View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University 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, 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 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 [email protected]. “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,