne to demonstrate nationalism. While

Muslim organizations occasionally contributed volunteers to melas sponsored by the Arya Samaj

and Guides often assisted Muslim families during famines or epidemics, Samajist Guiders advo-

cated a Hindu nationalism that saw Islam as a dangerous force that if left unopposed would con-

vert the ‘Depressed Classes’ of Hindus.397

In the thirties, Samajist Guide activities became more overtly demonstrative of their de-

sire for a future India nation that included all Hindus regardless of where they lived.398 In 1934,

a company of Girl Guides from the Arya Samaj’s Kanya Mahavidyalaya in Jalandhar traveled to

South Africa and Rhodesia for a four-month performance tour to raise money for school and

promote a sense of Hindu (trans) nationalism among South African Indians.399 Pandit Nardev

Vedalankar, a South African Arya Samajist described

141

The Girl Guides left behind a lasting impression on the minds of the people in this coun-try. Never before had the European as well as Indian community witnessed such the per-formance of such feats. The excellent displays of items, such as Indian club swimming, feats of Yoga asans [sic], archery, garba-dance, dagger drill, dragger fight, swordfight, uble [sic] sticks play, word and shield and staves fight held large audiences spellbound and captivated their hearts. Forceful and impressive speeches by the captain and other leads of the Guides astonished all those that heard them. It was beyond one’s conception to see Indian girls and women who are known all the world over for their seclusion and purdah system attired in almost military uniform. When not performing or traveling to performances, the Samajist Guides met with gov-

ernment officials and prominent Indians.400 According Thillayvel Naidoo, a South African relig-

ious scholar, the Guides’ performances inspired a few Indian girls in South Africa to pursue

higher education and may have encouraged the University of Natal to allow women students,

which it began in 1936. The South African Guide trip represents an expression of Hindu nation-

alism clothed behind the seemingly benign maternalism of physical spectacles of fitness that

most Samajist Guides only performed in their local communities.401

By the forties, some Guiders had involved their Guides in displays of support for the All-

India Muslim League and the idea of a separate Muslim nation. Amma Jaan, a Guide before in-

dependence, recalled her company making the trip with a number of other Guide companies to

Lahore when the League met in March of 1940 and Muhammad Ali Jinnah, later known as the

Quaid-i-Azam (Father of Pakistan) announced the Lahore Resolution, which demanded separate

Muslim states upon independence. She remembered,

On the 22nd, driven by the zeal of the day and the spirit of being young Muslim Girl Guides, we all decided to march to the venue on foot. We had in our hearts, the ambition to finally set our eyes on our dear Quaid. We had on our lips, the chants of Pakistan Zindabad and Quaid- e-Azam Payindabad. We had in our hands the emerald flags of Muslim League.402

Traditionally cut off from politics, Muslim women adapted Guiding into a means to ex-

press and pursue their visions of independence.403 Khawar Mumtaz and Farida Shaheed, scholars

142

of gender and human rights in Asia, argue, “In collecting funds, selling badges, and propagating

the idea of Pakistan, all the women a girls involved, by appearing in public and interacting with

strangers, were violating the unwritten but centuries old rule of purdah and confinement for Mus-

lim women.”404 The visible presence of Guides at Muslim League events and the involvement of

a few members of the Women's Central Subcommittee of the All India Muslim League with the

movement convinced Jinnah, the first Governor-General of Pakistan, to fully support the move-

ment upon independence.405

Despite Indian Guiders desire to impart Indian citizenship to Guides, few wholeheartedly

embraced the anti-imperialist, Hindu tone of Gandhian nationalism and only participated spo-

radically in the Swadeshi (self-sufficiency) movement. Some wore khadi (handspun and woven

cloth) and taught their middle-class Indian Guides the cottage industries of spinning and weav-

ing.406 However, many continued to work at or attend government funded schools or in govern-

ment social services during the Quit Indian. Moreover, nearly all Guiders enlisted their Guides in

the war effort even though the Indian National Congress opposed supporting the war.407 By

1940s, most elite nationalist Guiders had distanced themselves political debates raging among

male nationalists and the overt demonstrations of anti-imperialism. Because many of their hus-

bands worked for the Indian Civil Service, some could not participate in the mass demonstrations

Gandhi organized. Nearly all focused their energy on the social aspects of nationalism rather

than the political.408

World War II brought international acknowledgement and leadership positions to suc-

cessful Indian Guiders. As white women left the movement in considerable numbers to focus on

their children who no longer could go to Britain for school or to take on full-time volunteer posi-

tions related to WWII, Indian women essentially took over the movement. They occupied the

143

most prominent leadership roles below that of Chief Commissioner, which Lady Croften insisted

she hold until a month before independence.409 Many of their projects allowed Indian women

who publicly favored independence to gain international reputations as competent leaders of

large-scale projects. In 1942, Sherene Rustomjee, who was a well-known nationalist Guider in

India, gained the attention of the white leadership corps of WAGGGS when her Guide compa-

nies took on the care of 161 Polish children.410 WAGGGS embraced her nationalist views of citi-

zenship that demanded women to take on the same responsibilities that the imperial citizenship

the original program specified. In contrast to the original program, however, Rustomjee advo-

cated service, fitness, and patriotism as characteristics of Indian citizens. After the war,

WAGGGS appointed Rustomjee as a Guiding representative to recently independent Asian

countries with hope that she would insure that Girl Guides offered a positive conception of femi-

nine nationalist citizenship based on the tenets of Western modernization.411

With the partition of India in 1947, India inherited the organization of the All-India As-

sociation under the direction of the first Indian Chief Commissioner, Mrs. H. C. Captain.412 In

Pakistan, Begum G.A. Khan, who before independence had been the Provincial Girl Guide

Commissioner of the Punjab, constructed the Pakistan Girl Guide Association at the request of

the Governor-General of Pakistan, Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, known as the “Father

of the Nation.” Despite the partition and pre-independence manifestations of sectarian Guiding,

both associations promoted a multiethnic secular form of maternal citizenship that insured them

government support.413

After independence, Indian and Pakistani Guide officers sought to expand using innova-

tive policies to encourage more girls and women to learn the responsibilities of national citizen-

ship. The middle classes of India and Pakistan understood Guiding as a necessary activity that

144

trained their daughters as citizens. Middle-class Muslim parents even began to allow their daugh-

ters who practiced purdah to participate in public events like rallies and social service projects.414

However, most families who lived in villages knew little if anything about the movement, hesi-

tated to allow their daughters, whose labor they depended on, to spend hours playing games, and

had little sense of belonging to an imagined community of India or Pakistan.415

To reach the masses, both associations formed a close relationship with their respective

national government. They became directly involved in their modernization efforts and refugee

relief efforts, and invented traditions that provided girls with a sense of continuity with the his-

toric past.416 The Pakistan Association attempted to enroll Guides in modernization campaigns

for literacy, public sanitation, and vaccination.417 It developed policies that stressed a continuous

history and set of native traditions shared by East and West Pakistan. The Association also

adopted new uniforms modeled on those that the Muslim League’s Women’s National Guard

had worn in the early forties to evoke the legacy of Muslim anti-imperialism. Large Guide gath-

erings featured “native” folk dances and exhibitions of traditional arts and crafts and through

government funding included Guiders and Guides from both West and East Pakistan.418 Through

such activities, Pakistan Guiders changed Guiding into a tool to promote a maternal Pakistani

citizenship that gave girls and women the responsibility to integrate the marginalized village

populations into modernity and the Pakistani nation and to promote national traditions as histori-

cal. Essentially, Pakistani Guides and Guiders became the agents of a new, national civilizing

mission.419

In India, to coordinate better with the federal and state governments, the Girl Guide As-

sociation united with the Boy Scout Association and the Hindustan Scout Association (before

1938, the Seva Samiti Scout Association) to form a single Association, the Bharat Scouts and

145

Guides in 1951.420 Scouts and Guides rarely physically worked together, but they shared facili-

ties, personnel, finances, and long-term goals. As part of the First Five Year Plan for Social Wel-

fare in India, the Association worked to overcome the breach between the urban Western-

educated Guides and their village counterparts through camping and new badge requirements

that demanded cross-cultural encounters. It sent Guides to camps outside of villages where they

would spend two weeks working with the villagers, ideally teaching them basic sanitation tech-

niques and Westernized conceptions of childcare while impressing upon them the value of man-

ual labor.421 The Indian Planning Commission declared, “These camps inculcated among the

youth a sense of dignity of labour and discipline. They served to bridge the gulf between the

class rooms and the outside work, between dwellers in the villages and in towns.”422 When the

Indian government redrew state boundaries in 1956, the Association developed badge require-

ments that encouraged Guides of antagonistic ethnic groups to work together.423 Such nationally

relevant efforts assured that India and Pakistan movements gained the respect of WAGGGS and

individual national movements.424

Models of the post-war Guiding Internationalism: India and Pakistan

Within a decade Western and non-Western national associations began to emulate Paki-

stan and India. To Guiding officers across war-torn Europe and colonized Guiders involved in

nationalist movements, Indian and Pakistani Guiders seemed to have created a feminine national-

ism that embraced the beneficial aspects of Western culture while preserving indigenous tradi-

tions. Some Western associations combined Scouts and Guides into one organization to consoli-

date resources and expedite government communication as India had.425 The United States paid

for Indian and Pakistani Guiders to visit and tour the U.S., teaching American Girl Scouts and

their leaders the beneficial aspects of Asian culture including Bengali songs, Indian cookery, and

146

how to wrap a sari.426 Gradually, WAGGGS also adopted the social-service focus of the Indian

and Pakistani movements as their own and hired Indian and Pakistani Guiders to insure the

newly independent nation states of Southeast Asia did not deviate too far from Western concep-

tions of modernity.427

Non-Western Guide associations looked up to India as a role model of what independ-

ence might promise. Malaya and Nigeria sent delegations to India and Pakistan to learn to effec-

tively use Guiding to promote literacy and public health and overcome ethnic divisions.428 Both

movements also wanted to replicate the close-knit relationship that Pakistan and India had both

achieved with its respective governments. As the first nations to transform Guiding into a vehi-

cle for nationalism, India and Pakistan showed Western and non-Western women that a program

that originally celebrated imperial ties could effectively become an expression of an imagined

community of the nation that included women.

Despite the efforts of Malayan and Nigerian officers, they struggled to attract non-elite

colonized women to their movement. The Indian movement had included non-elite Indian

women almost from its inception. Because the predominately white, colonial All-India Guiding

Association had included elite Indian women starting in 1916 in leadership positions, started

translating materials in the twenties, and faced competition from the Seva Samiti Guides, it con-

fronted and gradually accepted a spectrum of various understandings of citizenship. Most elite

colonized Indian Guiders favored an inclusive, multifaith nation; however, during the thirties

more sectarian concepts of nationhood emerged. Though most white Guiders and the predomi-

nately white officer corps of the All-India Guiding Association viewed the ideas of nationalist

Guiders, whether they professed inclusive or exclusive versions of nationalism, as an anathema

to the international intent of the program, they had to accept some region-wide adaptations as

147

most Guiders were Indian and able outvote them at council meetings. When white officers in

Malaya, Nigeria, and Australia confronted nationalist, or in the case of Malaya, communist

manifestations of Guiding, they had the power to cut off colonized Guiders and their companies

from the official movement. Thus, as the Guiding movements in Malaya and Nigeria took on a

nationalist orientation after World War II, the few colonized Guiders were Western-educated

and rejected versions of national maternalism that failed to match the Western-oriented multieth-

nic nation they wanted. Furthermore, Nigerian and Malayan found their respective government’s

hesitant to assign Guides a role in their modernization programs as India and Pakistan had only

years after independence. As there were no official translations of Guiding materials until the

fifties in Nigeria and the sixties and seventies in Malaya, official policies were inaccessible to the

majority of colonized women in Malaya and Nigeria.429 The histories of Guiding in Malaya and

Nigeria, thus, accentuate the exceptional social and political conditions that enabled Indian

agency in the movement.

Malaya

Compared to India, Malaya had a very moderate, short-lived nationalist movement that

never became anti-British and only became political after World War II.430 The diversity of the

population and manifestations of British rule in the peninsula discouraged sentiments of common

nationality among peoples of different regions and ethnicities. By 1931, only 35% of the popula-

tion was Malay; the rest of the population, primarily Chinese and Indian, had ties to other states.

Although colonial policies overtly favored Malays, the colonized Chinese elite favored colonial

rule, identified as British, and feared independence would lead to economic and political instabil-

ity. Japanese occupation during World War II led the colonized to doubt the omnipotence of the

British to protect them. Still, the first expression of nationalism only emerged in 1947 and was a

148

communal movement limited to Malays who opposed the first postwar government the British

established.431 During the fifties, the Malay movement gradually evolved into multiethnic na-

tionalism that fractured after independence.432

Until the fifties, nearly all Guiders working in Malaya, white and Asian trained their

Guides to be mothers of the Empire.433 Lady Templer, wife of British High Commissioner of

Malaya Gerald Templer, demanded Guiders embrace a new conception of citizenship based in-

terracial Malayan nationalism and anti-communism. She wanted the movement to acknowledge

all aspects of Malayan identity- Malay, Chinese, Indian, and Western. The Malayan nationalist

foundation of Guiding established in the early fifties through the efforts of Lady Templer per-

sisted even when the ruling independent government worked to create an imagined community

centered on the Malay language, Islam, and the Malay royal family.434

When Lady Templer arrived in Malaya in 1952 and agreed to accept the symbolic title of

Chief Guide of the Federation of Malaya, colonial officials and the metropole just had conceded

that Malayan independence was the price they would have to pay to defeat the Communists. The

British colonial government had been engaged in a war against the communist guerilla forces

and the villagers who supported them for over four years. “New Villages,” communities made up

of relocated subsistence farmers, whom colonial officials had forced to resettle as their homes

had been in the reach of Communist influence, dotted Malaya. These villages resembled concen-

tration camps with barbed wire fences and armed soldiers, and the predominately female village

populations remained uncooperative.435 Lady Templer imagined Girl Guides as a vehicle to help

defeat Communism, the task that Britain had sent her husband, Gerald Templer, to Malaya to

achieve. With her husband’s support and resources Lady Templer used Girl Guides to overcome

the resistance and recruit elite Malayan and white women to villages as Guiders.436

149

Historians usually credit Gerald Templer for initiating the political and military innova-

tions that led to the rise of a multiracial Alliance party in 1954, independence in 1957, and the

defeat of the Communists in 1960.437 However, Templer needed the cooperation of all racial

communities in Malaya to defeat the Communist guerillas and create an independent coalition

government without the racial violence of Indian independence. As he attempted to do this

through traditional counterinsurgency tactics, he informally placed his wife in charge of the wel-

fare of Malayans. Lady Templer enthusiastically took on this responsibility and promoted his

policies through education and health care provisions for the colonized.438 Few historians ac-

knowledge that Lady Templer carried out her husband’s ‘Hearts and Minds campaign’ among

women and girls of the New Villages and settled communities or that she changed Malayan Girl

Guiding from an imperial movement to a national, though neo-colonial, one.439

As Lady Templer took a hands-on role in Guiding, she quickly found that the Malayan

Chinese women whom the British government had forced to live in the Villages cared little for

politics. They had supported the Communists because they had delivered material improvements

during and immediately after Japanese occupation when the British had abandoned Malaya.440

Among settled Chinese and Malay communities, she discovered a similar sense of political apa-

thy. They disapproved of Communism but cared little about political reforms of greater self-

governance her husband promised. Templer saw that they wanted more tangible improvements

than independence – better medical services, improved living conditions, and protection. From

her initial work with Guiders and Guides, she believed that if given access to health services and

educational and economic opportunities, women and girls in the roles as mothers, teachers,

nurses, and housewives would serve as essential actors in the war against Communism and the

150

creation of a new Malayan state that granted all racial groups equal citizenship and maintained

close ties to Britain.441

Guiding provided citizenship training in the non-threatening form of craft projects, first-

aid demonstrations, camping, and physical-fitness training. “Guide work in the new villages,”

Lady Templer explained to an audience of Village women “is of very great importance to the

future of these villages and the future of the country, which is in your hands.”442 To implement

the same sort of training to adult women, whom she believed ruled conservative Malay families,

she promoted the Women Institute movement in the New Villages. There, grandmothers and

mothers learned citizenship skills that their daughters learned in Guiding that ranged from par-

liamentary procedures to smocking a dress.443

Lady Templer recruited teachers, Red Cross nurses, and middle-class women to the New

Villages not only to provide the residents with education and health services, but also to exem-

plify nationalist maternalism at work. Many of these teachers and nurses previously had led

Guiding companies of Asian girls and enthusiastically took on the extra responsibilities of im-

plementing Guiding in the Villages. They began to train Chinese women as Guiders and encour-

aged them to form their own companies among the resettled children.444 Lady Templer ensured

that these new companies had all the material perks of Guiding: new uniforms, pins, badges, and

trips.445 She also convinced her husband of the benefits Scouting offered to both girls and boys

of the New Villages. By June 1952, he had embraced the program publicly and attended the an-

nual general meeting of the Boy Scouts of Malaya to encourage them to do what his wife had

with Guiding in the New Villages.446

Soon organizations of colonized women began to contribute to Templer’s project to bring

Guiding to the New Villages. The Malayan Chinese Association became among Templer’s most

151

active supporters as many middle-class Chinese Malayan women felt stigmatized by their shared

ancestry with the guerrilla Communists in Malaya and the People's Republic of China. They

wanted to assert their loyalty to Malaya and teach the uneducated villagers the benefits of mod-

ernity. It recruited young urban Malayan Chinese women from schools, Guide companies, and

churches to pilot companies in nearby New Villages. These women introduced marketable craft

projects, physical education, and team sports like basketball and badminton. They helped con-

struct sports fields.447 Most importantly, they began to help Village girls imagine a national

community that included all Malayans rather than only Malays.

Lady Templer not only initiated Guiding in the New Villages but also convinced the pre-

dominately white-officer corps of the Malayan Guide Association to understand Guiding as a

means to unite the disparate racial factions of Malaya and prepare women and girls for the re-

sponsibilities that a pro-British independence would demand.448 She wanted Guiding to become

a Malayan movement run by Malayan women from all ethnic groups. Some white Guiders en-

thusiastically adopted this idea of Malayan nationalism. They began to recruit and cooperate

with colonized Guiders and attempted to integrate aspects of Malayan culture like Indian and

Malay dances and Chinese and Indian songs into their Guiding repertoire.449 They also attempted

to introduce their Guides to democratic practices such as voting and compromise.450 Many West-

ern Guiders, however, remained ardent imperialist. They saw the late onset of the nationalist

movement among the Asian population and its limited demands as evidence that British rule

worked and should continue.451

Because many colonized Guiders with Western educations became prominent political

activists, middle-class Malayans and Westerners colonizers began to identify Guiding as an ex-

pression of Malayan patriotism rather than British loyalism. Political organizations began fund-

152

ing Guide projects and trips.452 Women in the Malayan royal families also took on more active

roles in the Association working with all Guides and Guiders rather than just those from the Ma-

lay elite. Their public appearances at multiethnic camps and nonsectarian nationalism convinced

non-Malay Malayans to identify with the royal family. Lastly, Guides served a visible role in the

independence process. They were the manpower for the increasing number of local elections the

years leading to independence and led the way in identifying Communist oriented youth activi-

ties, which the government had banned as incompatible with the pro-British independence it

wanted to create.453 Western observers, both those within Guiding and outside, cited the multi-

ethnic nature of Girl Guiding to assert optimistically that Malaya promised to become a plural,

peaceful, independent nation committed to free market values.454 When a WAGGGS official

visited Malaya in 1955, she noted that Girl Guiding had become a symbol of multiracial nation-

alism. She observed, “It as one of the important influences which is helping to build a truly mul-

tiracial community.”455

By the time Lady Templer left in 1956, a full two years after her husband departed, Guid-

ing had become one of the only multiracial organizations that would survive independence.456

Templer’s exceptional level of involvement in the welfare of the Malayan people helped under-

mine Communist propaganda and promote British colonialism as a beneficent force committed

to Malayan independence. As Chief of the Malayan Girl Guide Association, she actively re-

cruited Malayan leaders and emphasized Guiding as an expression of multiracial nationalism.

Her successor, Margaret Heath, saw Lady’s Templer’s hopes come to fruition. Upon Heath’s de-

parture, Tunku Kurshiah, the consort of Malaya’s first Head of State presented a silver tea set

Heath as a gesture to show the gratitude Malaya felt for the service of the many British women

who had volunteered as Guiders and officers. Then she announced Lakshimi Navaratnam as the

153

first Asian Girl Guide Commissioner. As the Malayan government embraced a more exclusive

Malay nationalism in the years following independence, Navaratnam kept the movement focused

on multiethnic nationalism until she retired in 1973.457

Nigeria

In Nigeria, one colonized woman, Oyinkan Abayomi, directed the movement to embrace

a nationalism free of ethnic animosities and anti-British sentiment. The rhetoric of equality and

maternal nationalism that Abayomi popularized among Guiders in the fifties never percolated

past the girls and women outside the educated southern elite. Unlike the movements of India,

Pakistan, and Malaya where white women at the national and international levels came to sup-

port the nationalist Guiding program as the apolitical multiracial national spirit they approved of,

the Nigerian movement remained marginalized within WAGGGS and never attained the loyal

support of white Guiders.

