Colonial Childhoods

Colonial Childhoods is about the politics of childhood in India between the 1860s and the 1930s. It examines not only the redefinition of the 'child' in the cultural and intellectual climate of colonialism, but also the uses of the child, the parent and the family in colonizing and nationalizing projects. It investigates also the complications of transporting metropolitan discourses of childhood, adulthood and expertise across the lines of race. Focused on reformatories and laws for juvenile delinquents, and boarding schools for aristocratic children, it illuminates a vital area of conflict and accommodation in a colonial society.    A key addition to Anthem's South Asian series and also to the growing discipline of Childhood and Colonial Childhood studies.

Satadru Sen teaches South Asian history at Washington University in St Louis. His research interests are in colonial India, the history of discipline, the history of youth and issues of race and identity. He also writes occasionally about cricket. He is the author of Migrant Races: Empire, Identity and KS Ranjitsinhji (Manchester University Press, 2004) and Disciplining Punishment: Colonialism and Convict Society in the Andaman Islands (Oxford University Press, 2000). He is also the co-editor of Confronting the Body: The Politics of Physicality in Colonial and Postcolonial South Asia (Anthem Press, 2004).