Editor's Introduction

History has shown us how young people's voices can be powerful instruments for social change. I would like to begin this volume by thanking Nicholas Syrett and Corinne Field for their years of dedicated service as JHCY book review editors and to welcome Stephen Toth and Hugh Morrison to the role.

This issue begins with an object lesson by Emily Bruce and Elise Klarenbeek. In "Playing on the Map: An Educational Game from the Age of Revolutions," the co-authors examine how board games may be used as instructional tools. Games have long enabled children to play roles as explorers and armchair travelers, they can teach map reading and geography, and at times they may foster the development of nationalism and the colonial ambitions of the adult generation. Many games for children, such as the one outlined in the article, have involved the subtle inculcation of the adult world's national and geopolitical viewpoints.

Sandra Fox examines a different form of adult-driven childhood play: summer camp. In "Is This What You Call Being Free?": Intergenerational Negotiation, Democratic Education, and Camper Culture in Postwar American Jewish Summer Camps," Fox argues that due to adult fear that youth would never come to understand, let alone embody, "real" Jewishness on their own, rabbis, educators, and philanthropists came to see camps as sites where they could immerse children in what they saw as ideal Jewish lifestyles. However, children and teens typically came to camp seeking enjoyment much more than spiritual ideology, and Fox details a number of the generally good-humored struggles that ensued in these summertime spaces.

Danni Cai and Rachel Neiwert analyze children's letters as valuable historical entry points into children's lives. Cai's article, "Power, Politeness, and Print: Children's Letter Writing in Republican China," suggests that writing letters on behalf of adults was a frequent childhood experience, as demonstrated in autobiographical works of literate school pupils during the Republican era (1912–49). Their stories describe obliging pupils who were educated in new-style public schools and family members and servants who were not literate enough to write their own letters. Letters written by children and letter-writing manuals do not simply contain epistolary knowledge; rather, they provide historians with a unique window into the interaction between children and adults, the regulation of manners and speech, and the parameters of age, rank, and gender during that period. In "Homeschool/School-Home: Defining Your Place in the British World, 1900–1924," while detailing the Parents' Union School's provision of a British homeschool curriculum heavy in English literature and history, Neiwert provides evidence that this educational project promised not only a high-quality education, but also a middle-class British identity for children living in all parts of the British world. The school likewise worked to form strong bonds between its students and their home country; to this end, it solicited letters from schoolchildren living abroad, asking them to describe their lives to children living in Britain. A survey of these letters shows that child writers, despite parents' overwhelming effort to impose a particular British identity and attitude, articulated their own understandings of their selfhood and sense of belonging.

The British-led anarchist education program for the children's colonies in Spain is the focus of Morris Brodie's "An Infantile Disorder? Youth, Childhood, and the British Anarchist Movement during the Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939." According to Brodie, British anarchists placed great emphasis on childhood as both an arena for individual self-development and an opportunity to educate children to reject bourgeois hegemonic norms in favor of revolutionary solutions to society's ills. This was to be achieved through an "integral education" that developed all aspects of a child's personality—however, this at times conflicted with anarchist visions of preparing children for future movement leadership roles.

Finally, moving to child labor in Ireland, Ciara Breathnach and Sarah-Anne Buckley contribute to the recent international discourse on the intersection of age, agency, life stage, and gender in the context of child and youth labor. In "Rural Youth, Seasonal Labor, and Family Income: Ireland, 1890–1935," the co-authors argue...