When compared to the development of Guiding in other British African colonies, the Girl

Guide Association of Nigeria adopted inclusive policies that initially strove to integrate the colo-

nized fully into the movement as equal members. Because the colonial government demanded

that the white children of colonial government officials leave Nigeria (ideally before birth), the

organization targeted their efforts towards colonized girls. Unlike South Africa and Rhodesia

that developed a watered-down Christian scouting program for colonized girls, the Nigerian As-

sociation desired that colonized girls wear the same uniform as their metropolitan counterparts

and work toward the same badges. This contrast underscores that settler colonies like South Af-

rica, Rhodesia, and Australia encouraged a racialized conception of imperial citizenship that ex-

cluded the colonized. In contrast, colonies based on exploitation and franchise like Malaya, In-

dia, and Nigeria used an inclusive ideal of imperial citizenship to maintain the consent of the

154

colonized. Thus, the first Nigerian Guiding Association created in 1924 invited one colonized

Guider, Abayomi to serve on the Central Nigerian Executive Committee to signal to colonized

elites their cosmopolitan views of Empire.458

Lady Oyinkan Abayomi, an elite Western-educated Lagosian, changed Nigerian Guiding

from a movement led primarily by white women who sought to create loyal African daughters of

the Empire to one that promoted Nigerian nationalism that included girls from all regions and

religious traditions. She came from a prominent Christian, Yoruba middle-class family that

firmly believed in education for boys and girls. Her parents sent Abayomi to a boarding school in

England, followed by two years at the Royal Academy of London. While in England, Abayomi

joined a company of Girl Guides.459 When she returned home, Abayomi became a teacher at her

alma mater, the Anglican Girls’ School, and a Guider.460 She served as the only colonized mem-

ber of the executive committee in the twenties and was the driving force behind the expansion of

Guiding to younger girls and those outside of the Western-educated elite. She started Cadet

Companies intended to train the older Guides as leaders.461 When the colonial government be-

gan to support Boy Scouts, she organized a letter writing campaign and large Guide rallies at the

Governor’s house to lobby for funding successfully.462

To the white women Abayomi worked with, she demonstrated that African women could

escape “their own backward culture” and become valuable members of the imperial commu-

nity.463 During the twenties, white leaders and Abayomi agreed that Guiding provided African

girls with the skills required to fulfill the responsibilities of imperial citizenship. White leaders,

who often spent only a couple of years in Nigeria, depended on Abayomi’s connections to Afri-

can elites and benefited from her familiarity with the social service network in Lagos. In turn,

155

Abayomi drew on this white network of patronage first to advance her career as a teacher and

then to gain power within the Guide Association.464

As Guiding expanded and calls for independence became more vocal, the Association’s

policies became more conservative. In 1931 the Association agreed that only white women

could become official Guiders “except in rare cases.”465 The small white officer corps in Lagos

feared that young village school teachers, in some cases as young as ten years old, who started

Guide companies with no white supervision might teach elements of the Guiding program such

as the Fourth Law, “A Guide is a Friend to all, and a Sister to every other Guide” in ways that

undermined the color bar or promoted an anti-imperial agenda.466 Abayomi, the only colonized

woman involved in the governance of Nigerian Guiding, lacked the power Indian Guiders at-

tained through their numbers and the existence of the Seva Samiti Guides. She faced far more

virulent racism than her Malayan counterparts. Lastly, she may have agreed with her colleagues.

Until her second marriage and loss of power within the Guiding Association, Abayomi supported

British imperialism.467 Even when white women attempted to set up training schools to teach

colonized women how to be Guiders, national officers remained wary and discouraged such ef-

forts.468 Nonetheless, in comparison to Guide associations in the African settler colonies, Kenya,

Rwanda, and South Africa, who prohibited all colonized membership until the late thirties and

forties, Nigeria’s movement continued to represent a more inclusive understanding of Guiding

within British Africa.469

Various factors converged in Abayomi’s life in the thirties that led her to question her

confidence in British rule and the future of Nigerian women in the Empire. White women con-

sidered Abayomi to be “a rare case” and allowed her to continue her work as a Guider. She par-

ticipated in the first Guide camp in 1938 and took advantage of the positive media coverage that

156

the camp generated to successfully lobby the government for additional funds. With the advent

of World War II, Abayomi encouraged her companies of Guides to organize various fundraisers

to raise money and supplies for the War.470 However, the Association’s discriminatory policies

impeded many of the initiatives Abayomi had initiated in the late twenties. The Cadets she had

trained as Guiders could not formally start companies, and many of the companies she had

helped start lost their official membership and funding as the Association did not consider the

colonized leaders in charge adequate. With her second marriage in 1934 to Dr. Kofoworola

Abayomi, one of the leaders of the Nigerian Youth Movement (NYM), a moderate multiethnic

nationalist movement, she became more political. She joined the ladies section of the NYM and

began to press Western-educated colonized women to work with women outside the educated

elite to form a multiethnic national Nigerian women’s movement that would overcome tribal,

religious, and regional divisions and promote Nigerian rule.471

In 1944, frustrated with the disregard NYM showed toward the interests of women and

the lack of power she held in the Guiding Association, Abayomi started the Nigerian Women’s

Party (NWP) as an inclusive political party for colonized women of all classes that focused on

four issues: “(1) girls’ education and literacy classes for adult women; (2) employment of women

in the civil service; (3) the right of female minors to trade freely in Lagos; (4) the protection of

market women’s rights.” The party never expanded beyond Lagos as Abayomi had hoped; still, it

worked to get elected as the Councilor to Lagos City Council, where she served for seven years,

created a temporary alliance between elite and ordinary women, and popularized the idea that

women should have the right to run for local office and vote in municipal elections. It also en-

gaged in numerous service projects with other women’s organizations including Girl Guides.472

Folarin Coker argues that during this period Abayomi reshaped Guiding into “the junior nation-

157

alist feminist movement” a pipeline that prepared girls for leadership roles within women’s na-

tionalist organizations like her own NYM.”473

When the colonial government shifted its policies in 1948 to prepare Nigerians for de-

colonization, the white officer corps of the Guiding Association had to adjust its policies to allow

greater Nigerian leadership. They appointed Abayomi as Deputy Commissioner of the Nigerian

Girl Guides Association in 1949 and then as Chief Commissioner 1951. Up until Abayomi as-

sumed leadership, white women had resisted any changes to the original program. This meant

that girls had to be fairly proficient in English just to enroll and many of the skills they learned,

like English folk dancing and how to fold a Union Jack, further separated them from other colo-

nized girls.474 When Aboyomi took over the movement, nearly all official Guides came from the

most elite southern Nigerian families and most Guiders were white. She dedicated the rest of her

life to change this.

Within her first year as Deputy Commissioner, Abayomi collaborated with other officers

to draft a new constitution that encouraged Nigerian leadership and open the first Nigerian

Headquarters complete with a Guide Shop that offered test cards in most of the predominant lan-

guages of Nigeria.475 She strove for international recognition and support for the Nigerian

movement. In order to ensure Nigeria would be accepted as member of WAGGGS upon inde-

pendence, Abayomi traveled to the Imperial Headquarters in England to recruit British Guiding

Trainers to Nigeria, who would ensure Nigerian Guiders upheld the standards of movement to

the extent that WAGGGS required and arranged for Guides to attend training at Foxlease, the

Guiding Center of England. She organized international travel for Girl Guide companies as she

believed Nigerian Guiding would benefit not only from a closer relationship with the metropole

but also with non-Western countries like Japan and India who had successfully overcome West-

158

ern imperialism. She hoped that the international reputation Nigerian Guides gained through in-

ternational travel would insure WAGGGS granted Nigeria its own delegation to World Confer-

ences.476

As regionally-based political parties emerged in the fifties replacing the multiethnic na-

tionalist associations of the thirties and forties and bringing the multiple women’s parties that

had emerged in the forties like Abayomi’s NYM into their folds, Abayomi focused nearly all the

resources of the Guiding Association on promoting a sense of multiethnic nationalism among

Guiders and Guides based on their roles as mothers and wives. She believed it was up to the Girl

Guides not only “to make the homes of our country happy, clean, and bright,” but also to intro-

duce sports and competition to Nigerian girls of all classes and religions. With the help of other

women’s organizations, Abayomi carried out a census of all the Guides in Nigeria to better target

underserved areas and populations. To expand the movement in the Northern Region, the most

underserved region because of the colonial governments’ haphazard approach to girls’ education,

she facilitated the organization of companies of Cadets at each Women’s Teacher Training Cen-

tre and recruited national officers from Northern Nigeria.477

Additionally, she encouraged all colonized and white Guiders to use their Guiding activi-

ties to promote sanitation, modern methods of childcare, and Western sports among less privi-

leged women and girls. Shortly before Nigerian independence, she started to distribute a Guid-

ing magazine, Look Wide, which two white Guiders in Northern Nigerian had started, to all

Guiders and older Guides in Nigeria free of charge to promote a sense of unity among Nigerian

Guides. Under her leadership, the Nigeria Association gathered tape recordings of various local

song and games throughout Nigeria so that girls of different ethnicities could began gaining a

159

sense of a united Nigerian culture that was greater than the Hausa, Igbo or Yoruba culture they

lived in.478

Despite Abayomi’s efforts, predominately Western-educated Yoruba women dominated

the officer corps. The united national front that Nigeria Guides represented in celebrations of In-

dependence on October 1, 1960 proved ephemeral. The one Northern Nigerian Guider who re-

mained active at the national and international level, Margaret Lowe, a Western-educated Chris-

tian failed to represent adequately the interests of the predominately Muslim Guiders of Northern

Nigeria. Once General Gowon, a Christian Northerner who took control of the government in

1966 and ruled until he was overthrown in 1975, became a prominent supporter of the movement

making appearances at camps and rallies, most Northern Muslims lost faith in the movement.479

Even with the loss of many of its Muslim members, a civil war, and a secession of military coups

after independence, the official Nigerian movement publicly has remained committed to its vi-

sion of Nigerian citizenship and committed to the government.

Australia

In Australia, Guiding remained inimical to any manifestation of Aboriginal nationalism.

The idea of a pan Aboriginal sovereign community violated the foundational myths of the impe-

rial identity of white Australians held dear: Western superiority, terra nullius (until 1992), and

teleogical timelines of progress.480 Most White Guiders of Aboriginal girls viewed the potential

of each Aboriginal Guide according to the racial status the government and society had assigned

them.481 The whiter the Guide looked and acted, the closer she was to the attainment of the rights

and responsibilities of imperial citizenship figuratively and legally.482 Until a constitutional ref-

erendum in 1967 that granted the federal government the right to control Aboriginal affairs, state

governments continued to take lighter-skinned Aboriginal children away from their parents, of-

160

ten through methods that historian Patrick Wolfe argues, “increasingly took the form of child

abduction,” to be raised in state-funded institutions. Aboriginal children who grew up with their

families lived in “fringe camps” on the outskirts of country towns with limited access to public

facilities such as schools, restaurants, hotels, etc. To gain the rights of a probationary citizenship,

which included the right to care for their children, marry without the approval of the Chief Pro-

tector of Aborigines, handle their own wages, vote, and drink alcohol, Aborigines had break off

all ties with the Aboriginal community.483

Most white Australians had no contact with Aboriginal Australia and the very sugges-

tions that Aborigines had the right to equal citizenship or self-government provoked far more

acrimony among colonizers than the nationalist movements of Malaya, India, and Nigeria.484 The

League of Nations did not recognize the right of Aboriginal peoples to self-rule, despite the nu-

merous petitions Australian Aborigines, Maori, and native Canadians submitted during the in-

terwar period. The UN only passed its nonbinding Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peo-

ples in 2007. In the middle of the twentieth century, most of white Australia, including much of

the academic community, opposed the social integration of Aborigines into Western society, and

many still predicted their extinction through intermarriage and assimilation.485 Taken in context,

white Guiders who believed that with hard work and time their Guides could become imperial

citizens with the rights to raise their children, vote, and participate in service organizations, were

among the most radical white Aboriginal activists until the late 1960s.486

Unlike Nigeria and India, no Australian Guiders emerged to push the white led Guiding

movement to embrace a more multiethnic nationalist vision of citizenship. Australia and the

Guiding Association in particular remained committed to an ideal of imperial citizenship rooted

in their Anglo-Celtic British identity. When the government a introduced a law to define a dis-

161

tinct Australian citizenship in 1948, the Minister for Immigration reassured the parliament and

the public that it was not intended “to make an Australian any less a British subject,” but only to

establish stringent conditions for the naturalization of non-European immigrants.487 Historian

Neville Meaney argues that until the seventies, “Britishness was probably stronger in Australia

than Britain itself.”488 The Australian government and Guiding Association both spoke of an

inclusive citizenship that included all Aborigines who abandoned primitive lifestyles. In practice,

however, both excluded Aboriginal women no matter their mastery of Western cultural norms.489

Social, economic, and political forces marginalized Aboriginal women from voluntary

organizations like Girl Guiding.490 The state’s policies of forcibly removing Aboriginal children

from their mothers, providing Aboriginal children only the most basic education in segregated

schools, and denying nearly all Aborigines citizenship rights compounded with the forces of ra-

cism, poverty, alcoholism, and domestic violence to alienate most Aboriginal women from the

movement.491 Even when Aboriginal women overcame such challenges and started Guiding

companies, white officers, like those in Nigeria, typically labeled them as subversive and at-

tempted to close them or place them under white supervision.492 Before the National Association

specified that it allowed Aboriginal women to lead companies independently in 1957, I have

found evidence of only four official Aboriginal Guiders. These Guiders worked closely with

white officers.493

Furthermore, most Aboriginal Guides identified Guiding with the “white world” that

never accepted them despite its efforts to assimilate them into it as inferiors. Though they may

have enjoyed it when imprisoned in Aboriginal settlements away from their families, they had no

desire to perpetuate the practice among the next generations of Aboriginal girls.494 Myrtle Cor-

della, an Aboriginal Guide who lived at the Moore River Settlement, a place where authorities

162

demanded silence at all meals, punished children severely for minor infractions, and demanded

that girls spend the majority of their days engaged in menial tasks like sewing and food prepara-

tion, loved Guiding “because it was something different.” At their meetings Cordella and her fel-

low Guides at the Settlement sang, practiced tying knots, and took hikes as long as 13 kilome-

ters.495 Years later, when her Guider, Eileen Heath, offered Cordella a position as a matron at a

boarding house for Aboriginal children where she would have her own company of Guides, Cor-

della dismissed the invitation and chose to marry and return to the region of Kalgoorlie, her

original home. Like many Aboriginal women, she not only rejected Guiding as a means to teach

young girls Aboriginal nationalism, but also the very concept of nationalism as white concept

that obscured the diversity of Aboriginal peoples and promoted individualism alien to Aboriginal

identity. Instead, she focused on her reviving the traditions and lifestyle of her clan.496

Overt racism made life unbearable for some of the Aboriginal women who attempted to

assimilate to the white world as imperial citizens. When one of Heath’s Guides, Kath Jones, re-

turned to Moore River to work as a teacher and Guider, white staff members segregated her at

meal times and other staff activities and foisted their own responsibilities onto her. Eventually,

after she was sexually assaulted, Jones left, moving on to marry and raise her own children.497

When interviewed, most former Aboriginal Guides experienced the same disappointment and

determined cultural pride that Jones did if they tried to enter into white society. As one former

explained, “Although I was integrated into the white world, I was still an Aboriginal person and I

was not permitted to forget it and nor did I want to forget it. I was not allowed to forget that I

was (in white minds) inferior to white people.”498 No matter the extent that an Aboriginal Guide

assimilated, the Australian conception of a white Anglo-Celtic imperial citizenship made it im-

possible for her ever to achieve.499

163

Because Australia was a settler colony that prided itself on its white Britishness, most

Guiding officers and Guiders never considered that Aboriginal girls and women might contribute

to the movement or to the nation as members until the late fifties.500 The foundation of The Fed-

eral Council for Aboriginal Advancement (FCAA), the first national organization for Aboriginal

activists, in 1958 and the rise of Aboriginal activism in the 1960s encouraged the National Asso-

ciation to begin to purposefully incorporate Aborigines into the movement, at least as Guides.

For example, in 1959 the Queensland Guide Association developed a yearlong training program

based in Papua, which was essentially a colony of Australia, to prepare white Guiders to work

with Aboriginal women and children in Australia.501 Such efforts intensified to little avail when

the new ideal of a multicultural Australia emerged in the seventies, and the government granted

self-management to Aboriginal communities, a policy that allowed Aborigines to manage pro-

jects and funds that the federal government mandated and allocated.

In Australia, a white-settler colony founded on the premise of terra nullius, the Guiding

movement remained a force of maternal imperialism. White Guiders effectively suppressed any

conceptions that Guiding could be a force for something other than British femininity. Because

few Aboriginal women became involved in the Guiding movement and missions and boarding

schools gradually shut down throughout the sixties and seventies, evidence available suggests

that the number of Aboriginal girls involved in Guiding decreased.502 In “Good, Upright Young

Citizens: Lived Experiences of Boy Scouts and Girl Guides in Australia,” Julia Messner, an Aus-

tralian scholar, concludes that as of 2004, “Aboriginal people remain largely absent from the

movement.”503

Conclusion

164

The Guiding program that originated in Britain provided citizenship training to interna-

tional community of women and girls. Throughout the interwar and postwar periods the metro-

pole continued to rhetorically stress an international ideal led by Western middle-class women.

Most white Guiders in the colonies imagined this international community as the Empire and

wanted to train their Guides to actively take part. Some white Guiders and many colonized

Guiders came to understand the movement as the ideal platform to teach children to imagine be-

longing to a large multiethnic national community.

White and colonized Guiders in India first demanded that Guiding acknowledge an In-

dian nation apart from the Empire in the teens. Because Indian and whites started their own In-

dian scouting movements, when Girl Guides prohibited Indian membership, and the All-India

Girl Guides Association had woo them to join the international movement, they began to nation-

alize the movement in the twenties- translating literature, altering uniforms, changing badges,

and bringing the movement to illiterate villagers. The early role of Indian officers set in place

policies that encouraged non-elite women to adopt the Guiding movement.

In Malaya and Nigeria, Lady Templer in Malaya and Lady Oyinkan Abayomi imposed

the nationalist agenda on the movement in the early fifties. They looked to the Pakistani and In-

dian movements as models of how Guiding could be used to promote multiracial nationality that

extended beyond the English-speaking elite. At independence celebrations in 1957 and 1960

respectively, Guides proudly performed their newly invested national pride. Both movements,

nonetheless, struggled to expand outside the elite.

When compared together the successful evolution of the Guiding movements in Nigeria,

India, and Malaya from an imperial to a national identity suggests that maternalism, the founda-

tion of the movement, is a malleable feminism that can take on multiple national identities. Be-

165

cause men and women across many cultures, time periods, and age groups identify the relation-

ship between mother and child as a form of compassionate guidance, white colonial Guiders,

Western leaders of WAGGGS, and nationalist Guiders in many contexts based their imaginings

of feminine citizenship to an imagined community on maternalism. The failure of the Guiding

movement in Australia to recognize Aboriginal nationalism demonstrates the limitations of this

flexibility. During the first half of the century, Australia attempted to replace Aboriginal experi-

ences of motherhood as either mothers or children with an institutionalized interpretation of

white motherhood. Thus, many Aboriginal girls and women even when they had positive experi-

ences in Guiding, identified maternalism with the colonizers’ efforts to eliminate their culture

and origins.

The maternal message of Guiding fused into the multiracial secular nationalisms that

women in Malaya, India, Nigeria, and Pakistan wanted to promote because colonized women

had access to modern models of physical and metaphorical motherhood in the colonized com-

munity. To Aboriginal women and white Guiders of Aboriginal girls, Guiding offered an impe-

rial citizenship that demanded Aborigines to replace their culture with normative white middle-

class values and traditions. Such sacrifices rarely led to the acceptance and cooperation that

white Guiders had promised their Aboriginal charges. Because Aboriginal women and girls

lacked modern models of metaphorical and physical motherhood among Aborigines and white

Australians remained committed to a British identity, the Australian Guiding movement remains

a maternalism that is closed off to most Aboriginal Guides.

332 Vijaya Ramaswamy, Historical Dictionary of the Tamils (Lanham, Md: Scarecrow Press, 2007), 244;

Geraldine Forbes, Women in Modern India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 192-193. 333 Cheryl Johnson-Odim, “Lady Oyinkan Abayomi,” Nigerian Women in Historical Perspective (1992):

149-162.

166

334 Leonard A. Gordon, Brothers against the Raj: A Biography of Indian Nationalists Sarat and Subhas

Chandra Bose (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 497 footnote 28; “Top Award for Brave Woman,” New Straits Times, August 23, 2000.

335 Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. (New York: Routledge, 1995), 13-14; Tramer Mayer, “Gender Ironies of Nationalism: Setting the Stage,” in Gender Ironies of Nationalism: Sexing The Nation, edited by Tramer Mayer (London: Routledge, 2002), 1-22; Cynthia H. Enloe, Ba-nanas, Beaches & Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), Steve Derné, “Men’s Sexuality and Women’s Subordination in Indian Nationalisms,” in Gender Ironies of Nationalism: Sexing the Nation, edited by Tamar Mayer (London: Routledge, 2002), 238-258; Mrinalini Sinha, “Na-tions in an Imperial Crucible,” in Gender and Empire, edited by Philippa Levine (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 192-197; Sinha, Specters of Mother India: The Global Restructuring of an Empire (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006), 47. Sinha explains, “The modern woman of the anti-colonial nationalist imagination was thus ex-pected to occupy a precarious position as the symbol of the colonized nation’s ‘betweenness’: a self-conscious mid-dle ground suspended between the poles of a ‘Western’ modernity and of an unreformed indigenous ‘tradition.’”

336 “Africa’s Problems,” Ebony 24, no. 9 (1969):116-128; Tammy Proctor, Scouting for Girls: A Century of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2009), 138. In many colonies the women who attempted to offer colonized girls membership in an imagined community through Guiding never abandoned the ideal of imperial citizenship. Consequently, when some colonies attained independence the movement nearly disappeared. For exam-ple, Guiding nearly disappeared in Malawi upon independence in 1964 and international rumor speculated that the government had banned the organization. Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda, President of Malawi 1964-1994, clarified "Boy Scouts and Girl Guides were not banned. They are essentially for whites. They drink tea and parade and pro-duce nothing. The only organizations for youth are the Young Pioneers and the League of Malawi Youth, a young army trained to develop the country.

