Empire's Nursery: Children's Literature and the Origins of the American Century

How children and children's literature helped build America's empire America's empire was not made by adults alone. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, young people became essential to its creation. Through children's literature, authors instilled the idea of America's power and the importance of its global prominence. As kids eagerly read dime novels, series fiction, pulp magazines, and comic books that dramatized the virtues of empire, they helped entrench a growing belief in America's indispensability to the international order. Empires more generally require stories to justify their existence. Children's literature seeded among young people a conviction that their country's command of a continent (and later the world) was essential to global stability. This genre allowed ardent imperialists to obscure their aggressive agendas with a veneer of harmlessness or fun. The supposedly nonthreatening nature of the child and children's literature thereby helped to disguise dominion's unsavory nature. The modern era has been called both the "American Century" and the "Century of the Child." Brian Rouleau illustrates how those conceptualizations came together by depicting children in their influential role as the junior partners of US imperial enterprise.

About the Author :
Brian Rouleau is Associate Professor of History at Texas A&M University. He is the author of With Sails Whitening Every Sea: Mariners and the Making of an American Maritime Empire.

Review :
"What a book! Sharp, surprising, and creative, Empire's Nursery tells the story of how a generation of children learned the art of empire. Brian Rouleau has shown himself to be a superb historian." - Daniel Immerwahr, author of How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States "Polished, well organized, and engaging. This is an important contribution that demonstrates the significance of taking children and their material culture seriously. Specifically, whereas most literature on the history of children and youth looks for children to be agents of change, Empire's Nursery regards children as cultural conservators." - Jennifer Helgren, University of the Pacific "There is much to admire in Empire's Nursery, which weaves together settler colonial studies and children's literary studies—two strands of analysis that aren't usually put into conversation. Rouleau makes important claims that deserve engagement and elaboration. Featuring excellent archival work, Empire's Nursery excavates children's writing in response to the literature they were reading." - Anna Mae Duane, author of Educated for Freedom: The Incredible Story of Two Fugitive Schoolboys Who Grew Up to Change a Nation "Brian Rouleau invites readers to reimagine children's literature from the 1860s to the 1960s as a 'species of diplomatic discourse'...Rouleau's thoughtful analysis is sure to encourage much more interest in this field." (Journal of the History of Childhood and Youth)