Children Are Hiding in Plain Sight in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations

Abstract

All kinds of peoples, previously marginalized in favor of the actions and thoughts of elite policy makers, now fill foreign relations histories. African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, women, workers, and many others have been shown to be indispensable—if informal—diplomatic assets. And yet, diverse as this cast of characters has become, notice one thing they share in common: their adulthood. It is as if human experience with foreign affairs only begins with the age of majority. What might be gained once we appreciate the influence of young people, as both audience and agent, in the long history of America's entanglement with the wider world?

Children Saving Children: Humanitarianism, World War I, and American Childhood

“…"It is as if human experience," Rouleau deplores, "only begins with the age of majority." 21 Rouleau has provocatively opined that children are hiding "in plain sight" in the history of U.S. foreign relations, urging historians of U.S. politics, diplomacy, and international relations to reorient their treatment of American history and include the nation's youth. Children, he argues, must be regarded not simply as passive characters of American society "but rather as actors themselves."…”

“…As Brian Rouleau explains, twentieth-century children's literature and popular culture permitted the U.S. government to "politicize children's entertainment as part of an effort to purchase their loyalty and assent." 10 In order to teach children that they belonged to a great altruistic nation, they needed to be fully integrated within the imagined national community. Rouleau has shown, for example, that children's literature, such as comic books and magazines, sought "to create a colonially inflected youth culture in the United States."…”

Empire, Colonialism, and Place-Attachment in Young Minds: Quebec Students' Imaginative Travels in the Age of the New Imperialism

“…had come back from abroad" (1911) or "the greatest violinist on either continent, even royalty has requested her presence" (1916). Elsewhere we find students working in Canadian places (13), in the United States (11), in Europe (5), in Africa (2), in China (2), in Brazil (1), in "the Orient" (1), and elsewhere in the world (4). The American and European places are mostly linked to precise occupations: cartoonists for a major newspaper, a professor, a dentist, a railwaycompany director, a "manager of the stocks for the 'Brazil and Canada Trade Co.,'" among other roles.…”

“…Settler colonialism in Quebec, its perpetuation, and the connections between the province and the rest of the world cannot be understood without taking into account the role played by young people. 4 Working from a variety of sources, my intention is to reconstruct the relationality of the geographic imagination of Quebec students. The maps they drew, the literature they consumed, the missionaries they heard speak, the knowledge they acquired, the ambitions they expressed, and their play are not compartmentalized spaces of young people's experience.…”