337 Neville Meaney, “Britishness and Australia: Some Reflections,” in The British World: Diaspora, Cul-ture, and Identity, edited by Carl Bridge and Kent Fedorowich (London: F. Cass, 2003), 121-135; David Day, Reluc-tant Nation: Australia and the Allied Defeat of Japan, 1942-1945 (New York, Oxford University Press, 1992),vii, 79, 315-316; J. G. A. Pocock, “The New British History in Atlantic Perspective: An Antipodean Commentary,” The American Historical Review 104, no. 2 (April 1999): 490-500; Douglas Cole, “The Problem of ‘Nationalism’ and ‘Imperialism’ in British Settlement Colonies,” Journal of British Studies 10, no. 2 (May 1971):160-182; “The New British History” is an effort among scholars to rewrite British history to focus on the colonies and the Dominions as much as much as the “Atlantic archipelago,” a term coined by historian, J. G. A. Pocock, to describe the British Isles in a way that captures plurality of its histories. Since Pocock first proposed the “New British History” in 1973, has attracted few loyal adherents. One advocate for the “New British History,” Neville Meaney describes, “Australian and New Zealand historian, no less than their British counterparts, have evinced little or no inclination to take up this cause.” Though most national historians of Australia still support a narrative thwarted Australian nationalism where Australians break with Britain during WWII, evidence from the Guiding movement support Meaney’s argu-ment that imperial loyalty remained the basis of Australian identity till the 1970s.

338 Patrick Wolfe, “Land, Labor, and Difference: Elementary Structures of Race,” The American Historical Review 106, no. 3 (June 2001): 868-870; Russell McGregor, Imagined Destinies: Aboriginal Australians and the Doomed Race Theory, 1880-1939 (Carlton, Melbourne University Press, 1997), 62, 72, 196.

339 Neville Meaney, “Britishness and Australia: Some Reflections,” 121-135; Julia Messner, “Good, Up-right Young Citizens: Lived Experiences of Boy Scouts and Girl Guides in Australia” (University of Technology, Sydney. M.A. Thesis, 2004), 31, 89; Julia Martínez, “Problematising Aboriginal Nationalism,” Aboriginal History 21 (1997): 133-147; Maisie McKenzie, The Road to Mowanjum (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1969); Fiona Pais-ley, Glamour in the Pacific: Cultural Internationalism and Race in the Women’s Pan-Pacific (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2009), 105.

340 McClintock, Imperial Leather, 360; Enloe, Bananas, Beaches & Bases: Making Feminist Sense of In-ternational Politics,44; Derné, “Men’s Sexuality and Women’s Subordination in Indian Nationalisms,” 238-258; Cynthia Enloe explains that national movements have “typically sprung up from masculinized memory, masculin-ized humiliation, and masculinized hope.”

341 Patrick Wolfe, “Land, Labor, and Difference: Elementary Structures of Race,” 868-874; A. McGrath and W. Stevenson, “Gender, Race, and Policy: Aboriginal Women and the State in Canada and Australia,” Labour History, no. 71 (1996): 37-53.

167

342 Ann Stoler and Frederick Cooper, “Between Metropole and Colony: Rethinking a Research Agenda,” in

Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, edited by Anna Stoler and Frederick Cooper (Ber-keley: University of California Press, 1997), 8.

343 In the twenty-first century, both the Pakistan Girl Guides and the Bharat Girl Guides have begun to work together and promote cross-cultural exchanges. See Akram Abid, “Indian Boys and Girls: Scouts visited Is-lamabad College for Girls Islamabad,” Friday, 4 May 2012, http://akramabid.blogspot.com/2012/05/indian-boys-and-girls-scouts-visited.html (accessed June 16, 2012); Sana Jamal, “Bharat Scouts Visit IMCG, Pakistan: India Scouts Deliver Message of Peace,” Pakistan Observer, Saturday, May 05, 2012, http://pakobserver.net/201205/05/detailnews.asp?id=153722 (accessed June 16, 2012).

344 World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, Trefoil Around the World (The World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, 1999), 15, 146; Kitty Barne, Here Come the Girl Guides (London: Girl Guides Asso-ciation, 1946), 24-25, 32. Agnes Baden-Powell sought to pacify fears of conservative mothers who perceived Girl Guides as the gateway to “either the ‘shrieking sisterhood’ who demanded the right to vote, or the less vociferous but even persistent band now storming the professions sacred to man.”

345 Jabalpur is nearly 500 kilometers north of Lucknow. 346 Carey Watt, “ ‘The Promise of "Character’ and the Spectre of Sedition: The Boy Scout Movement and

Colonial Consternation in India, 1908-1921,” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 22, no. 2 (1999): 43; Lak-shmi Mazumdar, “The Girl Guide Movement in India,” in Social Welfare in India, edited by Durgabai Deshmukh (New Delhi: The Planning Commission of the Government of India, 1955), 120-121; Flora L. Robinson, “The Girl Messenger Service,” in Woman’s Missionary Friend, 46-48, edited by Methodist Episcopal Church Society (Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church, 1913), 231. Robinson posits that the Girl Messenger Service began in 1911 before Baden-Powell had founded Girl Guides. However, Baden-Powell first began speaking about a separate Scouting organization for girls in 1908 and publicly launched Girl Guides in 1909.

347 Robinson, “The Girl Messenger Service,” 232-234. 348 Saroja Dev Param, A Guiding Light: The Life and Work of Datuk Hajah Hendon Din (Selangor Darul

Ehsan: Pelanduk Publications, 2004), 2; Maina Chawla Singh, Gender, Religion, and "Heathen Lands": American Missionary Women in South Asia, 1860s-1940s (New York: Garland Pub, 2000), 270-271; Peter Kazenga Tibender-ana, “The Beginnings of Girls' Education in the Native Administration Schools in Northern Nigeria, 1930-1945,” The Journal of African History 26, no. 1 (1985): 93-109.

349 Robinson, “The Girl Messenger Service,” 232-233. 350 Carey Watt, Serving the Nation: Cultures of Service, Association, and Citizenship (New Delhi: Oxford

University Press, 2005), 116-118,138,149 154, 186; Watt, “‘The Promise of ‘Character,’” 49; Heather Baden-Powell, Baden-Powell: A Family Album (Gloucester: A. Sutton, 1986), 6; Mazumdar, “The Girl Guide Movement in India,” 121. Mazumdar credits Dr. G. S. Arundale as well as Besant with the establishment of an Indian Boy Scout Association. Watt confirms that Arundale, the principal of the Central Hindu College, agreed with the principals of scouting, but did not connect him to any scouting organization.

351 Sinha, Specters of Mother India, 173; Nancy L. Paxton, “Complicity and Resistance in the Writings of Flora Annie Steel and Annie Besant,” in Western Women and Imperialism Complicity and Resistance, ed. by Nupur Chaudhuri and Margaret Strobel (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992), 158-176; Mazumdar, “The Girl Guide Movement in India,” 121; Baden-Powell, Baden-Powell: A Family Album, 6; India Planning Commission, Social Welfare in India (New Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, 1960), 44-47.

352 Paxton, “Complicity and Resistance in the Writings of Flora Annie Steel and Annie Besant,” 158-176; Mazumdar, “The Girl Guide Movement in India,” 121; Annie Besant, Wake Up, India: A Plea for Social Reform (Adyar, India: Theosophical Pub. House, 1913) 207-227; Arthur Hobart Nethercot, The Last Four Lives of Annie Besant (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 321; In 1916, Annie Besant began the Indian Boy Scout As-sociation that included girls, who were called Sister Guides. In 1921, Lady Baden-Powell directed the merger be-tween the Girl Guides, Girl Messenger Service, and the Sister Scouts. She relied on Besant to convince the Indians leaders who hesitant to accept the merger.

353 Watt, Serving the Nation, 117. 354 Mazumdar, “The Girl Guide Movement in India,” 120-124; Rose Gough Kerr, The Story of a Million

Girls: Guiding and Girl Scouting Round the World (London: The Girl Guides Association, 1937), 21-22; Siba Pada Sen, Dictionary of National Biography, Volume III 31-35 (Calcutta: Institute of Historical Studies, 1972), 376-378.

355“Notes and News: Commissioners’ Luncheon at the Calcutta Club,” The Council Fire 31, no. 1 (January 1956): 39; Ashoka Gupta, Sipra Bhattacharya, and Ranjana Dasgupta, In the Path of Service: Memories of a Chang-ing Century (Kolkata: STREE, 2005), 165; Kerr, The Story of a Million Girls, 188, 189, 220. Kerr describes, “These

168

cultured and broadminded women represented the most enlightened Indian opinion in Bengal.” Ghosel, Bose, Roy, and Hossein came from prominent Indian families and their husbands held important government positions or uni-versity professorships. Their upper-middle class background enabled them to dedicate their lives to the social re-form.

356 Mazumdar, “The Girl Guide Movement in India,” 121-122; Kristin Alexander, “Girl Guide Movement, Internationalism, and Imperialism in Interwar England, Canada, and India,” (PhD diss., York University, 2010), 211, 122; WAGGGS, Fourth Biennial Report, 1934-1936, 34; Gupta, Bhattacharya, and Dasgupta, In the Path of Service, 165; Barbara Southard, “Bengal Women's Education League: Pressure Group and Professional Association,” Mod-ern Asian Studies 18, no. 1 (1984): 76. Mrs. Hossein became one of the first Indians to represent India at a World Conference in 1934 and for a brief period she regularly sent reports to The Council Fire, the official international Guiding magazine. In 1956, Ghoshal traveled to the United States to study Scouting techniques.

357 Vir Bharat Talwar, “Feminist Consciousness in Women's Journals in Hindi: 1910-1920,” in Recasting Women: Essays in Indian Colonial History, edited by Kumkum Sangari, and Sudesh Vaid, Translated by Manisha Chaudhry, Neeraj Malik, and Badri Taina (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1990), 225.

358 Alexander, “Girl Guide Movement, Internationalism, and Imperialism in Interwar England, Canada, and India,” 228; Gupta, Bhattacharya, and Dasgupta, In the Path of Service, 165; “Notes and News: Commissioners’ Luncheon at the Calcutta Club,” The Council Fire 31, no. 1 (January 1956): 39; Ray Renuka, My Reminiscences: Social Development During the Gandhian Era & After (S.l.: Pub By Al, 1983), 74; Rose Kerr, “Story of the Girl Guides, 1908-1938: Official History of the Girl Guides Association,” in The Story of the Girl Guides, edited Alex Liddell (London: Girl Guides Association, 1976), 188; Mazumdar, “The Girl Guide Movement in India,” 121; “Distinguished Alumni,” Bethune- X, Bethune College Sammilani, 2012 http://www.bethunex.org.in/disalumni.php (accessed February 23, 2012); Bharati Ray, “Women in Calcutta: the Years of Change,” in Calcutta: The Living City Volume II, edited by Sukanta Chaudhuri (Calcutta: Oxford University Press, 1990), 36; India Planning Commission, Social Welfare in India, 351; Southard, “Bengal Women's Education League,” 65; “Round Table Conference of Trainers: Ceylon, 19th-27th April, 1954,” The Council Fire 29, no. 4 (October/November 1954): 171. Ghosel, Bose, Roy, and Hossein, the first Indians to play a role in the official movement, saw Guiding as only a small part of their larger goal to transform Indian women into active educated citizens. Hossein and Bose founded girls’ schools, and Roy directed one of the most prominent girls’ schools in Bengal. Ghosel, whose brother was the well-known nation-alist poet Tagore, served as State Secretary of Bengal upon independence.

359 Watt, Service to the Nation, x, 65-129; N. Chandra, “The Pedagogic Imperative of Travel Writing in the Hindi World: Children's Periodicals (1920-1950),” South Asia 30, no. 2 (2007): 310 .

360 Mazumdar, “The Girl Guide Movement in India,” 120-121; Siba Pada Sen, Dictionary of National Biog-raphy, Volume II, (Calcutta: Institute of Historical Studies, 1972) 376-378; Siba Pada Sen, Dictionary of National Biography, Volume III (Calcutta: Institute of Historical Studies, 1972), 31-35.

361 Daniel Gorman, Imperial Citizenship: Empire and the Question of Belonging (Manchester, UK: Man-chester University Press, 2006), 19.

362 Quoted in Alexander, “Girl Guide Movement, Internationalism, and Imperialism in Interwar England, Canada, and India,” 93.

363 Mazumdar, “The Girl Guide Movement in India,” 120; Alexander, “Girl Guide Movement, Internation-alism, and Imperialism in Interwar England, Canada, and India,” 345; Kerr, “Story of the Girl Guides, 1908-1938: Official History of the Girl Guides Association,” in The Story of the Girl Guides, edited Alex Liddell (London: Girl Guides Association, 1976), 188186. In later editions, Steps to Girl Guiding became Girl Guiding in India. Mazum-dar and Alexander disagree who actually wrote Steps to Girl Guiding. Alexander claims Robert Baden-Powell as the author; Mazumdar describes Bear writing the handbook.

364 Robert Baden-Powell, Lessons from the ‘Varsity of Life,’(London: Pearson, 1933), 151-152. 365 See Trefoil Round the World (1999); Kerr, The Story of a Million Girls, 28, 222-228; Barne, Here Come

the Girl Guides, 30-32, 50-51, 88-89. Kerr describes imperial citizenship: "The term "British Guides" is a wide one and includes girls of many different countries and types. They speak many different languages, but they all make the same Promise, and follow the rules of the Guide game as laid down by British Imperial Headquarters."

366 Mazumdar, “The Girl Guide Movement in India,” 122; India Planning Commission, Social Welfare in India (New Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, 1960), 44-47.

367 Quoted in Alexander, “Girl Guide Movement, Internationalism, and Imperialism in Interwar England, Canada, and India,” 185; Watt, Serving the Nation, 116. Watt and Mazumdar do not connect the Seva Samiti Guides to the Indian National Congress as Olave does.

169

368 Proctor, Scouting for Girls, 69; Alexander, “Girl Guide Movement, Internationalism, and Imperialism in

Interwar England, Canada, and India,” 189-191. 369 Proctor, Scouting for Girls, 61-71; M. Th. De Kerraoul, “The Thirteenth Session of the World Commit-

tee,” The Council Fire 21, no. 1 (January 1946). 370 Watt, “The Promise of ‘Character,’”54; Timothy Parsons, Race, Resistance, and the Boy Scout Move-

ment in British Colonial Africa (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2004), 65-66; Alexander, “Girl Guide Move-ment, Internationalism, and Imperialism in Interwar England, Canada, and India,” 98.

371 WAGGGS, Fourth Biennial Report: 1936 to1938, 137; Alexander, “Girl Guide Movement, Internation-alism, and Imperialism in Interwar England, Canada, and India,” 186.

372 Pakistan Girls Guide Association, “History: Pakistan Girls Guide Association,” Pakistan Girl Guides Association, 2012 http://www.pgga.org.pk/about-us/history/ (accessed February 20, 2012); Begum G. A Khan, “Emancipation of Women,” in Quaid-I-Azam and Muslim Women (Islamabad: National Committee for Birth Cen-tenary Celebrations of Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Ministry of Education, Govt. of Pakistan, 1976), 44-52;44-48; Kerr, “Story of the Girl Guides, 1908-1938,” 188.

373 Annie Besant, Annie Besant, Builder of New India (Adyar: Theosophical Publishing House, 1942), 473-474; Besant, Wake Up, India, 227; Watt, Serving the Nation, 185-186.

374 Carey Watt and Michael Mann, Civilizing Missions in Colonial and Postcolonial South Asia: From Im-provement to Development (London: Anthem Press, 2011), 301; Geraldine Forbes, Women in Modern India, 130; Nethercot, The Last Four Lives of Annie Besant, 348; Vindhyeshwari Prasad Pande, Village Community Projects in India: Origin, Development and Problems (Bombay: Asia Pub. House, 1967), 94-95; Rabindranath Tagore and Mo-hit Kumar Ray, Miscellaneous Writings (New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers & Distributors, 2007), 1260, 1922; Leonard Elmhirst, Rabindranath Tagore: Pioneer in Education (London: John Murray, 1961), 32; Randor Guy, Seva Sadan Saga (Chetput, Chennai: The Madras Seva Sadan , 2008), 33-34, 79

375 Annie Besant, “Women’s Indian Association,” Theosophist Magazine (April 1926-June 1926) 225; Be-sant, Annie Besant, Builder of New India, 473-474; Bhagavan Das, Annie Besant and the Changing World (Madras: Theosophical Publishing House, 1934) 2, 34, 78, 81; Nethercot, The Last Four Lives of Annie; Paxton, “Complicity and Resistance in the Writings of Flora Annie Steel and Annie Besant,” Heather Baden-Powell, Baden-Powell, 6; India Planning Commission, Social Welfare in India, 44-47; Watt, Serving the Nation, 116-117; Rose Gough Kerr, The Story of a Million Girls, 221.

376 Carey Watt and Michael Mann, Civilizing Missions in Colonial and Postcolonial South Asia, 301; Be-gum G. A. Khan, “Emancipation of Women,” 47-48.

377 For an example of an Indian Guider who supported imperialism see Helen Rappaport, Encyclopedia of Women Social Reformers, Volume I (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 2001), 661-662; Robert Baden-Powell, Scout-ing and Youth Movements (London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1929), 26-27; Katherine Furse, “A Message,” The Coun-cil Fire 4, no. 3 (July 1934): 110-111; “The Etiquette of Pax Ting,” The Council Fire 14, no. 4 (October 1939): 57-58; Leslie E. Whateley, “Challenge to Girl Guiding,” The Council Fire 35, no. 3 (July-Sept 1960): 105-106; Arch-duchess Ileana, “Guiding and Nationalism,” The Council Fire 5, no. 3 (July 1935): 6; Alexander, “Girl Guide Movement, Internationalism, and Imperialism in Interwar England, Canada, and India,” 121.

378 Quoted in Alexander, “Girl Guide Movement, Internationalism, and Imperialism in Interwar England, Canada, and India,” 93.

379 Pande, Village Community Projects in India, 94-95; Rabindranath Tagore and Mohit Kumar Ray, Mis-cellaneous Writings (New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers & Distributors, 2007), 1260, 1922; Elmhirst, Rabindranath Tagore, 3, 15.

380 Mazumdar, “The Girl Guide Movement in India,” 121; Planning Commission, Social Welfare in India, 351; WAGGGS, Ninth Biennial Report, 1944-1946, 73; Alexander, “Girl Guide Movement, Internationalism, and Imperialism in Interwar England, Canada, and India,” 344-345; Kalpana Dutt, Chittagong Armoury Raiders: Remi-niscences (New Delhi: Peoples’ Pub. House, 1979), 51-56.

381 Tagore and Ray, Miscellaneous Writings,1260, 1922; Elmhirst, Rabindranath Tagore, 3, 15.Tagore ex-plained his actions to a Pioneer Commune near Moscow: “I do not believe in the Boy Scouts’ or Girl Guides’ orga-nizations because they have to take all kinds of oaths, and then, as they say, there amongst those organizations some wrong notions of the military kind.”

382 Patricia Richards, “Girl Guides in India,” The Council Fire 6, no. 3 (July 1931): 41. 383 Allen Warren, “Foreword: Understanding Scouting and Guiding After A Hundred Years,” in Scouting

Frontiers: Youth and the Scout Movement's First Century, eds. Tammy M. Proctor and Nelson R. Block (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Pub, 2009), xvi.

170

384 “India: Extract from Miss Picken’s Letter from Mahableshwar,” The Council Fire 6, no. 3 (April 1931):

20. 385 WAGGGS, Second Biennial Report, 1930-1932, 56. 386 WAGGGS, Second Biennial Report, 1930-1932, 56; Lillian Picken, “Letter February 5, 1932 to Olave

Baden-Powell,” Lillian Picken Papers, Record Group No. 159, Special Collections, Yale Divinity School Library. Picken, a white Guider and the head District Commissioner claimed 90% of her Guiders knew no English.

387 Alexander, “Girl Guide Movement, Internationalism, and Imperialism in Interwar England, Canada, and India,” 122; “Report of the Eighth World Conference of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts,” The Council Fire 4, no. 4 (October 1934): 123, 144. Different conceptions of citizenship among Indian Guiders and Western Guiders gener-ated conflicting approaches to traditions that both groups disapproved of. Western Guiders sought to use Guiding to thwart common practices of, purdah, and restrictive dress. Elite Indian Guiders opposed such customs yet demon-strated a greater respect and familiarity for such traditions. A few Indian Guiders had married as young girls, and many had campaigned for the Sarda Act or Child Marriage Restraint that passed in 1929. Because the practice con-tinued unabated, they argued the need to work around such customs as early marriage made it even more pressing to enroll Indian girls at a young age so that they could quickly progress through the badges before they had to drop out. Mrs. Hussain, an Indian Guider, who attended the 8th World Conference in Adelboden, Switzerland at Our Chalet in 1934, explained

Bluebird work is only the beginning, and we hope many of the children will pass on to be Guides. But in In-dia, due to early marriage and connected other customs, all will never have that privilege, so while we can let us train the Indian child (who will so soon have the responsibility of wifehood and motherhood thrust upon her) in character and intelligence, skill and handicraft, physical health and development, and service for others. Because so many Guides left at the ages of 12 or 13, Guiders adjusted requirements to focus on skills that

Indian Guides would need as married Indian women. For example, to become a Second Class Guide, Indian Guides had to pass the Child Nurse test even though the original program had demanded a Morse Code Test.

