Agents of future promise: the ideological use of children in culture and politics (Britain and France, c.1880-c.1950)

How active are children in politics? They don't vote. They rarely support political parties. They seem untainted by political mudslinging, unsullied by the warmongers' guilt. Rather, they appear innocent, vulnerable and passive. Yet they are political. They carry upon their shoulders the hopes of nation, region, religion, society, family. In this latent potentiality, they sit at the heart of adults' projections of new futures, whether at moments of violence and revolution or within the quest for peace and stability. Since childhood was 'invented' in Britain, Europe and beyond, adults have made use of children at an individual and collective level to promote their own notions of the future. Children bear the burden of social expectations: they are 'agents of future promise'. While this research project seeks to examine children and ideology in the Western past, it also begins to think about how children are still being ideologically used in the contemporary world. Through our collaboration with external partners, we will start to examine how past insights can influence present practice. The project is underpinned by three research questions: 1. How have children been ideologically used for political/cultural purposes? 2. Why have they been used like this? 3. How can we better understand the consequences of this instrumentalisation? We will complete three case studies comparing societies, time and place, and using historical and archaeological methodologies. Using Britain and France in cross-national comparison reveals the sharp differences in the relationship between children, family and state in a monarchy and a republic, at key moments of nation-building, domestic and international conflict, and reconstruction. King will analyse the way that children featured in projections of new futures towards the end of the Second World War and into the postwar era in Britain. Two further case studies will emerge in direct comparison to the PI's research. Crewe will examine children's material culture in Britain from the late nineteenth to early twentieth century and the way that it mobilized ideologies of gender, empire and war. Dodd's work focuses on the role assigned to French children (1940-1944) as mobile agents of national unity, tasked rhetorically and practically with healing national political divisions. The conclusions drawn from the three case studies will be compared and disseminated, and then written into a History & Policy paper in order to bring the question of the ideological instrumentalisation of children to the attention of policy makers. A key objective of the project is the cross-sector conference, held towards the end of the project. The conference seeks to assemble a network of academic researchers and policymakers, NGO, education and museum practitioners, all concerned with childhood whether in terms of education, health, welfare or culture. Through the presentation of research and practice, roundtable discussions and ideas generation, we will prepare the ground for future projects that put research on the past into the service of practice in the present. The project contributes to the burgeoning historical debate on childhood and youth in the past. It also seeks to raise awareness of the ideological use of children (gendered, political, religious, commercial). By establishing ways in which we can work better with practitioners who can make good use of our insights from the past, the research will have benefits for children's wellbeing in the future.