The project started in 2017 by bringing together European researchers who, independently and simultaneously, were delving into colonial interference in children’s lives as an important technique in colonial civilizing projects. The symposium Colonizing children (Mak, Amsterdam 2017) examined the links between historical research, development studies and non-governmental development organizations in the Netherlands. It addressed discourses and techniques of mobilizing children (education, vocational training) and identified various forms of ‘child removal’ that blended philanthropic and colonial discourses (freeing children from slavery, adoption, village
re-settlement programs, boarding schools). These discourses and techniques were transferred between metropole and colony and reverberate in later campaigns of development organizations. The workshop ‘Colonialism and education in a comparative perspective: analyzing gendered civilizing missions (ca. 1850-1970)' (Unger-Kamphuis, Florence 2017) focused on non-state colonial actors who constituted colonial society and whose civilizing missions shaped the realities of the lives of children in colonial context. The joint panel session ‘Creating European Loyalties: the Double-Edged Role of Children in Colonial Civilizing Projects' (Mak-Monteiro-Jensz, Nijmegen 2017) concentrated on archival and methodological questions related to the agency of local children under Dutch and German colonial regimes.