388 “News from Overseas: From India, Paris, Germany,” The Age, May 12, 1936, 5; “The All India Girl Guides Training Camp 1929,” The Council Fire 4, no. 2 (July 1929): 21; Phyllis Barlee, “Bluebirds,” The Council Fire (July 1931): 42; WAGGGS, Second Biennial Report, 1930-1932, 103; WAGGGS, Fourth Biennial Report, 1934-1936, 129. In the twenties, most Guides opted for a blue sari that had white trimming speckled with trefoils. Indian Guides of various religions, however, wore this one uniform differently. Hindus and Christians draped the sari over the left shoulder and Parsis the right. Only Brahmin Hindus left their heads uncovered. In the mid 1930s, a new uniform appeared for regions that wore pants with long tunics rather than saris. The Fourth Biennial Report specified, “Where the dress of the Province or State consists of trousers and a long tunic or shirt, Guides wear blue or white tunics over white trousers, which are very full for Mohammedans, but fitting the leg tightly below the knees for Hindus.” Guiders insisted on the greatest diversity of uniform styles for Bluebirds, the youngest Guides of India, Uniform varied to reflect not only each girl’s religious community, but also her parents’ expectations. Phyllis Barlee, an Eagle Owl or leader of a Bluebird flock, described, “You will find Moslem Bluebirds in blue trousers and white shirts and blue waistcoats; little Hindu girls in blue skirts to their ankles, tight white jackets, their hair done in tight nobs at the back and oiled till it is like a mirror. Parsi Bluebirds in khaki or blue overalls and solar topees, or less orthodox-looking little pill box hats covered with gold and colored embroidery. Some Bluebirds wear jackets and saris exactly like their mothers, and wear them with great dignity.”

389 Proctor, “(Uni)Forming Youth: Girl Guides and Boy Scouts in Britain, 1908-39,” History Workshop Journal, no. 45 (April 1, 1998): 104,116-117, 119. Proctor asserts, “Uniforms are useful for analyzing the Scout and Guide movements at a variety of levels because they meant different things to members and to leaders, yet they were important to all concerned with the organizations.” In her studies of Guiding in interwar Britain, Proctor has found that uniforms often induced girls to join Guiding.

390 A.M. Maynard, Be Prepared: Handbook for Guides (London: C. Arthur Pearce, 1946), 320. 391 Leslie E. Whateley “The Director’s Travels,” The Council Fire 28, no.1 (January 1953), 6-8. Leslie E.

Whateley, the Director of WAGGGS observed on her world tour of 1953, “Guide activities are much the same in every country in the world, but differences in uniforms, dances, and songs are of course very apparent, I am glad to say, because these do symbolize the customs and traditions of the country to which they belong. In India the dances and songs vary even from state to state.”

392 “Reports: India, Presented by Lady Butler,” The Council Fire, World Conference Number 5, no. 4 (Oc-tober 1930): 112.

171

393 Alexander, “Girl Guide Movement, Internationalism, and Imperialism in Interwar England, Canada, and

India,” 17-18, 95-96; All India Women’s Conference, All-India Women's Conference on Educational Reform. The ... All-India Women's Conference on Educational Reform: [Proceedings], Poona: January 5-8, 1927 (Sammelana: Pune India, 1927), 48-49

394 Pushpam S. John, “Camping in India,” The Council Fire 6, no. 3 (July 1931):42. 395 Sherene Rustomjee, “Education in Patriotism,” The Council Fire 18, no. 1 (January 1943):10. 396 Rabindranath Tagore, “ Song Offering,” The Council Fire 17, no. 1 (January 1942): 11; For another ex-

ample see Sare Jehan Se Archchha, “Urdu National Hymn,” The Council Fire 18, no. 1 (January 1943): 10. 397 Watt, Serving the Nation, 103, 184-187. 398 Watt, Serving the Nation, 157. 399 Nardev Vedalankar, Religious Awakening in South Africa: A History of the Arya Samaj Movement in

South Africa (Durban: Arya Pratinidhi Sabha (Natal), 1950), 55-57; Watt, Serving the Nation, 1-4. 400 Vedalankar, Religious Awakening in South Africa, 55-57; Thillayvel Naidoo, The Arya Samaj Movement

in South Africa (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 1992), 166-170. 401 Watt, Serving the Nation, 127, footnote 106. Though the Seva Samiti Guides, which in the late thirties

became the Hindustan Guides, remained unaffiliated with the official Guide movement until Indian independence, they also imagined a national specifically Hindu community.

402 Chachi Chatters, The Day Lahore Became Pakistan, As Was Narrated to Me by Amma Jaan US Maga-zine for the Youth/ Jamadi-Us-Sani (May 2012). http://e.thenews.com.pk/newsmag/mag/detail_article.asp?id=2202&magId=9 (accessed May 21, 2012); for another example see Moeena Hidayatullah, “Brief History of the Sind Girl Guides Association,” Sind Quarterly 8, no. 1 (1980): 45-51.

403 David Willmer, “Women as Participants in the Pakistan Movement: Modernization and the Promise of a Moral State,” Modern Asian Studies 30, no. 3 (July 1996): 573-590; Hidayatullah, “Brief History of the Sind Girl Guides Association,” 45-51.

404 Khawar Mumtaz and Farida Shaheed, Women of Pakistan: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back? (Lon-don: Zed Books, 1987), 45.

405 Khan, “Emancipation of Women,” 44-52. 406 Padmini Natarajan, “Leela Sekhar—An Octogenarian Girl Guide,” Suleka.com, October 2, 2006.

http://padmininatarajan.sulekha.com/blog/post/2006/10/leela-sekhar-an-octogenarian-girl-guide.htm (accessed May 18, 2012); Gupta, Bhattacharya, and Dasgupta, In the Path of Service, 33; Lind, The Compassionate Memsahibs, 82.

407 Susan Haskell Khan, “From Redeemers to Partners: American Women Missionaries and the ‘Woman Question’ in India 1919/1939,” in Competing Kingdoms: Women, Mission, Nation, and the American Protestant Empire, 1812-1960, edited by Barbara Reeves-Ellington, Kathryn Kish Sklar, and Connie Anne Shemo (Durham [NC]: Duke University Press, 2010), 146; V. B. Sundari, “Padmavibhushan Mrs. Mary Clubwala Jadhave,” in Great Indian Social Reformers and Philanthropists, edited by Sri A. S Chetti and G. V. L. N. Sarma, and M. Venkataran-gaiyya (Narsapur, Andhra Pradesh: Chetti Sanmana Sangham, 1975), 119-120; WAGGGS, Eleventh Biennial Re-port, 1949-1950, 89; Lillian Picken, “Guiders’ Training Camp, Panhala: November 1931,” Lillian Picken Papers, Record Group No. 159, Special Collections, Yale Divinity School Library; Dr. A. Lakshmanaswami Mudaliar, Re-port of the Secondary Education Commission, October, 1952-June 1953 (Ministry of Education: Government of India), 100-102. After Independence, the Mudaliar Commission, a committee made up of leading educational ex-perts that the federal government of India appointed to determine the current state of secondary education, recog-nized that Girl Guides and Boy Scouts rarely participated in acts of loyalty. In their effort stem acts of indiscipline that were once necessary during British rule but were no longer necessary, they stressed the disciplinary nature of Scouting.

408 Mahila Seva Samity, Mahila Seva Samity (Organization for the Welfare of Women) http://mss-india.org/html/about.html (accessed June 28, 2012); Zarin Mistry, “The Parsis of Madras – 3: The “Darling” of Ma-dras,” Madras Musings 18, no. 15 (November 16-30 2008) http://madrasmusings.com/Vol%2018%20No%2015/the_parsis_of_madras_3.html (accessed June 28, 2012)

409 Elizabeth Buettner, Empire Families: Britons and Late Imperial India (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 104-109; Lind, The Compassionate Memsahibs, 79, 91-104; Kerr, “Story of the Girl Guides, 1908-1938,” 188.

410 “Polish Children in India,” The Council Fire 37, no. 4 (October 1942): 61. 411 WAGGGS, Twelfth Biennial Report, 36-37. 412 Kerr, “Story of the Girl Guides, 1908-1938,” 188.

172

413 Khan, “Emancipation of Women,” 47-48. 414 Leslie E. Whateley, “The Director’s Travels,” The Council Fire 28, no. 2 (April 1953): 37; 415 “Social Service in Pakistan,” The Council Fire 34, no. 4 (October 1959): 143-144. 416 Lakshmanaswami Mudaliar, Report of the Secondary Education Commission, October, 1952-June 1953,

104; Eric Hobsbawm, “Introduction: Inventing Traditions,” in The Invention of Tradition edited by E. J. Hobsbawm and T. O. Ranger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 1-14; WAGGGS, Eleventh Biennial Report, 1949-1950, 40; WAGGGS, Thirteenth Biennial Report, 1952-54, 75. Politicians in India attended nearly all-national Guiding gatherings, where they would pose for pictures and present inspirational speeches. At the All-India General Council Meeting of 1950, Dr. Rajendra Prasad, the President of India, posed in a group shot of the Indian leadership of Guides that newspapers across the nation featured. In 1952, Dr. Rajendra Prasad and Prime Minister, Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru, attended the Scouters’ and Guiders’ Conference in Delhi and spoke of the importance Scouting would play in India’s future. Prime Minister Nehru continued to appear at all of the Guides major rallies, camps, and conferences as well as events they held together throughout the fifties.

417 C. Bilqees Taseer, “East to West in Pakistan,” The Council Fire 28, no.4 (October 1953): 116-118; WAGGGS, Thirteenth Biennial Report, 1952-1954,76; Leslie Whateley, “The Director’s Travels,” The Council Fire 31, no. 2 (April 1956): 55-58; Khalida Bashir, “All Pakistani Rally,” The Council Fire 33 no. 2 (April 1958): 85-86. “Pakistan,” The Council Fire 22, no. 2 (April 1957): 74; Christabel Taseer “Pakistan: Each One, Teach One,” B.P.: 1857-1957 Supplement to the Council Fire (July 1958): 18-20; “Guides to meet in Malaya,” The Straits Times, No-vember 28, 1962, 11; “The Walter Donald Ross (Vancouver, B.C.) Perpetual Trophy: Pakistan Guides Fight Small-pox and Cholera,” The Council Fire 35, no. 4 (October-December 1960): 216-217

From its inception, the Pakistan Guide Association purposefully sought to overcome divisions between East and West Pakistan with similar badges and uniforms, trips, exchanges, and propaganda. In 1953, twenty-one East Pakistan Girl Guides visited West Pakistan for a month representing “the first time since the Partition (1947) that a women’s organization had sent a goodwill delegation from on wing of Pakistan to the other.” One of the East Pakistan Commissioners explained the importance of visit: “We have been able to clear many of the misconceptions of the people of these provinces regarding East Pakistan.” In 1956, the Pakistan government funded the expenses for West Pakistan Guiders to attend the Annual General Meeting in Dacca, East Pakistan. The All-Pakistan Rally Jinnah had originally conceived of in 1952, finally occurred in October of 1959 in Lahore. Khalida Bashir, an attendee de-scribed, “One thousand Guides and Commissioners from every corner of Pakistan arrived in Lahore by train, bus and aeroplane.” The Rally included handicraft exhibits that emphasized the benefits of diversity and encouraged participants to have pride in the cultural heritage of both East and West Pakistan. A Guider observed, “Exhibits showed the richness and variety that exists in this field in our country.”

During the fifties and early sixties, Pakistani Girl Guides became ambassadors of modernization. In 1957, The Association created a Centenary Badge that required Guides in urban areas to teach an adult how to read (the adult also earned a literacy certificate) and in rural areas to go into one home and give the family a very detailed health lesson. In order to prepare Guides and Guiders for such a challenging task, the Pakistan Guide Association offered three training courses on adult literacy and basic public health in Karachi and Lahore. Speakers at the classes included representatives from the Village Aid Institutes, College of Home Economics, Nurses’ Institute, and American Women’s Club. UNESCO Department of Fundamental Education donated reading materials appropriate for adults. Throughout 1957, Guides and Guiders opened literacy centers in many towns, which not only helped women learn read to but also offered classes in home management. Other Guides went door-to-door offering to help women learn to read. According to Pakistan Guide Association, 1,200 Guides and Bluebirds earned a Centenary badge. These Guides taught over 1000 adults to read. Many of the literacy centers remained open for years. Such projects integrated women and children traditionally marginalized from the “imagined community” of the nation.

Some of the modernization projects taken on by Pakistani Girl Guides provoked considerable controversy. In the late fifties, Guides in East Pakistan volunteered to help the Public Health Authorities vaccinate and inoculate against smallpox and cholera. A report in The Council Fire described the hesitance of the community to accept young girls acting as nurses: “Some of the Guide leaders had doubts to the wisdom of allowing young girls to take part in the work; outside people thought the Guides too young and irresponsible to do so; while the parents were utterly opposed to the plan. ‘Our daughters will need police protection if they are not to be molested’, they said, ‘and may also pick up some dangerous disease.’” The Provincial Secretary, Begum Akhtar Teherani, persuaded par-ents. At the end of the campaign in January 1959, the Guides had inoculated 200,000 people, many women in pur-dah who would only allow women to vaccinate them. Provincial Public Health Advisor formally thanked Begum and declared, “An example has been set and a trail marked out that will encourage other women to enter such fields of public service.”

173

418 Khawar Mumtaz and Farida Shaheed, Women of Pakistan: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back? (Lon-

don: Zed Books, 1987), 45; Bilquees Taseer, “World Guiding Comes Alive: Gathering for Young Adults, Pakistan, 28 October to 6th November 1959,” The Council Fire 35, no. 2 (April-June 1960): 62-65; Khalida Bashir, “All Paki-stani Rally,” The Council Fire 33, no. 2 (April 1958): 85-86

419 Benedict R. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991), 178-186; 199-206.

420 India Planning Commission, Social Welfare in India, 32, 46-47. 421 India Planning Commission, Social Welfare in India, 32; “India,” B.P.: 1857-1957 Supplement to the

Council Fire (July 1958): 12; A. L. Karkare, “Service Camp in India,” The Council Fire 31, no. 2 (April 1956): 58-59; For other examples, see Leslie E. Whateley, “The Director’s Travels,” The Council Fire 28, no. 2 (April 1953): 35-39. The first project that the federal government of India involved Bharat Scouts and Guide Association in was the development of youth camps to promote social service and “bridge the gulf between the class rooms and the outside work, between dwellers in the villages and in towns.” The Association organized numerous regional camps where for two weeks, large groups of Guides would live in tents at state campgrounds and volunteer at local vil-lages, teaching women and children first aid, knitting, sewing, and crochet work, hygiene, and music and games. At the end, Guides concluded with a camp fire to which they invited all the villagers. The Indian Planning Commission concluded, “These camps inculcated among the youth a sense of dignity of labour and discipline. They served to bridge the gulf between the classrooms and the outside work, between dwellers in the villages and in towns.”

422 A. L. Karkare, “Service Camp in India,” The Council Fire 31, no. 2 (April 1956): 58-59; India Planning Commission, Social Welfare in India, 32

423“News and Notes: India,” The Council Fire 21, no. 2 (April 1946): 21; “India,” B.P.: 1857-1957 Sup-plement to the Council Fire 33, no. 2 (July 1958): 12. For example, shortly after Andhra, a Telugu-speaking state in southeast India merged with the Telugu-speaking sections of the Hyderabad State to form Andhra Pradesh, the As-sociation encouraged each Guide to teach one other person her mother tongue. Officers hoped this would help en-courage non-Telugu speakers to become part of the community and bridge divides between Telugu and Urdu speak-ers

424 Helen McSwiney, “Eastern Tour,” The Council Fire 30, no. 3 (July 1955): 91-94. One white Guider, Helen McSwiney, described in the early 1950s, “The Movement [of India and Pakistan] is, undoubtedly, appreciated by those outside it as one of the important influences which is helping to build a truly multi-racial community.”

425 Proctor, Scouting for Girls, 157-163 426 WAGGGS, Twelfth Biennial Report, 36-37;WAGGGS, Tenth Biennial Report, 1946-48, 44 “West

Pakistan Girl Scout Worker to Speak Here Tuesday Afternoon,” The Greeley Daily Tribune, Wednesday, May 23, 1956, 12; Gupta, Bhattacharya, and Dasgupta, In the Path of Service,112-113, 159-177

427 A. L. Karkare, “Service Camp in India,” The Council Fire 31, no. 2 (April 1956): 58-59; Anasuya Kark-are “Just a Beginning” The Council Fire 33, no. 4 (October 1958) 135-137; “Notes and News: India, The Guide Trip to Serampore,” The Council Fire 35, no. 2 (April-June 1960): 92-93; Dame May Curwen, “World Refugee Year 1959 June 1960,” The Council Fire 34, no. 3 (July 1959): 91-93; Leslie Whateley, “The World Association and Refugees,” The Council Fire 34, no. 3 (July 1959): 93-95.

428 Folarin Coker, A Lady: A Biography of Lady Oyinkan Abayomi (Ibadan, Nigeria: Evans Brothers (Nige-ria Publishers), 1987), 76; Sushaini Aznam, “Tan Sri Zainun Sulaiman, A Pioneer for Malay Women in Education and Politics, Spoke Up Bravely for the Independence Cause,” The Star online, Sunday January 28, 2007, News http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2007/1/28/nation/16709039&sec=nation. (accessed February 24, 2012); “Social Work—Guider's Plea to the Mature Women,” The Straits Times, November 18, 1959, 9; “The King's Daughter is Going to India, too,” The Straits Times, November 9, 1961, 9; Pakistan,” The Council Fire 32, no. 2 (April 1957): 74; Christabel Taseer “Pakistan: Each One, Teach One,” B.P.: 1857-1957 Supplement to the Council Fire 33, no. 2 (July 1958): 18-20; “Guides to Meet in Malaya,” The Straits Times, November 28, 1962, 11;

429 Param, A Guiding Light, 101; Eileen Sandford, “Guiding in Nigeria,” The Council Fire 31, no. 4 (Octo-ber 1956): 147.

430 T. N. Harper and C. A. Bayly, Forgotten Wars: Freedom and Revolution in Southeast Asia (Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 98.

431 John Butcher, The British in Malaya, 1880-1941: The Social History of a European Community in Co-lonial South-East Asia (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1979), 17, 21; L. H Lees, "Being British in Ma-laya, 1890-1940," Journal of British Studies 48, no. 1 (2009):82-83, 100; Ruth Ho, Rainbow Round My Shoulder (Singapore: Eastern Universities Press, 1975), 87, 88.

174

432 T. N. Harper and C. A. Bayly, Forgotten Wars: Freedom and Revolution in Southeast Asia (Cambridge,

Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 55, 528-535. 433 Mahani Musa, “The ‘Woman Question’ in Malayan Periodicals,” Indonesia and the Malay World 38,

no. 111 (July 2010): 250-270; Brownfoot, “Sisters Under the Skin,” 63-64; Nazreen Tajul Arif, “Ibu Zain - The Champion for Women,” Virtual Malaysia E-Tourism Portal http://www.virtualmalaysia.com/news/ibu%20zain%20-%20the%20champion%20for%20women.html (accessed March 8, 2012); Sushaini Aznam, “Tan Sri Zainun Su-laiman, A Pioneer for Malay Women in Education and Politics, Spoke Up Bravely for the Independence Cause,” The Star online, Sunday January 28, 2007, News http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2007/1/28/nation/16709039&sec=nation (accessed February 24, 2012); Christine Heward and Sheila S. Bunwaree, Gender, Education, and Development: Beyond Access to Empowerment (London: Zed Books, 1999), 158; T. N. Harper, The End of Empire and the Making of Malaya (New York: Cam-bridge University Press, 1998), 29. The one exception I have found, Ibu Zain, a Malay Guider, encouraged Malays to form their own imagined community that embraced Islamic values but supported the broader interpretation of women’s maternal role to society that included nurturing their own families and the marginalized of the nation. Zain, who saw Guiding as essential part of the education of Malay girl as “its principles were and are in accordance with Islamic teachings,” eagerly helped the Association modify the program to ease the concerns of Muslim parents. She designed a modified uniform for Muslim Guides that was khaki-colored instead of blue and completely covered girls’ arms and legs. She hoped Guiders would stress activities that taught Western hygiene and childcare practices and encouraged companionate marriage among Malay girls. According to Zain, Western ideals of maternalism com-plimented true Islam. Zain urged her Guides “to discard customary practices that are out of date or useless and con-tradictory to our religion.” During the fifties, Zain like many committed Malay nationalists expanded her concep-tion of the nation to include all Malayan people – Chinese, Indian, and European. Zain’s expanded conception of the Malayan nation reflected the influence of Lady Templer and the shift she imposed on the Malayan Guiding Associa-tion.

According to her own account, Zain integrated the Guiding program that emphasized multiethnic national-ism into her political platform as the leader of its women’s branch of the UMNO during the early 1950s, and upon independence, a one-term Member of Parliament. Zain’s vision of girls’ education nearly perfectly matched the ma-ternalism embedded within Baden-Powell’s Guiding Program. She wanted to equip the next generation of Malayan girls with Western concepts of nationalism, domestic science, child-rearing, service to the country, and physical activity but also stress the importance of more traditional feminine virtues: modesty, motherhood, marriage, and morality. In her speeches and writings, she remained a committed advocate for the movement and championed it efforts to educate girls of all races along the lines moden dididik agama dibela (modernity nurtured, religion de-fended). For her and the Malayan parents and male politicians she enjoined, Girl Guiding demonstrated the ideal way to reform all Malayan woman to mix the virtues of tradition with Western innovations in hygiene and educa-tion.

434 Lily Zubaidah Rahim, “Whose Imagined Community? The Nation-State, Ethnicity and Indigenous Mi-norities in Southeast Asia,” Paper presented at the Racism and Public Policy Conference of the United Nations Re-search Institute for Social Development (Durban, South Africa 3 - 5 September 2001), 9; “500 Girl Guides to Hold One-Week Camp,” The Straits Times, April 17, 1967, 5;

435 Margaret Shennan, Out in the Midday Sun: The British in Malaya, 1880-1960 (London: John Murray, 2000), 325-326, 329; “Penang Gets New YWCA Centre,” The Straits Times, July 8, 1952, 4; “Lady Templer Invites Guides,” The Straits Times, November, 17, 1952, 5; “Members 'Become ‘Efficient Wives,’” The Straits Times, May 2, 1952, 10; “Lady Templer: I Intend to Help,” The Straits Times, April 1 1952, 7. Most residents were women. Pearl Cox, a Red Cross worker recalled, “The original idea was that each village would eventually be an ordinary village, but some were so isolated and in such horrible places – like tin tailings where it would be very hard to do anything with the land – that they became a community cut off from everyone else, with barbed wire around them.”

