Children at the Birth of Empire

<p>This is the first study to focus specifically on destitute children who became part of the early British Empire uniting separate historiographies on poverty childhood global expansion forced migration bound labor and law.</p><p>Britons used their nascent empire to employ thousands of destitute children launching an experiment in using plantations and ships as a solution for strains on London’s inadequate poor relief schemes. Starting with the settlement of Jamestown (1607) and ending with Britain’s participation in the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) British children were sent all around the world. Authorities parents and the public fought against the men and women they called spirits and kidnappers who were reviled because they employed children in the same empire but without respecting the complexities surrounding children’s legal status when it came to questions of authority consent and self-determination. Children mattered to Britons: protecting their liberty became emblematic of protecting the liberty of Britons as a whole. Therefore contests over the legal means of sending children abroad helped define what it meant to be British. </p><p>This work is written for a wide audience including scholars of early modern history childhood law poverty and empire.</p>