436 Harper, The End of Empire and the Making of Malaya, 187; Bahasa Melayu, “New Village Complains to Lady Templer,” The Straits Times, 14 August 1952, 7; Joan Alexander, Voices and Echoes: Tales from Colonial Women. (London: New York, 1983),144.

437 Brian Lapping, End of Empire (London: Granada, 1985), 168-190; Virginia H. Dancz, Women and Party Politics in Peninsular Malaysia (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1987), xvii. In 1954, Malaya’s three major parties reflect the major ethnic groups of Malaya: the UMNO (United Malays National Organization), the MCA (Malaya Chinese Association), and the MIC (Malayan Indian Congress) came together to form the Alliance party, which insured that the elites of Malaya’s largest three ethnic communities would determine the course of in-dependence.

175

438 Lapping, End of Empire 175-178; Wade Markel, “Draining the Swamp: The British Strategy of Popula-

tion Control,” Parameters (Spring 2006), 36-38. Parameters is the official journal of the US Army War College, rather than a scholarly publication. Wade Markel, who has a Ph.D. in history from Harvard, wrote this as a Lieuten-ant Colonel of the U.S. Army.

439 Ho, Rainbow Round My Shoulder, 92; Param, A Guiding Light, 99-101; Joan Alexander, Voices and Echoes, 141-159; Lapping, End of Empire, 174-178; Butcher, The British in Malaya, 1880-1941, 17; James P. Ong-kili, Nation-building in Malaysia 1946–1974 (Oxford University Press, 1985). Gerald Templer, known for his re-mark “the answer lies not in pouring more troops into the jungle, but rests in the hearts and minds of the people,” believed that in order to defeat the Communists he had to win over the loyalty of Malayan Chinese, the largest racial group in Malaya. He demanded the improvement of conditions at the New Villages, promised independence, and began to rush Malaya through the steps needed to establish a constitutional, multiracial state.

440 Markel, “Draining the Swamp,” 36-37; Bayly and Harper, Forgotten Wars, 36, 101. During Japanese occupation and the immediate postwar years, many Malayan Chinese women became strong supporters of the Ma-layan Communist Party [MCP] because the Communists provided what the British could not --rural social services, protection from crime, and promises of a better future of independence and improved working conditions during periods occupation and military administration.

441 Markel, “Draining the Swamp,” 38-40; Bahasa Melayu, “New Village Complains to Lady Templer,” The Straits Times, 14 August 1952, 7. Guiding allowed Templer to approach disenchanted Village women through their daughters. Already uprooted from their homes, forced to live under surveillance, and forswear Communism, these women did not want further Western incursions into their homes. As their daughters accrued free uniforms and completed short excursions, their mothers began to believe that Lady Templer could improve their lives as well. Women petitioned her to help them improve their communities and working conditions.

442 “Members 'Become ‘Efficient Wives,’” The Straits Times, May 2, 1952, 10. 443 Joan Alexander, Voices and Echoes,146, 149 444 “New Village Gets its First Girl Guides,” The Straits Times, July 28, 1952, 7; J. M. Gullick, Josephine

Foss and the Pudu English School (Petaling Jaya: Pelanduk Publications for Pudu English School Old Girls Asso-ciation, 1988), 165-171; Shennan, Out in the Midday Sun, 327-328; Mark Foenander, “Johore Leads the Way,” The Straits Times, June 29, 1952, 4.

445 “New Village Gets its First Girl Guides,” The Straits Times, July 28, 1952, 7; “Lady Templer: I intend to Help,” The Straits Times, April 1 1952, 7.

446 Mark Foenander, “Johore Leads the Way,” The Straits Times, June 29, 1952, 4. 447 Markel, “Draining the Swamp, 36-37, 46 Ho, Rainbow Round My Shoulder, 125-126 Harper, The End of

Empire and the Making of Malaya, 187; The Malayan Chinese Association report claimed that girls obtained “a great kick from this form of service” but worried they lacked “a full appreciation of the voluntary and nonpolitical nature of the movement.”

448 “Members 'Become ‘Efficient Wives,’” The Straits Times, May 2, 1952, 10; Shennan, Out in the Midday Sun, 331; Joan Alexander, Voices and Echoes,141-151.

449 “A Parting Word of Advice By Miss Jimmie,” The Straits Times, November 4, 1960,10; Pamela Dalton, “Tropical Camp in Singapore,” The Council Fire 34, no. 1 (April 1959): 99-102.

450 Gerald Hawkins, “First Steps in Malayan Local Government,” Pacific Affairs 26, no. 2 (June 1953): 158. By the elections for local governments in 1952, Guides staffed most voting stations.

451 John G. Butcher, The British in Malaya, 1880-1941, 21, 162. 452 “MIC Assembly,” The Straits Times, July 21, 1967, 10; “Girl Guide for Jamboree,” The Straits Times,

April 16, 1950, 7; Nilanjana Sengupta, A Gentleman's Word: The Legacy of Subhas Chandra Bose in Southeast Asia (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2012), 219-222; Sushaini Aznam, “Tan Sri Zainun Sulaiman, a pioneer for Malay women in education and politics, spoke up bravely for the independence cause,” The Star online, Sunday January 28, 2007, News http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2007/1/28/nation/16709039&sec=nation. (accessed February 24, 2012); Musa, “The ‘Woman Question’ in Malayan Periodicals,” 250-270; M. Bavani, “Girl Guides in KL mark 95th anni-versary with a bang” The Star online, Monday April 18, 2011 Metro http://thestar.com.my/metro/story.asp?file=%2F2011%2F4%2F18%2Fcentral%2F8498842&sec=central (accessed June 29, 2012); “Top Award for Brave Woman,” New Straits Times August 23, 2000; Harper, The End of Empire and the Making of Malaya, 226, 314. A Malay Guider, teacher, magazine editor, and unionist, Ibu Zain, started the women’s branch of the United Malays National Organization (UMNO) in 1946. As most English-educated Malay women valued their welfare work through organizations such as the Girl Guides as more important than membership

176

to political groups and remained on the peripheries of political activities, Zain hoped to use Girl Guides as a new recruiting ground for politically engaged women. According to her own account, Zain integrated the Guiding pro-gram into her political platform as the leader of its women’s branch of the UMNO during the early 1950s, and upon independence, a one-term Member of Parliament. Zain’s vision of girls’ education nearly perfectly matched the ma-ternalism embedded within Baden-Powell’s Guiding Program. She wanted to equip the next generation of Malayan girls with Western concepts of nationalism, domestic science, child-rearing, service to the country, and physical activity but also stress the importance of more traditional feminine virtues: modesty, motherhood, marriage, and morality. In her speeches and writings, she remained a committed advocate for the movement and championed it efforts to educate girls of all races along the lines moden dididik agama dibela (modernity nurtured, religion de-fended). For her and the Malayan parents and male politicians she enjoined, Girl Guiding demonstrated the ideal way to reform all Malayan woman to mix the virtues of tradition with Western innovations in hygiene and educa-tion.

Puan Seri Janaki Athinahapan was another well-known Malayan who integrated Guiding into her political activism. She cofounded the Malayan Indian Congress (MIC) in 1947 as a veteran soldier of Rhani of Jhansi Regi-ment, the only women’s regiment of Subhas Chandra Bose’s army. During the fifties and sixties, she served the government in various capacities both elected and appointed. Like Zain, she continued her work with Guiding as a government official. When politics grew more sectarian after independence, she remained committed to the multi-ethnic nation Guiding celebrated.

453 “Merdeka Means Sacrifice: Youth Leader,” The Straits Times, May 13, 1957, 7; “Great day for 3,200 in Penang,” The Straits Times, December 22, 1952, 9; “Chief Guide Will Have Full Programme,” The Straits Times, March 28, 1958, 4; “Queen gets Guides' Friendship Badge,” The Straits Times, March 23, 1962, 6; “Raja Permaisuri Agong—A Firm Champion of Women's Rights,” The Straits Times, January 4, 1961, 12; Gerald Hawkins, “First Steps in Malayan Local Government,” 158; Harper, The End of Empire and the Making of Malaya, 314. Harper suggests that the Malayan Girl Guide Association dropped out of the Malayan Youth Council as it resented the in-fluence that the World Assembly of Youth held over the Council and feared Communist infiltration.

454 Donald MacGillivray, “Malaya-The New Nation,” International Affairs 34, no. 2 (April 1958): 157-163. Donald MacGillivray, the last British High Commissioner in Malaya, wrote, “Men and women of every com-munity have worked together in State and District War Executive Committees, in Town and Local Councils, and in voluntary organizations such as the Girl Guides, the Boy Scouts, the Red Cross, and the St John Ambulance Bri-gade. Of course, there will always be different community points of view on many subjects, just as in the same way there will always be different points of view on some subjects between the English and the Scots. But at least there seemed to have developed in Malaya a common Malayan outlook generally on the part of the great majority of the people, and a national consciousness to a degree sufficient to ensure that the people would hold together as a na-tion.”

455 Helen McSwiney, “Eastern Tour,” The Council Fire 30, no. 3 (July 1955): 93. 456 Harper and Bayly, Forgotten Wars, 532-535; Donald MacGillivray, “Malaya-The New Nation,” Inter-

national Affairs 34, no. 2 (April 1958): 162. 457 “Youth Movement Mystery,” The Straits Times, July 7, 1964, 9; “'Malayanised'—the Girl Guides,” The

Straits Times, April 7, 1958, 7; WAGGGS, Seventeenth Report, 72, 86-87, 93-94; “A Woman Born to Homage and Respect,” The Straits Times, September 2, 1957, 9; “Girl Guide Chief Lakshmi Quits Next Month,” New Straits Times, March 19, 1973.

458 Helen Callaway, Gender, Culture, and Empire: European Women in Colonial Nigeria (Urbana: Univer-sity of Illinois Press, 1987), 183-184; Coker, A Lady, 67; Johnson-Odim, “Lady Oyinkan Abayomi,” 151-153. Until 1924, Nigeria had no official association to supervise Guide companies in Nigeria. In 1923, a group of all white Guiders met and created the Central Nigerian Executive Committee. The Committee decided to invite Abayomi to join it as the only African representative, and she attended the subsequent meetings that led to the development of the Nigerian Guide Association. When Olave Baden-Powell visited Nigeria in 1925, she personally warranted Abayomi as the first Nigerian Guide Captain, which is a certified Guide leader. The white leadership may have in-vited Abayomi to the initial meeting. If they did, she would not have been able to attend as her first husband, Mo-ronfolu Abayomi, had died just months after they were married that year.

459 Coker, A Lady, 66-67; Johnson-Odim, “Lady Oyinkan Abayomi,”151-152; LaRay Denzer, “Yoruba Women: A Historiographical Study,” The International Journal of African Historical Studies 27, no. 1 (1994): Both Abayomi’s parents had a Western education and had studied in England. Her father, Sir Kitoyi Ajasa, a lawyer, journalist, and politician often met with Governor Lugard and sat as head of the Lagos bar from 1915 till he died in 1935. Her parents supported British rule yet sought more governing power for Africans

177

460 Coker, A Lady, 25-29; Johnson-Odim, “Lady Oyinkan Abayomi,” 153; Cheryl Johnson,

“Grassroots Organizing: Women in Anticolonial Activity in Southwestern Nigeria,” African Studies Review 25, no. 2/3 (June-September 1982): 137-157. 143. It is unclear when Abayomi founded the British West African Educated Girls Club. In "Lady Oyinkan Abayomi," Johnson states 1920; in “Grassroots Organizing,” she states 1927. Ac-cording to Johnson’s "Lady Oyinkan Abayomi," the British West African Educated Girls Club transformed into the Ladies Progressive Club in the early 1920s.

461 Coker, A Lady, 68-69. In 1927, she pushed the Association to support the establishment of Brownie Packs “as part of the ways of bringing the younger girls into guiding from a tender age.”

462 Coker, A Lady, 66, 69-71. Nigerian Boy Scouts had the government’s total support, financially and le-gally. Governor Sir Hugh Clifford promulgated an ordinance that legalized Boy Scouting for African boys.

463 Margery Freda Perham, Africans and British Rule (London: Oxford University Press, H. Milford, 1941), 85.

464 Cheryl Johnson-Odim, “Lady Oyinkan Abayomi,” 151; Coker, A Lady, 62, 107; Johnson, “Grassroots Organizing,” 143. In 1927, Abayomi became the only African woman on the founding staff of Queen’s College, which was the first and only government-funded girls’ secondary school in Nigeria until the 1950s. Originally, when women’s organizations lobbied colonial officials for a government-funded secondary school for the girls of Lagos in the early twenties, officials ignored their requests. Consequentially, the organizations set up their own fund and raised over one thousand dollars. Abayomi’s British West African Educated Girls Club raised a significant amount towards Queen’s college that historian Cheryl Johnson argue pushed the government to acquiesce. When the gov-ernment gave in and created Queen’s College, white teachers felt obligated to include Abayomi in the founding staff. Her career at Queen’s College expanded Abayomi’s network of potential white patrons. Additionally, she became involved in the predominantly white Young Women’s Christian Association, which further increased her appeal to white elites.

465 Coker, A Lady, 72- 73; Sheila Bridges “Guiding in Nigeria,” The Council Fire 16, no. 2 (April 1941): 24-25.

466 Agnes Baden-Powell and Robert Baden-Powell, The Handbook for Girl Guides or How Girls Can Help Build the Empire (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1912), 25-26, 38-41; Gloria Chuku, “From Petty Traders to International Merchants: A Historical Account of Three Igbo Women of Nigeria in Trade and Commerce, 1886 to 1970,” African Economic History no. 27 (1999): 13-15; Trevor Clark and Trevor Royle, Was It Only Yesterday? The Last Generation of Nigeria's "Turawa" (Bristol: BECM Press, 2002), 137. Even after the Association essentially prohibited African Guiders, many companies remained active in an unofficial capacity.

467 Cheryl Johnson-Odim and Nina Emma Mba, For Women and the Nation: Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti of Nigeria (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 12; Johnson-Odim, “Lady Oyinkan Abayomi,” 149-150.

468 Eileen Sandford, Come on, Eileen! (Shrewsbury: Shrewsbury Words, 2010), 37. 469 Sheila Bridges “Guiding in Nigeria,” The Council Fire 16, no. 2 (April 1941): 24-25. 470 Coker, A Lady, 73. 471 Coker, A Lady, 49, 64, 106; Quoted in Johnson-Odim, “Lady Oyinkan Abayomi,” 157; Toyin Falola,

The History of Nigeria (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1999), 86; Philip Serge Zachernuk, Colonial Subjects: An African Intelligentsia and Atlantic Ideas (Charlottesville, Va: University Press of Virginia, 2000), 113. In an arti-cle entitled, “Modern Womanhood” she propounded, “Unless the so-called highly educated make themselves open and approachable they will have no one to lead.”

472 Johnson, “Grassroots Organizing,” 146-147; Coker, A Lady, 107-108; Johnson-Odim and Mba, For Women and the Nation, 225-233; Toyin Falola and Saheed Aderinto, Nigeria, Nationalism, and Writing History (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2010), 94.

473 Coker, A Lady, 82, 86; Ifi Amadiume, Daughters of the Goddess, Daughters of Imperialism African Women Struggle for Culture, Power and Democracy (Londres: Zed Books, 2000), 42.

474 Falola, The History of Nigeria, 90-91; Sheila Bridges “Guiding in Nigeria,” The Council Fire 16, no. 2 (April 1941): 24-25; Robert Baden-Powell, Girl Guiding: The Official Handbook (London: C. Arthur Pearson, 1921), 27-28.

475 Eileen Sandford, “Guiding in Nigeria,” The Council Fire 31, no. 4 (October 1956): 146-148. 476 Coker, A Lady, 76, 86; Sandford, Come on, Eileen!, 55. Sandford explains the process: “The time came

for Nigeria to be visited by the World Association representatives, to decide whether or not Nigeria was ready to be recognized by the World Association of Girl Guides (WAGGS). They had to meet certain criteria, as well as provid-ing a high standard in all they did. Basically, these were that the Movement was independent of Government, and that the whole organisation should be run at a high standard, and according to World Rules.”

178

477 Sandford, “Guiding in Nigeria,” The Council Fire 31, no. 4 (October 1956): 146-148; Tibenderana,

"The Beginnings of Girls' Education in the Native Administration Schools in Northern Nigeria, 1930-1945," 93-109; Sandford, Come on, Eileen! 161, 166-167; Adetowun Ogunsheye, “The Women of Nigeria,” Présence Africaine (1960): 41.

478 Sandford, Come on, Eileen! 161,166-168, 180; Sandford, “Guiding in Nigeria,” The Council Fire 31 no. 4 (October 1956): 146-148.

479 Eileen Sandford, Come on, Eileen!, 47-48; Coker, A Lady, 9, 66-68,77-78; Chuku, “From Petty Traders to International Merchants,” 13-15; Kofoworola Aina Moore, “The Story of Kofoworola Aina Moore, of the Yoruba Tribe, Nigeria,” in Ten Africans, edited Perham, Margery (Evanston, Ill: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 323-341; Sarah Segilola Odulaja, Autobiography of Princess Sarah Segilola Odulaja Africa Resources,1999 www.africaresource.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=636:autobiography-of-princess-sarah-segilola-odulaja&catid=85:oral-history&Itemid=341 (accessed March 6, 2012); Awe Bolanle, Nigerian Women in Historical Perspective (Lagos: Sankore Publishers, 1992) 123-124; Amadiume, Daughters of the Goddess, 42, 62; Kenneth Lindsay Little, African Women in Towns; An Aspect of Africa's Social Revolution (London: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 201.

480 Julia Martínez, “Problematising Aboriginal Nationalism,” Aboriginal History 21 (1997): 133-145. Be-fore the arrival of settlers, over 500 “separate traditional communities” existed each with its own history, language, and customs. Thus genocide and oppression led Aborigines to adopt a common identity. Until the sixties, most “Aboriginal nationalists” sought out imperial citizenship. Since pan-Aboriginal nationalism emerged with the Free-dom Rides and the Black Panther Movement in the sixties and the Tent Embassy in the seventies, men led it.

481 Anna Haebich, Broken Circles: Fragmenting Indigenous Families, 1800-2000 (Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2000), 286; Daphne Carpenter, “Frangipani Crowns on Thinking Day,” The Council Fire 29, no. 3 (July 1954): 85-86

482 Russell McGregor, Imagined Destinies: Aboriginal Australians and the Doomed Race Theory, 1880-1939 (Carlton, Vic: Melbourne University Press, 1997), 146; Haebich, Broken Circles, 282-283; Patrick Wolfe, “Land, Labor, and Difference: Elementary Structures of Race,” 873; McGrath and W. Stevenson, “Gender, Race, and Policy,” 44.

483 Alastair Davidson, From Subject to Citizen: Australian Citizenship in the Twentieth Century (Cam-bridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 206; Wolfe, “Land, Labor, and Difference,” 873; Anna Haebich, For Their Own Good: Aborigines and Government in the Southwest of Western Australia, 1900-1940 (Nedlands , Western Australia: University of Western Australia Press,1988), 308-310; 354-356; Vera Whittington, Sister Kate: A Life Dedicated to Children in Need of Care (Nedlands, W.A.: University of Western Australia Press, 1999), 318; A. McGrath and W. Stevenson, “Gender, Race, and Policy,” 44, 47, 50-51. The Australian government, in an effort to impose Western gender roles on Aboriginal women who traditionally had exercised a high degree of social and economic autonomy, legally designated Aboriginal women dependents either of their father, husband, or the state until 1985. This meant that male Aborigines or white government authorities had the right to decide if a woman would gain enfranchisement, which demanded she give up all associations with Aboriginal culture.

484 Anthony Moran, “The Psychodynamics of Australian Settler-Nationalism: Assimilating or Reconciling with the Aborigines?” Political Psychology 23, no. 4 (December 2002): 671-672, 678, 685, 688. As of 2000, most non-indigenous Australians oppose granting Aborigines any special rights of self-governance or land reclamation.

485 Russell McGregor, Imagined Destinies, 146-151; Moran, “The Psychodynamics of Australian Settler-Nationalism,” 679-680, 683.

486 Davidson, From Subject to Citizen, 193-197. 487 Moran, “The Psychodynamics of Australian Settler-Nationalism,” 692-693; Meaney, “Britishness and

Australia,” 123-135; Davidson, From Subject to Citizen, 46, 68-70, 189. Even today, politicians across the political spectrum emphasize the Britishness of Australia.

488 Meaney, “Britishness and Australia,” 121. 489 Davidson, From Subject to Citizen, 188-289, Wolfe, “Land, Labor, and Difference,” 874. 490 “Australia,” The Council Fire 28, no. 3 (July 1953) : 92 491 Annette Roberts, Sister Eileen: A Life with the Lid Off (Bassendean, Western Australia: Access Press,

2002), 244-245; Jennifer Clark, “‘The Wind of Change’ in Australia: Aborigines and the International Politics of Race, 1960-1972,” The International History Review 20, no. 1 (March 1998): 109; Wolfe, “Land, Labor, and Differ-ence,” 871-874; Haebich, Broken Circles, 282-283. The government of Australia defined individuals with less 3.125% of Aboriginal blood as white. Thus, more individuals of Aboriginal descent gained citizenship rights as the practice of exogamy continued. Also, in 1953, the local government of Central Australia, a region within the North-

179

ern Territory, gave the Aboriginal population full citizenship rights. By 1965, legislative and constitutional changes that insured Aborigines the right to vote in federal and state elections did little to improve the quality of life or legal position of Aboriginal women

492 Kerr, The Story of a Million Girls, 192-203; WAGGGS, Fourth Biennial Report, 1934-1936, 100. Doro-thy Hawthorn, the Deputy State Commissioner for the Girl Guides’ Association of Queensland, a state in northeast Australia, successfully petitioned the Department of Aboriginal Affairs to contribute to the Association’s efforts to supervise Guiding among indigenous girls in the Torres Strait Islands and Thursday Island. Hawthorne complained that indigenous women had begun Guide companies on the Torres Strait Islands that failed to conform to the stan-dards of Guiding as set out in the handbooks. Her fears of what the girls might learn from their unsupervised in-digenous leaders convinced the government of Queensland to pay for one white Guider to oversee the progress of indigenous Scouts and Guiders on the islands. Hawthorne promised, “It will be an interesting and thrilling adventure to help these native girls become true Guides, Their keenness is pathetic, and with training we shall hope to make them Guides of whom any nation might be proud.”

493 “Australian Federal Council Meeting,” The Council Fire 33, no. 1 (January 1958): 24; “Australia,” The Council Fire 28, no.3 (July 1953) : 92; Marcy C. Hodkin, “The Land of the Black Swans,” The Council Fire 30, no. 1 (January 1956): 17-19; Avril Janks, Leadership for Life: 100 Women, 100 Years in Guiding (Rosanna, Vic: Bounce Books, 2010), 36

494 Messner, “Good, Upright Young Citizens,” 99; Daphne Popham, Reflections: Profiles of 150 Women Who Helped Make Western Australia's History (Perth: Carroll's, 1978), 246.

495 Susan Maushart, Sort of a Place Like Home: Remembering the Moore River Native Settlement (South Fremantle, West Australia: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1993), 198. It seems that Guiding was one of the few tol-erable aspects of life at Moore River. Codella described, “Oh, I didn’t like that place. No, it wasn’t the sort of place you could live in -- I thought. You get these bugs and things, fleas eating you. And then we was drafted away from our parents, like the women’s dormitory was next to ours, and the children’s dormitory was next, all in the same area. But you was locked away from your mother…” An inspector from the Health Department observed during his visit at the Moore River Settlement, “Happiness appears to be an unknown quantity about the Settlement and there is a general air of repression with the natives, involving their punishment as well.”

496 Roberts, Sister Eileen, 80, 125; Martínez, “Problematising Aboriginal Nationalism,” 141-145 497 Roberts, Sister Eileen, 150-155. 498 Rosemary van den Berg, “Black Thoughts on Whiteness: Perspectives from an Aboriginal Woman,”

Journal of the European Association of Studies on Australia 2, no. 2 (2011): 54-55; Haebich, Broken Circles, 286. A former resident of Sister Kate’s Quarter Caste Children’s Home recalled, “ One of the greatest travesties … is that they never prepared us for the fact that we would one day have to leave the home and go into the outside world and deal with the fact that we were Aboriginal.”

499 Davidson, From Subject to Citizen, 188-198 500 “The Centenary Camp in South Australia,” The Council Fire 7, no. 2 (April 1937): 14; Meaney, “Brit-

ishness and Australia,” 123-135; Moran, “The Psychodynamics of Australian Settler-Nationalism,” 685. Aboriginal women had served as laborers at larger Guiding camps.

501 Helen McSwiney, “Pacific Odyssey,” The Council Fire 34, no. 1 (April 1959): 56-58. 502 Wolfe, “Land, Labor, and Difference,” 874; Adele Murdolo, “Warmth and Unity with All Women? His-

toricizing Racism in the Australian Women's Movement,” Feminist Review no. 52 (Spring 1996):81; A. McGrath and W. Stevenson, “Gender, Race, and Policy,” 52. McGrath and Stevenson contend that self-management may have worsened conditions for Aboriginal women.

503 Julia Messner, “Good, Upright Young Citizens,” 29, 71.

180

CONCLUSION

At the Seventeenth World Conference in 1960 in Athens, Helvi Sipila, a prominent Fin-

nish women-rights’ lawyer and WAGGGS officer who trained Guiders internationally, trium-

phantly observed, “Today millions of men and women in the world see Guiding/Girl Scouting

one of the best means by which women in the world can be helped to fulfill their role to become

better citizens with equal rights as men, but also remain women, wives and mothers.”504 The

delegates from India, Malaya, and Nigeria enthusiastically agreed with her analysis as they had

already begun to build Guiding into a training program tailored to future citizenry of their na-

tions.

It was the first World Conference to which WAGGGS had invited delegates from Nigeria

and Malaya. Though neither delegation had the right to vote, their presence encouraged

WAGGGS to continue to break down the barriers that disempowered non-Western participants.

Moreover, Malayan delegates initiated a meaningful relationship with Western leaders that led

WAGGGS to place Malayan women in positions of leadership over regional events in Southeast

Asia.505 Nigerian women continued to seek out greater roles in WAGGGS, but Western leaders

hesitated to except African leadership at international level until late sixties.506 Independent

delegations from Pakistan and India had attended five World Conferences before the Seventeenth

and their influence already had changed the focus of the international movement significantly.

Nationalist Indian and Pakistani Guiders convinced WAGGGS to internationalize many

of the nationalist policies that they had implemented before and just after independence. Cultur-

ally diverse uniforms became an expectation, and Western officers pressured Pre-Tenderfoot

countries to adopt new uniforms to replace the blue British jumpers most Guides still wore.507

181

WAGGGS pursued more extensive refugee outreach after Indian Guiders during WWII had in-

sured the safety of Polish refugees. With independence in 1947, these the Indian and Pakistani

movements cooperated with their governments to place Guides on the forefront of their coun-

tries’ efforts to modernize. With the same maternalist idea of uplift of less civilized that moti-

vated white colonial Guiders, Guides had become advocates of literacy, hygiene, vaccinations,

and nation-building among the disenfranchised poor of India and Pakistan.

The international movement had taken up some of these issues that they believed perti-

nent to Western and non-Western member states such as refugees, international training, and UN

funding. Furthermore, Indian and Pakistani women had joined the leadership of WAGGGS. The

governing board of WAGGGS had included one Indian Guider since 1948 when the Twelfth

World Conference elected Julia Sen, the Chief Commissioner of India as one of the nine mem-

bers of the World Committee. Other Guiders from India and Pakistan had taken on positions as

traveling commissioners, conference organizers, or international trainers.

As Nigeria, Malaya, and India became involved in international Guiding upon independ-

ence, their membership expanded, and their programs began to officialize their nationalist ethos

of Guiding through new literature, nation-wide camps, and the participation in national ceremo-

nies. Nationalist Guiders applied the maternal ideal that had once justified the intervention of

white Guiders into the lives of the colonized to justify their intervention into the lives of villag-

ers. The villagers, according to the nationalist Guiders, lacked the skills needed to fulfill the re-

sponsibilities that citizenship to a newly independent nation. Former Australian Aboriginal

Guides found maternalism an ineffectual means to assert power and distanced themselves from

the movement.

182

Many scholars have noted that Guiding complemented and fueled the maternalist impe-

rial ambitions of Western women reformers. My study captures how the nuances of imperialism,

the extent of self-government, and the tone of anti-colonial nationalisms affected the flexibility

of maternal imperial imports like Guiding. The maternalism that saturated the Guiding program

enabled colonial women, mostly those from the Western-educated elite, to imagine belonging to

an egalitarian community larger than themselves. Because white colonial Guiders disagreed

over what imperial citizenship required, colonial women, mostly colonized, began to assert a na-

tion-based citizenship. Nationalists Guiders prolonged the feminine civilizing mission of mater-

nalism after independence. Instead of white “mothers” nurturing colonized girls, Malayan, Nige-

rian, Indian, and Pakistani made themselves into “mothers” and assumed responsibility for nur-

turing the impoverished villagers their countries sought to modernize.

504 Helvi Sipila, “Tenderfoot and Pre-Tenderfoot Countries,” The Council Fire 35 no. 4 (October-

December 1960): 151-154. 505 “Girl Guides on a 2-Week Goodwill Tour,” The Straits Times, December 4, 1963, 6; “Mrs. Bulsuk

learns from Malaya,” The Straits Times, December 13, 1962, 13; “Guides to Meet in Malaya,” The Straits Times, November 28, 1962, 11; “Queen Gets Guides' Friendship Badge,” The Straits Times, March 23, 1962, 6; “Two Teachers Get Certificates,” The Singapore Free Press, June 26, 1961, 3.

506Eileen Heath, Come on, Eileen! (Shrewsbury: Shrewsbury Words, 2010), 47-48; Folarin Coker, A Lady: A Biography of Lady Oyinkan Abayomi (Ibadan, Nigeria: Evans Brothers, 1987), 77-78; World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, “Regional Committee:

Previous Africa Committee Members,” World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, http://africa.wagggsworld.org/en/about/work/regionalcommittee/PreviousAfricaCommitteemembers; (accessed July 8, 2012); The Nigerian Girl Guide Association, “Past Chiefs,” http://www.nigguides.org/past_chiefs.html (accessed July 8 2012); Financial Nigeria, “Nigeria Suspends Adoption of ECOWAS Tariff,” from The Guardian December 14, 2007, http://www.financialnigeria.com/NEWS/news_item_detail.aspx?item=625 (accessed July 8, 2012)

507 Leslie E. Whateley “The Director’s Travels,” The Council Fire 28, no.1 (January 1953), 6-8.

183

BIBLIOGRAPHY: PRIMARY SOURCES

Collections

Mary Johnson Collection. Cambridge University Library. Royal Commonwealth Society. Lillian Picken Papers. Special Collections. Yale Divinity School Library. Newspapers/ Journals

The Age. Australian Newspapers Online. South Melbourne, Vic: Francis Cooke. The Council Fire. 1926-1983. National Historic Preservation Center, Girl Scouts of the USA.

New York. The Greeley Daily Tribune. Greeley, Colorado: Greeley Tribune Pub. Co, 1908. International Committee on Christian Literature for Africa. Listen. London: International Committee on Christian Literature for Africa, 1932-1949. Methodist Episcopal Church. Woman’s Missionary Friend. Methodist Church (U.S.), The Malaysia Message. Singapore: [s.n.], 1891-1953. New Straits Times. Kuala Lumpur: New Straits Times Press (Malaysia), 1900. Presbyterian Church in Malaya. Saint Andrew’s Outlook: Annual Record of the Presbyterian

Church in Malaya, Sumatra, Burma and Siam. Singapore: Presbyterian Church in Ma-laya.

The Straits Times (1845 – 2009). NewspaperSG. National Library Singapore.

http://newspapers.nl.sg/Default.aspx The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser (1884-1945). NewspaperSG. National Li-

brary Singapore. http://newspapers.nl.sg/Default.aspx The Theosophist: A World Magazine. World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, Biennial Reports 1928-1960.

184

Published

Aldis, Janet. A Girl Guide Captain in India. Madras: Methodist Publishing House, 1922. Alexander, Joan. Voices and Echoes: Tales from Colonial Women. London: New York, 1983. All India Women’s Conference. All-India Women’s Conference on Educational Reform. The ...

All-India Women’s Conference on Educational Reform: [Proceedings]. Poona: January 5-8, 1927. Sammelana: Pune India, 1927.

All-India Women's Conference on Educational Reform, Poona January 5-8 1927 (1927). Baden-Powell, Agnes, and Robert Baden-Powell. The Handbook for Girl Guides or How Girls

Can Help Build the Empire. London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1912. Baden-Powell, Heather. Baden-Powell: A Family Album. Gloucester: A. Sutton, 1986. Baden-Powell, Olave, and Rudyard Kipling, The First Trail. Oxford: Published for the Girl

Guides Association by Blackwell, 1927. Baden-Powell, Olave. Guide Links. London: Pearson, 1936. Baden-Powell, Olave. Training Girls as Guides. London: C. Arthur Pearson, 1917. Baden-Powell, Olave, and Mary Drewery. Window on My Heart: The Autobiography of Olave,

Lady Baden-Powell. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1973. Baden-Powell, Robert. Girl Guiding the Official Handbook: A Handbook for Guidelets, Guides,

Senior Guides, and Guiders. Sixth edition. London: C. Arthur Pearson, 1921. Baden-Powell, Robert. Girl Guiding: A Handbook for Guidelets Guides, Rangers and Guiders.

8th edition. London: C. Arthur Pearson, 1925. Baden-Powell, Robert. Girl Guiding: A Handbook for Brownies, Guides, Rangers. London: C.

Arthur Pearson, Ltd.,1938. Baden-Powell, Robert. Scouting and Youth Movements. London: Ernest Benn Limited, 1929. Baden-Powell, Robert and Robert Stephenson Smyth. Lessons From The 'Varsity of Life. Lon-

don: Pearson, 1933. Baden-Powell, Robert. “White Men in Black Skins.” Elders Review of West African Affairs 8,

no. 30 (July 1929): 6-7. Barne, Kitty. Here Come the Girl Guides. London: Girl Guides Association, 1946.

185

Bennett, Mary Montgomerie. The Australian Aboriginal As a Human Being. London: Alston

Rivers, 1930. Bennett, Mary Montgomerie. Teaching the Aborigines: Data from Mount Margaret Mission.

West Australia, 1935. Besant, Annie. Annie Besant, Builder of New India. Adyar: Theosophical Publishing House,

1942. Besant, Annie. Wake Up, India: A Plea for Social Reform. Adyar, India: Theosophical Publish-

ing House, 1913. Bright, Esther, and Annie Besant. Old Memories and Letters of Annie Besant. London: Theoso-

phical Publishing House,1936. Brown, Phyllis Stewart. All Things Uncertain: The Story of the G.I.S. Girl Guides Association,

1966. Chesterton, Gilbert Keith. The Coloured Lands, 1874-1936. New York : Sheed & Ward, 1938. “Clansman of the Year: Sir John Stuart MacPherson.” Creag Dhubh: The Annual of the Clan

MacPherson Association Duncan of the Kiln Number, no. 12 (1960): 28-31. Clark, Trevor, and Trevor Royle. Was It Only Yesterday? The Last Generation of Nigeria’s

“Turawa.” Bristol: BECM Press, 2002. Coghlan, T. A. A Statistical Account of the Seven Colonies of Australasia, 1901-1902. Sydney:

William Applegate Gullick, Government Printer, 1902. Collis, Robert. Nigeria in Conflict. London: Secker & Warburg, 1970. Conference on African Education. African Education: A Study of Educational Policy and Prac-

tice in British Tropical Africa. Oxford: University Press, 1953. Das, Bhagavan. Annie Besant and the Changing World. Madras: Theosophical Publishing

House, 1934. Elmhirst, Leonard. Rabindranath Tagore: Pioneer in Education. London: John Murray, 1961. Gauthé, Jean-Jacques. Les scouts. Paris: Le Cavalier bleu, 2007. Girl Guides Association. The Guiding Book: Dedicated to the Girlhood of Many Countries and

to All Those With a Heart Still Young. Edited by Ann Kindersley. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1923.

186

Girl Scouts of the United States of America. Hands Around the World; International Friendship for Girl Scouts. 1949.

Hawkins, Gerald. “First Steps in Malayan Local Government.” Pacific Affairs 26, no. 2 (June

1953): 155-158. Ho, Ruth. Rainbow Round My Shoulder. Singapore: Eastern Universities Press, 1975. Hoxie, W. J. How Girls Can Help Their Country. New York: The Knickerbocker Press, 1913. India Planning Commission. Social Welfare in India. New Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry

of Information and Broadcasting, 1960. Johnston, Tim, Berrice Johnston, and Carolyn Johnston. Harmattan, a Wind of Change Life and

Letters from Northern Nigeria at the End of Empire. London: Radcliffe Press, 2010. Leith-Ross, Sylvia. African Women; A Study of the Ibo of Nigeria. New York: F. A. Praeger,

1965. The Leaders of Malaya and Who’s Who. Edited by Morais, J. Victor. Kuala Lumpur: The Khee

Meng Press, 1960. “Letterbook of Secretary, Darjeeling, Calcutta and Madras.” Papers of the Women’s Association

for Foreign Missions, 1885-1930, (Church of Scotland). Adam Matthew Digital. Empire Online.

Liddell, Alix. “Story of the Girl Guides, 1938-1975: Official History of the Girl Guides Associa-

tion.” In The Story of the Girl Guides. London: Girl Guides Association, 1976. Lindsay, Samuel McCune, Dame Katharine Furse, Mrs. H. H. Moorhead, William Martin, Wil-

liam F. Snow, and Julia C. Lathrop. “Discussion: International Social Welfare Prob-lems.” Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science in the City of New York 12, no. 1 (July1926): 424-432.

Kingsley, Mary Henrietta. Travels in West Africa. Washington, D.C.: Adventure Clas-

sics/National Geographic, 2002. Kerr, Rose Gough. The Story of a Million Girls; Guiding and Girl Scouting Round the World.

London: The Girl Guides Association, 1937. Kerr, Rose Gough. “Story of the Girl Guides, 1908-1938: Official History of the Girl Guides As-

sociation.” In The Story of the Girl Guides, edited by Alex Liddell. London: Girl Guides Association, 1976.

187

Khan, Begum G. A. “Emancipation of Women.” In Quaid-I-Azam and Muslim Women, 44-52. Islamabad: National Committee for Birth Centenary Celebrations of Quaid-i-Azam Mo-hammad Ali Jinnah, Ministry of Education, Govt. of Pakistan, 1976.

MacGillivray, Donald. “Malaya The New Nation.” International Affairs 34, no. 2(April 1958):

157-163. MacFee, K. J. Eastern Schools and School Girls: An Account of the Educational Work of the

Church of England Zenana Missionary Society. London: Church of England Zenana Missionary Society, 1927.

Madan, Gurmukh. Indian Social Problems. Ahmedabad: Allied Publishing, 1987 Magidi, Dora Thizwilondi, and John Blacking. Black Background: The Childhood of a South Af-

rican Girl. New York: Abelard-Schuman, 1964. Marsh, Mabel. Hard Scrabble. Kuala Lumpur, Malaya: Union Press, 1960. Marsh, Mabel. Service Suspended. New York: Carlton Press, 1968. Marsh, Mabel. A Wagon That Was Hitched to a Star.1917. Martyn, Margaret. Married to the Raj. London: BACSA, 1992. Mazumdar, Lakshmi. “The Girl Guide Movement in India.” In Social Welfare in India, edited by

Durgabai Deshmukh, 119-131. New Delhi: The Planning Commission of the Govern-ment of India, 1955.

Maynard, A.M. Be Prepared: Handbook for Guides. London: C. Arthur Pearce, 1946. Mockier, Ethel. Citizens in Action; The Girl Scout Record, 1912-1947. New York, N.Y.: Girl

Scouts National Organization, 1947. Moore, Kofoworola Aina. “The Story of Kofoworola Aina Moore, of the Yoruba Tribe, Nige-

ria.” In Ten Africans, edited Perham, Margery, 323-341. Evanston, Ill: Northwestern University Press, 1964.

Mudaliar, A. Lakshmanaswami. Report of the Secondary Education Commission, October, 1952-

June 1953. Government of India, Ministry of Education. Nash, F. O. H. The Audrey Books. London: Sheldon Press (SPCK), 1933. National Archives of Australia. Australian Indigenous Servicemen WW1. Canberra: National Ar-

chives of Australia, 2003.

188

Nigeria. The Nigeria Handbook Containing Statistical and General Information Respecting the Colony and Protectorate. London: West Africa publicity Ltd, 1936.

Odulaja, Sarah Segilola. Autobiography of Princess Sarah Segilola Odulaja Africa Re-

sources.1999. www.africaresource.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=636:autobiography-of-princess-sarah-segilola-odulaja&catid=85:oral-history&Itemid=341 (accessed March 6, 2012)

Ogunsheye, Adetowun. “The Women of Nigeria.” Présence Africaine (1960): 33-49. Painting Book: Uniforms, Badges and Flags of Countries Members of the World Association of

Girl Guides and Girl Scouts. London: World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, 1955.

Perham, Margery Freda. Africans and British Rule. London: Oxford University Press, H. Mil-

ford, 1941. Philmus, Harriett Claire. Brave Girls: The Story of the Girl Scouts and Girl Guides in the Un-

derground. New York, Girl Scouts National Organization, 1947. Renuka, Ray. My Reminiscences: Social Development During the Gandhian Era & After. 1983. Rose, Isabel Brown. The Star of India. New York: Friendship Press, 1930 Rylah, Ann. Australian Adventure; Girl Guiding Under the Southern Cross. Melbourne: Lans-

downe Press, 1963. Sandford, Eileen. Come on, Eileen! Shrewsbury: Shrewsbury Words, 2010. Sierra Leone Girl Guides Association. Sierra Leone Girl Guides Association: 60 Years of Guid-

ing : Girl Guides, 1924-1984 : “Service Through Guiding.” Freetown, Sierra Leone: The Association, 1984.

Smith, John. Colonial Cadet in Nigeria. Durham, N.C.: Published for the Duke University

Commonwealth-Studies Center, Duke University Press, 1968. Smythe, Hugh H. and Mabel M. Smythe. The New Nigerian Elite. Stanford, California: Stanford

University Press, 1960. Spratling, Doris. Extension Echoes: The Story of Girl Guiding for the Disabled in Victoria-

1927-1987. Melbourne: Girl Guides Association of Victoria, 1987. Swinburne, Gwendoline Hamer. Among the First People, 1908-1936: The Baden-Powell Girl

Guide Movement in Australia. Sydney: Girl Guides Association of Australia, 1978.

189

Tagore, Rabindranath, and Mohit Kumar Ray. Miscellaneous Writings. New Delhi: Atlantic Pub-lishers & Distributors, 2007.

van den Berg, Rosemary. “Black Thoughts on Whiteness: Perspectives from an Aboriginal

Woman.” Journal of the European Association of Studies on Australia 2, no. 2 (2011): 53-59.

Vedalankar, Nardev. Religious Awakening in South Africa: A History of the Arya Samaj Move-

ment in South Africa. Durban: Arya Pratinidhi Sabha (Natal), 1950. Wilson, J.S. Scouting Round the World. London: Blanford Press, 1959. Woodsmall, Ruth Frances. Women and the New East. Washington: Middle East Institute, 1960. World Association of Girl Scouts and Girl Guides. “Document N°11: Fifth World Centre.” 34th

World Conference 2011, Edinburgh, United Kingdom. April 15, 2011. World Association of Girl Scouts and Girl Guides, Regional Conference Report: AF.400.” 8th

African Regional Conference, Zambia, June 12-18, 2007.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: SECONDARY SOURCES

Adas, Michael. “Contested Hegemony: The Great War and the Afro-Asian Assault on the Civi-lizing Mission Ideology.” Journal of World History 15, no. 1 (2004): 31-63.

Adas, Michael. Machines As the Measure of Men: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of West-

ern Dominance. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989. Alexander, Kristine. “Girl Guide Movement, Internationalism, and Imperialism in Interwar Eng-

land, Canada, and India.” PhD diss., York University, 2010. Alexander, Kristine. “The Girl Guide Movement and Imperial Internationalism: During the

1920s and 1930s.” The Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth 2, no. 1 (Winter 2009): 37-63.

Alexander, Kristine. “Similarity and Difference at Girl Guide Camps in England, Canada, and

India.” In Scouting Frontiers: Youth and the Scout Movement’s First Century, edited by Tammy M. Proctor and Nelson R. Block, 106-120. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009.

Amadiume, Ifi. Daughters of the Goddess, Daughters of Imperialism African Women Struggle

for Culture, Power and Democracy. Londres: Zed Books, 2000. Anderson, Benedict R. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nation-

alism. London: Verso, 1991.

190

Apple, Rima D. and Joanne Passet. “Learning to Be a Woman: Lessons from Girl Scouting and

Home economics, 1920-1970.” In Defining Print Culture for Youth The Cultural Work of Children’s Literature, edited by Anne H. Lundin and Wayne Weigand, 139-154. West-port, Connecticut: Libraries Unlimited, 2003.

Awe, Bolanle. Nigerian Women in Historical Perspective. Lagos: Sankore Publishers, 1992. Aznam, Sushaini. “Tan Sri Zainun Sulaiman, a pioneer for Malay women in education and poli-

tics, spoke up bravely for the independence cause.” The Star online, Sunday, January 28, 2007, News. http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2007/1/28/nation/16709039&sec=nation. (ac-cessed February 24, 2012).

Azuma, Eiichiro. Between Two Empires: Race, History, and Transnationalism in Japanese

America. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. Ballantyne, Tony. “Race and the Webs of Empire: Aryanism from India to the Pacific.” Journal

of Colonialism and Colonial History 2, no. 3 (2001): 85-105. Banarje, Swapna M. “Child, Mother, and Servant: Motherhood and Domestic Ideology in Colo-

nial Bengal.” In Rhetoric and Reality: Gender and the Colonial Experience in South Asia, edited by Avril A. Powell and Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, 16-49. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Banerjee, Sukanya. Becoming Imperial Citizens: Indians in the Late-Victorian Empire. Durham

[NC]: Duke University Press, 2010. Barnes, Andrew E. “‘Some Fire Behind the Smoke:’ the Fraser Report and Its Aftermath in Co-

lonial Northern Nigeria.” Canadian Journal of African Studies 31, no. 2: 197-228. Bastian, Misty L. “Young Converts: Christian Missions, Gender and Youth in Onitsha, Nigeria,

1880-1929.” Anthropological Quarterly (2000):145-158. Basu, Aparna and Bharati Ray. Women’s Struggle: A History of the All India Women’s Confer-

ence, 1927-2002. New Delhi: Manohar, 2003. Bayly, C. A. and T. N. Harper Forgotten Wars: Freedom and Revolution in Southeast Asia.

Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007. Bayly, C. A. The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914: Global Connections and Comparisons.

Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub, 2004. Beaver, R. Pierce. American Protestant Women in World Mission: History of the First Feminist

Movement in North America. Grand Rapids: W.B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, 1980.

191

Beinart, Jennifer. “Darkly Through a Lens: Changing Perceptions of the African Child in Sick-ness and Health, 1900-1945.” In In the Name of the Child Health and Welfare, 1880-1940, edited by Roger Cooter, 220-243. London: Routledge, 1992.

Beran, Janice A. “Americans in the Philippines: Imperialism or Progress through Sport.” The In-

ternational Journal of the History of Sport 6 (1989): 62-87. Blake, Susan L. “A Woman’s Trek: What Difference Does Gender Make?” In Western Women

and Imperialism Complicity and Resistance, edited by Nupur Chaudhuri and Margaret Strobel, 19-34. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992.

Bloomfield, Anne. “Drill and Dance as Symbols of Imperialism.” In Making Imperial Mentali-

ties: Socialisation And British Imperialism, edited by J. A. Mangan, 74-95. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990.

Bowie, Fiona, Deborah Kirkwood, and Shirley Ardener. Women and Missions: Past and Pre-

sent: Anthropological and Historical Perceptions. Providence, RI: Berg, 1993. Brouwer, Ruth Compton. “Margaret Wrong’s Literacy Work and the ‘Remaking of Woman’ in

Africa, 1929-48.” The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 23, no. 3 (1995): 427-452.

Brouwer, Ruth Compton. Modern Women Modernizing Men: The Changing Missions of Three

Professional Women in Asia and Africa, 1902-69.Vancouver: UBC Press, 2002. Bratton, J. S. “Of England, Home and Duty: The Image of England in Victorian and Edwardian

Juvenile Fiction.” In Imperialism and Popular Culture, edited by John M. Mackenzie. 73-93. Manchester and Dover, N.H.: Manchester University Press 1986.

Brennan, Sean, George Williams, and Brenda Gunn. Treaty: What’s Sovereignty Got to Do with

It? Sydney: Gilbert and Tobin Centre of Public Law, 2004. Bridge, Charles and Kent Fedorowich. “Mapping the British World.” In The British World: Di-

aspora, Culture, and Identity, edited by Carl Bridge and Kent Fedorowich, 1-15. Lon-don: F. Cass, 2003.

Brownfoot, Janice N. “Emancipation, Exercise and Imperialism: Girls and the Game Ethic in Co-

lonial Malaya.” The International Journal of the History of Sport 7 (1990): 61-84. Brownfoot, Janice. “‘Healthy Bodies, Healthy Minds’: Sports and Society in Colonial Malaya.”

The International Journal of the History of Sport 19 (2002): 129-156. Brownfoot, Janice. “Memsahibs in Colonial Malaya: A Study of European Wives in a British

Colony and Protectorate, 1900-1940.” In The Incorporated Wife, edited by Hilary Callan and Shirley Ardener. 186-210. London: Croom Helm, 1984.

192

Brownfoot, Janice N. “Sisters Under the Skin: Imperialism and the Emancipation of Women in Malaya, c.1891-1941.” In Making Imperial Mentalities: Socialisation And British Impe-rialism, edited by J. A. Mangan, 46-73. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990.

Buettner, Elizabeth. Empire Families: Britons and Late Imperial India. Oxford: Oxford Univer-

sity Press, 2004. Burton, Antoinette. “The Feminist Quest for Identity: British Imperial Suffragism and ‘Global

Sisterhood’ 1900-1915.” Journal of Women’s History, 3, no. 2 (Fall 1991): 46-81. Burton, Antoinette M. “The White Woman’s Burden: British Feminists and ‘The Indian

Woman,’ 1865-1915.” In Western Women and Imperialism Complicity and Resistance, edited by Nupur Chaudhuri and Margaret Strobel, 137-157. Bloomington: Indiana Uni-versity Press, 1992.

Burton, Antoinette M. Burdens of History: British Feminists, Indian Women, and Imperial Cul-

ture, 1865-1915. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994. Bush, Barbara. “Gender and Empire: The Twentieth Century.” In Gender and Empire, edited by

Philippa Levine, 77-111. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Bush, Barbara. Imperialism, Race and Resistance Africa and Britain, 1919-1945. London: Rout-

ledge, 1999. Butcher, John G. The British in Malaya, 1880-1941: The Social History of a European Commu-

nity in Colonial South-East Asia. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1979. Callaway, Helen and Dorothy O. Helly. “Crusader for Empire: Flora Shaw/Lady Lugard.” In

Western Women and Imperialism Complicity and Resistance, edited by Nupur Chaudhuri and Margaret Strobel, 79-97. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992.

Callaway, Helen. Gender, Culture, and Empire: European Women in Colonial Nigeria. Urbana:

University of Illinois Press, 1987. Chandra, N. “The Pedagogic Imperative of Travel Writing in the Hindi World: Children’s Peri-

odicals (1920-1950).” South Asia 30, no. 2 (2007): 293-325. Chatterjee, Partha. “The Nationalist Resolution of the Women's Question.” In Recasting Women:

Essays in Indian Colonial History, edited by Kumkum Sangari, and Sudesh Vaid , 233-253. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1990.

Chaudhuri, Nupur and Margaret Strobel. “Introduction.” In Western Women and Imperialism

Complicity and Resistance, 1-18. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992.

193

Cheater, Christine. “Stolen Girlhood: Australia’s Assimilation Policies and Aboriginal Girls.” In Girlhood: A Global History, ed. Jennifer Helgren and Colleen A. Vasconcellos, 250-267. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2010.

Chuku, Gloria. “From Petty Traders to International Merchants: a Historical Account of Three

Igbo Women of Nigeria in Trade and Commerce, 1886 to 1970.” African Economic His-tory, no. 27 (1999): 1-22.

Clark, Jennifer. “‘The Wind of Change’ in Australia: Aborigines and the International Politics of

Race, 1960-1972.” The International History Review 20, no. 1 (March 1998): 89-117. Clarke, Robert. “The Idea of Celebrity Colonialism: An Introduction.” In Celebrity Colonialism:

Fame, Power and Representation in Colonial and Postcolonial Cultures, edited by Rob-ert Clarke, 1-14. Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009.

Clark, Trevor, and Trevor Royle. Was It Only Yesterday? The Last Generation of Nigeria’s

“Turawa” Bristol: BECM Press, 2002. Coker, Folarin. A Lady: A Biography of Lady Oyinkan Abayomi. Ibadan, Nigeria: Evans Brothers

(Nigeria Publishers), 1987. Cole, Douglas. “The Problem of ‘Nationalism’ and ‘Imperialism’ in British Settlement Colo-

nies.” Journal of British Studies 10, no. 2 (May 1971): 160-182. Collingham, E. M. Imperial Bodies: The Physical Experience of the Raj, C. 1800-1947. Cam-

bridge, UK: Polity Press, 2001. Conor, Liz. “ ‘Blackfella Missus Too Much Proud’: Techniques of Appearing, Femininity, and

Race in Australian Modernity.” In The Modern Girl Around the World: Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization, edited by Eve Alys Weinbaum, 220-239. Durham: Duke University Press, 2008.

Cooper, Frederick and Ann Stoler. “Between Metropole and Colony: Rethinking a Research

Agenda.” In Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World, edited by Anna Stoler and Frederick Cooper, 1-56. Berkeley, Calif: University of California Press, 1997.

Dancz, Virginia H. Women and Party Politics in Peninsular Malaysia. Singapore: Oxford Uni-

versity Press, 1987. Day, David. Reluctant Nation: Australia and the Allied Defeat of Japan, 1942-1945. New York,

Oxford University Press, 1992. Davidson, Alastair. From Subject to Citizen: Australian Citizenship in the Twentieth Century.

Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

194

Davin, Anna. “Imperialism and Motherhood.” History Workshop no. 5 (Spring 1978): 9-65. Deloria, Philip Joseph. Playing Indian. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998. Denzer, LaRay. “Domestic Science Training in Colonial Yorubaland, Nigeria.” In African En-

counters with Domesticity, edited by Karen Tranberg Hansen, 116-139. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1992.

Denzer, LaRay. “Yoruba Women: A Historiographical Study.” The International Journal of Af-

rican Historical Studies 27, no. 1 (1994): 1-39. Derné, Steve. “Men’s Sexuality and Women’s Subordination in Indian Nationalisms.” In Gender

Ironies of Nationalism: Sexing the Nation, edited by Tamar Mayer, 238-258. London: Routledge, 2002.

DeWitt C. Ellinwood, “The Indian Soldier, The Indian Army, and Change, 1914-1918.” In India

and World War I, edited by DeWitt C. Ellinwood and S. D. Pradhan, 177-211. Colum-bia, Mo: South Asia Books, 1978.

“Distinguished Alumni.” Bethune- X, Bethune College Sammilani, 2012.

http://www.bethunex.org.in/disalumni.php (accessed February 23, 2012). Dixon, Robert. Writing the Colonial Adventure: Race, Gender, and Nation in Anglo-Australian

Popular Fiction, 1875-1914. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Dutt, Kalpana. Chittagong Armoury Raiders: Reminiscences. New Delhi: Peoples’ Pub. House,

1979. Dyhouse, Carol. Girls Growing Up In Late Victorian And Edwardian England. London: Rout-

ledge & Kegan Paul, 1981. Enloe, Cynthia H. Bananas, Beaches & Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics.

Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Fabunmi, Martins. “Historical Analysis Of Educational Policy Formulation In Nigeria: Implica-

tions For Educational Planning And Policy.” International Journal of African & African American Studies 4, no. 2 (Jul 2005): 1-7.

Falola, Toyin, and Saheed Aderinto. Nigeria, Nationalism, and Writing History. Rochester, NY:

University of Rochester Press, 2010. Falola, Toyin. The History of Nigeria. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1999. Fass, Paula. “Children and Globalization.” Journal of Social History 36, no. 4 (2003): 966-977.

195

Fass, Paula. Children of a New World: Society, Culture and Globalization. London & New York: New York University Press, 2007.

Feldberg, Alexandra C. “Lillian Picken: Bringing Her Home to India: An American, Female

Missionary in Twentieth Century India.” Thesis, Columbia University, 2008. Flemming, Leslie A. “A New Humanity: American Missionaries’ Ideals for Women in North

India, 1870-1930.” In Western Women and Imperialism Complicity and Resistance, ed-ited by Nupur Chaudhuri and Margaret Strobel, 191-206. Bloomington: Indiana Univer-sity Press, 1992.

Forbes, Cynthia. 1910 ... and Then? Great Britain, 1986. Forbes, Geraldine. Women and Modern India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Fyzee-Rahamin, Atiya Begum, Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, and Sunil Sharma. Atiya’s Journeys: A

Muslim Woman from Colonial Bombay to Edwardian Britain. New Delhi: Oxford Uni-versity Press, 2010.

Gauthé, Jean-Jacques. Les scouts. Paris: Le Cavalier bleu, 2007. Gaitskell, Deborah. “Upward All and Play the Game: The Girl Wayfarer's Association in the

Transvaal 1925 – 1975.” In Apartheid and Education: The Education of Black South Af-ricans, edited by Peter Kallaway, 222-264. Johannesburg: Ravan Press, 1984.

Gardner, Helen D. The First Girl Guide: The Story of Agnes Baden-Powell. Stroud: Amberley,

2010. Gupta, Ashoka, Sipra Bhattacharya, and Ranjana Dasgupta, In the Path of Service: Memories of

a Changing Century. (Kolkata: STREE, 2005). Girl Guides Association, and Vronwyn M. Thompson. 1910 - and Then?: A Brief History of the

Girl Guides Association. London: Girl Guides Association, 1990. Girl Guides Singapore. Chronological View: History of Girl Guides Singapore. Singapore: Girl

Guides Singapore, 2010. Goodall, Heather. “Saving the Children: Gender and Colonization of Aboriginal Children in New

South Wales, 1788-1990.” Aboriginal Law Bulletin Special Issue on Juvenile Justice 2, no. 44 (1990).

Goodwin, James. Our Gallant Doctor: Enigma and Tragedy : Surgeon Lieutenant George Hen-

dry and HMCS Ottawa, 1942. Toronto: Dundurn Press, 2007. Gordon, Leonard A. Brothers against the Raj: A Biography of Indian Nationalists Sarat and

Subhas Chandra Bose. New York: Columbia University Press, 1990.

196

Gorman, Daniel. Imperial Citizenship: Empire and the Question of Belonging. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2006.

Grimshaw, Patricia. “Faith, Missionary Life, and the Family.” In Gender and Empire, edited by

Philippa Levine, 260-280. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Gruss, Daniel. “UNTEA and West New Guinea.” In Max Planck Yearbook of United Nations

Law, edited by Armin von Bogdandy, Rüdiger Wolfrum, and Christiane Philipp, 97-126. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 2005.

Gullick, J. M. Josephine Foss and the Pudu English School. Petaling Jaya: Pelanduk Publica-

tions for Pudu English School Old Girls Association, 1988. Gupta, Ashoka, Sipra Bhattacharya, and Ranjana Dasgupta. In the Path of Service: Memories of

a Changing Century. Kolkata: STREE, 2005. Guy, Randor. Seva Sadan Saga. Chetput, Chennai: The Madras Seva Sadan , 2008. Haebich, Anna. Broken Circles: Fragmenting Indigenous Families, 1800-2000. Fremantle: Fre-

mantle Arts Centre Press, 2000. Haebich, Anna. For Their Own Good: Aborigines and Government in the Southwest of Western

Australia, 1900-1940. Nedlands: University of Western Australia Press, 1988. Hahner, L. “Practical Patriotism: Camp Fire Girls, Girl Scouts, and Americanization.” Commu-

nication and Critical/Cultural Studies 5, no. 2 (1995): 113-134. Hampton, Janie. How the Girl Guides Won the War. Hammersmith, London: Harper Press, 2010. Harper, T. N. The End of Empire and the Making of Malaya. New York: Cambridge University

Press, 1998. Hasian, Marouf Arif. The Rhetoric of Eugenics in Anglo-American Thought. Athens: University

of Georgia Press, 1996. Hay, Marnie. “The Foundation and Development of Na Fianna ƒireann, 1909–16.” Irish Histori-

cal Studies, 36, no. 141 (May 2008): 53-71. Heward, Christine and Sheila S. Bunwaree. Gender, Education, and Development: Beyond Ac-

cess to Empowerment. London: Zed Books, 1999. Hidayatullah, Moeena. “Brief History of the Sind Girl Guides Association.” Sind Quarterly 8,

no. 1 (1980): 45-51 Hobsbawm, Eric. “Introduction: Inventing Traditions.” In The Invention of Tradition, edited by

E. J. Hobsbawm and T. O. Ranger, 1-14. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.

197

Hobsbawm, Eric. “Mass-producing Traditions: Europe, 1870-1914.” In The Invention of Tradi-tion, edited by E. J. Hobsbawm and T. O. Ranger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 263-307.

Hoe, Susanna. The Private Life of Old Hong Kong: Western Women in the British Colony, 1841-

1941. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1991. Hunt, Nancy Rose. “Colonial Fairytales and the Knife and Fork Doctrine in the Heart of Africa.”

In African Encounters with Domesticity, edited by Karen Tranberg Hansen, 143-171. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1992.

Hurley, Siobhan Lambert. “Out of India: The Journeys of the Begam of Bhopal, 1901-1930.”

Women’s Studies International Forum 21, no. 3 (1998): 263 – 276. The Imam of the Socio-Economic Revolution: Hazrat Imam Sultan Muhammad Shah. Ottawa:

Simerg Incorporated, 2011. “Introduction.” In European Imperialism, 1830-1930, edited by Alice L. Conklin and Ian

Fletcher, 1-13. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. Jacobs, Margaret D. White Mother to a Dark Race: Settler Colonialism, Maternalism, and the

Removal of Indigenous Children in the American West and Australia, 1880-1940. Lin-coln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009.

Janks, Avril. Leadership for Life: 100 Women, 100 Years in Guiding. Rosanna, Vic: Bounce

Books, 2010. Jayawardena, Kumari. The White Woman’s Other Burden: Western Women and South Asia Dur-

ing British Colonial Rule. New York: Routledge, 1995. Jensen, Joan M. “Women on the Pacific Rim: Some Thoughts on Border Crossings.” The Pacific

Historical Review 67, no. 1 (1998): 3-38. Johnson-Odim, Cheryl, and Nina Emma Mba. For Women and the Nation: Funmilayo Ransome-

Kuti of Nigeria. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997. Johnson-Odim, Cheryl. “Lady Oyinkan Abayomi.” Nigerian Women in Historical Perspective

(1992): 149-162. Johnson, Cheryl. “Grassroots Organizing: Women in Anticolonial Activity in Southwestern Ni-

geria.” African Studies Review 25, no. 2/3 (June-September 1982): 137-157. Johnston, Tim, Berrice Johnston, and Carolyn Johnston. Harmattan, a Wind of Change Life and

Letters from Northern Nigeria at the End of Empire. London: Radcliffe Press, 2010 Jolly, Margaret. “Introduction: Colonial and Postcolonial Plots in Histories of Maternities and

198

Modernities.” In Maternities and Modernities: Colonial and Postcolonial Experiences in Asia and the Pacific, edited by Kalpana Ram and Margaret Jolly, 1-25. Cambridge [Eng-land]: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Jolly, Margaret. “Other Mothers: Maternal ‘Insouciance’ and the Depopulation Debate in Fiji

and Vanuatu, 1890-1930.” In Maternities and Modernities: Colonial and Postcolonial Experiences in Asia and the Pacific, edited by Kalpana Ram and Margaret Jolly, 177-212. Cambridge [England]: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Kallaway, Peter. Apartheid and Education: The Education of Black South Africans. Johannes-

burg: Ravan Press, 1984. Khan, Haskell Susan. “From Redeemers to Partners: American Women Missionaries and the

‘Woman Question’ in India 1919/1939.” In Competing Kingdoms: Women, Mission, Na-tion, and the American Protestant Empire, 1812-1960, edited by Barbara Reeves-Ellington, Kathryn Kish Sklar, and Connie Anne Shemo, 141-163. Durham [NC]: Duke University Press, 2010.

Khan, Shaharyar M. The Begums of Bhopal: A Dynasty of Women Rulers in Raj India. London:

I.B. Tauris, 2000. Lake, Marilyn. “‘Between Old World Barbarism’ and Stone Age ‘Primi-tivism’: The Double

Difference of the White Australian Feminist.” In Australian Women: Contemporary Feminist Thought edited by Norma Grieve and Ailsa Burns, 80-91. Melbourne: Oxford University Press.

Lake, Marilyn, and Henry Reynolds. Drawing the Global Colour Line: White Men's Countries

and the International Challenge of Racial Equality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

Lange, Matthew, James Mahoney, and Matthias vom Hau. “Colonialism and Development: A

Comparative Analysis of Spanish and British Colonies.” American Journal of Sociology 11, no. 5 (March 2006): 1412-1462.

Lange, Matthew. Lineages of Despotism and Development British Colonialism and State Power.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. Lapping, Brian. End of Empire. London: Granada, 1985. Lees, L. H. “Being British in Malaya, 1890-1940.” Journal of British Studies 48, no. 1 (2009):

76-101. Little, Kenneth Lindsay. African Women in Towns; An Aspect of Africa’s Social Revolution.

London: Cambridge University Press, 1973.

199

Lind, Mary Ann. The Compassionate Memsahibs: Welfare Activities of British Women in India, 1900-1947. New York: Greenwood Press, 1988 79-80

Love, C. “Swimming, Service to the Empire and Baden-Powell’s Youth Movements.” Interna-

tional Journal of the History of Sport 24, no. 5 (May 2007): 682-692. MacKenzie, John M. Propaganda and Empire: The Manipulation of British Public Opinion,

1880-1960. Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 1984 MacMillan, Margaret. Women of the Raj. New York, N.Y.: Thames and Hudson, 1988. Meaney, Neville. “Britishness and Australia: Some Reflections.” In The British World: Dias-

pora, Culture, and Identity, edited by Carl Bridge and Kent Fedorowich, 121-135. Lon-don: F. Cass, 2003.

Malhotra, Anshu. “The Body as a Metaphor for the Nation: Caste, Masculinity, and Femininity

in the Satyarth Prakash of Swami Dayananda Sarasvati.” In Rhetoric and Reality: Gen-der and the Colonial Experience in South Asia, edited by Avril A. Powell and Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, 121-156. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Mamdani, Mahmood. Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Coloni-

alism. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996. Manderson, Lenore. “Shaping Reproduction: Maternity in Early Twentieth-Century Malaya.” In

Maternities and Modernities, edited by Kalpana Ram and Margaret Jolly, 26-49. Cam-bridge; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Mangan, J.A. “Making Imperial Mentalities: Introduction.” In Making Imperial Mentalities: So-

cialisation And British Imperialism, edited by J. A. Mangan, 1-22. Manchester: Man-chester University Press, 1990.

Markel, Wade. “Draining the Swamp: The British Strategy of Population Control.” Parameters

(Spring 2006): 36-48. Martínez, Julia. “Problematising Aboriginal Nationalism.” Aboriginal History 21 (1997): 133-

147 Matthews, James K. “World War I and the Rise of African Nationalism: Nigerian Veterans As

Catalysts of Change.” The Journal of Modern African Studies: A Quarterly Survey of Politics, Economics and Related Topics in Contemporary Africa 20, no. 3 (1982): 493-502.

Matz, Nele. “Civilization and the Mandate System Under the League of Nations.” In Max Planck

Yearbook of United Nations Law, edited by Armin von Bogdandy, Rüdiger Wolfrum, and Christiane Philipp, 47-96. Leiden: Martinus Nijhoff, 2005.

200

Maushart, Susan. Sort of a Place Like Home: Remembering the Moore River Native Settlement. South Fremantle, West Australia: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1993.

Mayer, Tramer. “Gender Ironies of Nationalism: Setting the Stage.” In Gender Ironies of Na-

tionalism: Sexing The Nation, edited by Tramer Mayer, 1-22. London: Routledge, 2002. Mazower, Mark. “An International Civilization? Empire, Internationalism and the Crisis of the

Mid-Twentieth Century.” International Affairs 82, no. 3 (May 2006): 553-566 McCarthy, Helen. “The League of Nations, Public Ritual and National Identity in Britain, c.

1919-1956.” History Workshop Journal, (Autumn 2010): 106-132. McClintock, Anne. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. New

York: Routledge, 1995. McGrath, Ann and W. Stevenson. “Gender, Race, and Policy: Aboriginal Women and the State

in Canada and Australia.” Labour History, no. 71 (1996): 37-53. McGregor, Russell. Imagined Destinies: Aboriginal Australians and the Doomed Race Theory,

1880-1939. Carlton, Vic: Melbourne University Press, 1997. McGregor, Russell. “‘To Breed Out the Colour’ or the Importance of Being White.” Australian

Historical Studies 33, no. 120 (2002): 286-302. McKenzie, Maisie. The Road to Mowanjum. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1969. Miller, Susan A. Growing Girls: The Natural Origins of Girls’ Organizations in America. New

Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2007. Mills, Sarah. “Scouting for Girls: Gender and the Scout Movement in Britain.” Gender, Place

and Culture 18, no. 4 (August 2011): 537-556. Mitchell, Sally. The New Girl: Girls’ Culture in England, 1880-1915. New York: Columbia Uni-

versity Press, 1995. Modern Girl Around the World Research Group. “Modern Girl as Heuristic Device: Collabora-

tion, Connective Comparison, Multidirectional Citation.” In The Modern Girl Around the World: Consumption, Modernity, and Globalization, edited by Eve Alys Weinbaum, 1-24. Durham: Duke University Press, 2008.

Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. “Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Dis-

courses.” boundary 2 12, no. 3 (Spring - Autumn, 1984): 333-358. Moran, Anthony. “The Psychodynamics of Australian Settler-Nationalism: Assimilating or Rec-

onciling with the Aborigines?” Political Psychology 23, no. 4 (December 2002): 667-701.

201

Mumtaz, Khawar, and Farida Shaheed. Women of Pakistan: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back? London: Zed Books, 1987.

Murdolo, Adele. “Warmth and Unity with All Women? Historicizing Racism in the Australian

Women's Movement.” Feminist Review no. 52 (Spring 1996): 69-86. Musa, Mahani. “The ‘Woman Question’ in Malayan Periodicals.” Indonesia and the Malay

World 38, no. 111 (July 2010): 247–271. Nair, Janaki. “Uncovering the Zenana: Visions of Indian womanhood in Englishwomen’s Writ-

ings, 1813-1950.” In Cultures of Empire: Colonizers in Britain and the Empire in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: A Reader, edited by Catherine Hall, 224-245. New York: Routledge, 2000.

Nakanyike D. Musisi, “Colonial and Missionary Education: Women and Domesticity in Uganda,

1900-1945.” In African Encounters with Domesticity, edited by Karen Tranberg Hansen, 172-194. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1992.

Natarajan, Padmini. “Leela Sekhar—An Octogenarian Girl Guide.” Suleka.com October 2, 2006.

http://padmininatarajan.sulekha.com/blog/post/2006/10/leela-sekhar-an-octogenarian-girl-guide.htm (accessed May 18, 2012).

Nayeem, Asha Islam and Avril A. Powell. “Redesigning the Zenana: Domestic Education in

Eastern Bengal in the Early Twentieth Century.” In Rhetoric and Reality: Gender and the Colonial Experience in South Asia, edited by Avril A. Powell and Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, 50-81. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Naidoo, Thillayvel. The Arya Samaj Movement in South Africa. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Pub-

lishers, 1992. Nethercot, Arthur Hobart. The Last Four Lives of Annie Besant. Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1963. Ongkili, James P. Nation-building in Malaysia 1946–1974. Oxford University Press, 1985. Oppenheimer, M. “The ‘Imperial’ Girl: Lady Helen Munro Ferguson, The Imperial Woman and

Her Imperial Childhood.” Journal of Australian Studies 34, no. 4 (2010): 513-525. Pande, Vindhyeshwari Prasad. Village Community Projects in India; Origin, Development and

Problems. Bombay: Asia Pub. House, 1967. Paisley, Fiona. “Childhood and Race: Growing Up in the Empire.” In Gender and Empire, edited

by Philippa Levine, 240-259. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Paisley, Fiona. “‘For a Brighter Day’: Constance Ternent Cook.” In Uncommon Ground : White

Women in Aboriginal History, edited by Anna Cole, Victoria K. Haskins, and Fiona

202

Paisley, 172-196. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press for the Australian Institute of Abo-riginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, 2005.

Paisley, Fiona. Glamour in the Pacific: Cultural Internationalism and Race Politics in the

Women's Pan-Pacific. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2009. Pakenham, Thomas. The Boer War. New York: Random House, 1979. Param, Saroja Dev. A Guiding Light: The Life and Work of Datuk Hajah Hendon Din. Selangor

Darul Ehsan: Pelanduk Publications, 2004. Parsons, Timothy H. “No More English than the Postal System: The Kenya Boy Scout Move-

ment and the Transfer of Power.” Africa Today 51, no. 3 (April 1, 2005): 61-80. Parsons, Timothy. “The Consequences of Uniformity: The Struggle for the Boy Scout Uniform

in Colonial Kenya.” Journal of Social History 40, no. 2 (December 1, 2006): 361-383. Parsons, Timothy H. “The Limits of Sisterhood: The Evolution of the Girl Guide Movement in

Colonial Kenya.” In Scouting Frontiers: Youth and the Scout Movement’s First Century, edited by Tammy M. Proctor and Nelson R. Block, 143-156. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009.

Parsons, Timothy. Race, Resistance, and the Boy Scout Movement in British Colonial Africa.

Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2004. Paxton, Nancy L. “Complicity and Resistance in the Writings of Flora Annie Steel and Annie

Besant.” In Western Women and Imperialism Complicity and Resistance, edited by Nu-pur Chaudhuri and Margaret Strobel, 158-176. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992.

Pocock, J. G. A. “The New British History in Atlantic Perspective: An Antipodean Commen-

tary.” The American Historical Review 104, no. 2 (April 1999): 490-500. Popham, Daphne. Reflections: Profiles of 150 Women Who Helped Make Western Australia’s

History. Perth: Carroll’s, 1978. Powell, Avril A. “Islamic Modernism and Women’s Status: The Influence of Syed Ameer Ali.”

In Rhetoric and Reality: Gender and the Colonial Experience in South Asia, edited by Avril A. Powell and Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, 282-317. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006

Procida, Mary A. Married to the Empire: Gender, Politics and Imperialism in India, 1883-1947.

Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002. Proctor, Tammy M. On My Honour Guides and Scouts in Interwar Britain. Philadelphia: Ameri-

can Philosophical Society, 2002.

203

Proctor, Tammy M. “‘A Separate Path:’ Scouting and Guiding in Interwar South Africa.” Com-parative Studies in Society and History 42, no. 3 (July 2000): 605-631.

Proctor, Tammy M. Scouting for Girls: A Century of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts. Santa Bar-

bara: Praeger, 2009. Proctor, Tammy M. “Scouts, Guides, and Fashioning the of Empire, 1919-39.” In Fashioning the

Body Politic: Dress, Gender, Citizenship, edited by Wendy Parkins, 125-144. Oxford: Berg, 2002.

Proctor, Tammy M. “(Uni)Forming Youth: Girl Guides and Boy Scouts in Britain, 1908-39.”

History Workshop Journal, no. 45 (April 1, 1998): 103-134. Rahim, Lily Zubaidah. “Whose Imagined Community? The Nation-State, Ethnicity and Indige-

nous Minorities in Southeast Asia.” Paper presented at the Racism and Public Policy Conference of the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development. Durban, South Africa 3 - 5 September 2001.

Ramamurthy, Priti. “All-Consuming Nationalism: The Indian Modern Girl in the 1920s and

1930s.” In The Modern Girl Around the World: Consumption, Modernity, and Global-ization, edited by Eve Alys Weinbaum, 147-173. Durham: Duke University Press, 2008

Ramaswamy, Vijaya. Historical Dictionary of the Tamils. Lanham, Md: Scarecrow Press, 2007 Ramusack, Barbara N. “Cultural Missionaries, Maternal Imperialists, Feminist Allies: British

Women Activists in India, 1865-1945.” In Western Women and Imperialism Complicity and Resistance, edited by Nupur Chaudhuri and Margaret Strobel, 119-136. Blooming-ton: Indiana University Press, 1992.

Ramusack, Barbara N. and Antoinette Burton, “Feminism, Imperialism and Race: A Dialogue

Between India and Britain.” Women’s History Review, 3 (1994): 469-8I. Rappaport, Helen. Encyclopedia of Women Social Reformers, Volume I. Santa Barbara, CA:

ABC-Clio,2001. Ray, Bharati. “Women in Calcutta: the Years of Change.” In Calcutta: The Living City Volume

II, edited by Sukanta Chaudhuri, 34-41. Calcutta: Oxford University Press, 1990. Reddy, Deepa S. “The Ethnicity of Caste.” Anthropological Quarterly (2005): 543-584. Riedi, Eliza. “Women, Gender, and the Promotion of Empire: The Victoria League, 1901-1914.”

The Historical Journal 45, no. 3 (September 2002): 569-599. Robert, Dana Lee. American Women in Mission: A Social History of Their Thought and Prac-

tice. Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1996.

204

Roberts, Annette. Sister Eileen: A Life with the Lid Off. Bassendean, Western Australia: Access Press, 2002.

Rosaldo, Renato. Culture & Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis. Boston: Beacon Press,

1989. Rothschild, Mary Aickin. “To Scout or to Guide? The Girl Scout-Boy Scout Controversy, 1912-

1941.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 6, no. 3 (Autumn, 1981), 115-121. Rupp, Leila J. “Constructing Internationalism: The Case of Transnational Women’s Organiza-

tions, 1888-1945.” The American Historical Review 99, no. 5 (1994): 1571-1600. Rupp, Leila J. “Challenging Imperialism in International Women’s Organizations, 1888-1945.”

NWSA Journal 8 (Spring 1996): 8-27. Said, Edward W. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978 Sathyamurthy, T.V. “Victorians, Socialisation and Imperialism: Consequences for Post-Imperial

India.” In Making Imperial Mentalities: Socialisation And British Imperialism, edited by J. A. Mangan, 110-126. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990.

Sengupta, Nilanjana. A Gentleman’s Word: The Legacy of Subhas Chandra Bose in Southeast

Asia. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 2012. Sen, Siba Pada. Dictionary of National Biography. Calcutta: Institute of Historical Studies, 1972. Shennan, Margaret. Out in the Midday Sun: The British in Malaya, 1880-1960. London: John

Murray, 2000. Singh, Maina Chawla. Gender, Religion, and “Heathen Lands”: American Missionary Women

in South Asia, 1860s-1940s. New York: Garland Pub, 2000. Sinha, Mrinalini. “Nations in an Imperial Crucible.” In Gender and Empire, edited Philippa

Levine, 181-202. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Sinha, Mrinalini. Specters of Mother India: The Global Restructuring of an Empire. Durham:

Duke University Press, 2006. Smith, Michelle. “Be(ing) Prepared: Girl Guides, Colonial Life, and National Strength.” Limina

12 (2006): 52–62. Smythe, Hugh H. and Mabel M. Smythe. The New Nigerian Elite. Stanford, Calif: Stanford Uni-

versity Press, 1960. Southard, Barbara. “Bengal Women’s Education League: Pressure Group and Professional Asso-

ciation.” Modern Asian Studies 18, no. 1 (1984): 55-88.

205

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, eds. Carry Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, 271-313. Urbana: University of Il-linois Press, 1988.

The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge/USA: Providing Resources for Christian Disci-

pleship. http://spckusa.org/ (Accessed May 9, 2011). Stanley, Timothy J. “White Supremacy and the Rhetoric of Educational Indoctrination: A Cana-

dian Case-Study.” In Making Imperial Mentalities: Socialisation And British Imperial-ism, edited by J. A. Mangan, 144-162. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990.

Stearns, Peter N. Childhood in World History. London: Routledge, 2006. Stivens, Maila. “Modernizing the Malay Mother.” In Maternities and Modernities, edited by

Kalpana Ram and Margaret Jolly, 50-80. Cambridge; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Stoler, Ann Laura. “Making Empire Respectable: The Politics of Race and Sexual Morality in

20th-Century Colonial Cultures.” American Ethnologist 16, no. 4 (November1989): 634-660.

Stoler, Ann Laura. Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault’s History of Sexuality and the

Colonial Order of Things. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995. Stoler, Ann Laura. Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial

Rule. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Sundari, V. B. “Padmavibhushan Mrs. Mary Clubwala Jadhave.” In Great Indian Social Reform-

ers and Philanthropists, edited by Sri A. S Chetti and G. V. L. N. Sarma, and M. Venka-tarangaiyya, 119-121. Narsapur, Andhra Pradesh: Chetti Sanmana Sangham, 1975.

Switzer, Lee and Donna Switzer. The Black Press in South Africa and Lesotho: A Descriptive

Bibliographic Guide to African, Coloured and Indian Newspapers, Newsletters and Magazines 1836-1976. Boston: G.K. Hall and Company, 1979.

Talwar, Vir Bharat. “Feminist Consciousness in Women’s Journals in Hindi: 1910-1920.” In

Recasting Women: Essays in Indian Colonial History, edited by Kumkum Sangari, and Sudesh Vaid, Translated by Manisha Chaudhry, Neeraj Malik, and Badri Taina, 204-232. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1990.

Taylor, A. J. P. A Personal History. New York: Atheneum, 1983. Tibenderana, Peter Kazenga. “The Beginnings of Girls’ Education in the Native Administration

Schools in Northern Nigeria, 1930-1945.” The Journal of African History 26, no. 1 (1985): 93-99.

206

Tinkler, Penny. “English Girls and the International Dimension of British Citizenship in the 1940s.” European Journal of Women's Studies 8, no. 103 (February 2001): 411-568.

Vallory, Eduard. “Status Quo Keeper or Social Change Promoter? The Double Side of World

Scouting’s Citizenship Education.” In Scouting Frontiers: Youth and the Scout Move-ment’s First Century, edited by Tammy M. Proctor and Nelson R. Block, 207-222. New-castle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009.

Voeltz, Richard. “Adam’s Rib: The Girl Guides and Imperial Race.” San Jose Studies 14, no. 1

(1988): 91-99. Voeltz, Richard. “The Antidote to ‘Khaki Fever’? The Expansion of the British Girl Guides Dur-

ing the First World War.” Journal of Contemporary History 27, no. 4 (October 1992): 627-638.

Walkowitz, Judith R. City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian

London. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Warren, Allen. “Citizens of the Empire: Baden-Powell, Scouts and Guides, and an Imperial

Ideal.” In Imperialism and Popular Culture, edited by John M. MacKenzie, 242-246. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1986.

Warren, Allen. “ ‘Mothers for the empire?’: The Girl Guides Association in Britain, 1909-1939.”

In Making Imperial Mentalities: Socialisation And British Imperialism, edited by J. A. Mangan, 96-109. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990.

Watenpaugh, Keith David. “Scouting in the Interwar Arab Middle East.” In Scouting Frontiers:

Youth and the Scout Movement’s First Century, edited by Tammy M. Proctor and Nelson R. Block, 89-105. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009.

Watson, Keith. “Education and Colonialism in Peninsular Malaysia.” In Education in the Third

World, edited by Keith Watson, 88-108. London: Croom Helm, 1982. Watt, Carey Anthony, and Michael Mann. Civilizing Missions in Colonial and Postcolonial

South Asia: From Improvement to Development. London: Anthem Press, 2011. Watt, Carey. “The Promise of ‘Character’ and the Spectre of Sedition: The Boy Scout Movement

and Colonial Consternation in India, 1908-1921.” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 22, no. 2 (1999): 37-62.

Watt, Carey Anthony. Serving the Nation: Cultures of Service, Association, and Citizenship.

New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005. Wade, Eileen Kirkpatrick. Olave Baden-Powell: The Authorised Biography of the World Chief

Guide. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1971

207

Weber, Charlotte. “Unveiling Scheherazade: Feminist Orientalism in the International Alliance of Women, 1911-1950.” Feminist Studies 27, no. 1 (2001): 125-157.

Whittington, Vera. Sister Kate: A Life Dedicated to Children in Need of Care. Nedlands, W.A.:

University of Western Australia Press, 1999. Willard, Myra. History of the White Australia Policy to 1920. London: Cass, 1967. Willmer, David. “Women as Participants in the Pakistan Movement: Modernization and the

Promise of a Moral State.” Modern Asian Studies 30, no. 3 (July 1996): 573-590. Whitehead, Clive. Colonial Educators: The British Indian and Colonial Education Service 1858-

1983. London: Tauris, 2003. Wolfe, Patrick. “Land, Labor, and Difference: Elementary Structures of Race.” The American

Historical Review 106, no. 3 (June 2001): 866-905. World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts. Trefoil Round the World. The World Associa-

tion of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, 12th edition, 1994, 1999. [First six editions, 1958,1959,1961,1964,1967, 1973 Trefoil Around the World]

World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts. “History of WAGGGS.”

http://www.wagggsworld.org/en/about/About/History (accessed January 22, 2012). World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts. “Our World.”

http://www.wagggs.org/en/world (accessed April 22, 2012). World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts. “Welcome to Sangam.”

www.sangamworldcentre.org (accessed January 23, 2012). Wright, Edie. Full Circle: From Mission to Community: A Family Story. Fremantle: Fremantle

Arts Centre Press, 2001 Yoshihara, Mari. Embracing the East: White Women and American Orientalism. Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 2003. Zachernuk, Philip Serge Colonial Subjects: An African Intelligentsia and Atlantic Ideas. Char-

lottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000. Zonana, Joyce. “The Sultan and the Slave: Feminist Orientalism and the Structure of ‘Jane

Eyre.’” Signs 18, no. 3 (1993): 592-617