Our Frontier Is the World
The Boy Scouts in the Age of American Ascendancy
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Cornell University Press
Published:15th May '18
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
Mischa Honeck’s Our Frontier Is the World is a provocative account of how the Boy Scouts echoed and enabled American global expansion in the twentieth century.
The Boy Scouts of America (BSA) has long been a standard bearer for national identity. The core values of the organization have, since its founding in 1910, shaped what it means to be an American boy and man. As Honeck shows, those masculine values had implications that extended far beyond the borders of the United States. Writing the global back into the history of one of the country’s largest youth organizations, Our Frontier Is the World details how the BSA operated as a vehicle of empire from the Progressive Era up to the countercultural moment of the 1960s. American boys and men wearing the Scout uniform never simply hiked local trails to citizenship; they forged ties with their international peers, camped in foreign lands, and started troops on overseas military bases. Scouts traveled to Africa and even sailed to icy Antarctica, hoisting the American flag and standing as models of loyalty, obedience, and bravery. Through scouting America’s complex engagements with the world were presented as honorable and playful masculine adventures abroad.
Innocent fun and earnest commitment to doing a good turn, of course, were not the whole story. Honeck argues that the good-natured Boy Scout was a ready means for soft power abroad and gentle influence where American values, and democratic capitalism, were at stake. In other instances the BSA provided a pleasant cover for imperial interventions that required coercion and violence. At Scouting’s global frontiers the stern expression of empire often lurked behind the smile of a boy.
Thought-provoking and deeply researched.... Our Frontier Is the World covers much fresh ground. Indeed, Honeck's expansive narrative provides new insights on a wide variety of topics, from the development of mass media to the commodification of Native American culture to the role of youth in waging the Cold War.... Exploring the complex nexus of boyhood and empire, Our Frontier Is the World deftly illuminates the contours of U.S. power.
* Journal of Social History *In a richly detailed and researched book, nearly a quarter of the pages are dedicated to sources and citations, providing a history of the BSA while at the same time exploring the evolution of the United States as an imperial power. Honeck provides details, research, and several sources to make his argument. The book presents a complex and intriguing picture of the intersection of a service organization, empire, and identity in the twentieth century... Honeck's fine work chronicles the intentions of the BSA, but it remains an open question as to what the effects were on everyday Scouts.
* H-Net *This original and incisive portrait of scouting's shifting global frontiers demonstrates the centrality of this iconic youth organization to the construction and maintenance of U.S.
* The Journal of American History *Honeck provides a superbly written and richly detailed history of the Boy Scouts abroad. He fully accomplishes his goal to show that the BSA's agenda neatly dovetailed with U.S. foreign policy in times of crisis by becoming a useful tool from which to sharpen U.S. influence abroad behind the innocent faces of young American boys.
* Diplomatic History *Our Frontier Is the World: The Boy Scouts in the Age of American Ascendancy is an expansive examination of the global history of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) and the organization's role in promoting "American ascendancy" in cultural, political, and even military realms.... Honeck's book is a critical addition to the field
* Journal of Southern History *This masterly study of the BSA will appeal to students and scholars of U.S. empire and to anyone invested in understanding how age-related constructs of difference operated within the intertwined national and globalized youthscapes of the tumultuous twentieth century
* The Journal of American history *Mischa Honeck's Our Frontier Is the World demonstrates how fields of historiography can fruitfully overlap if not quite merge... In splendidly researched and forcefully argued narrative, standards intertwine in clear view, enlivened by quotations and anecdotes... Thoughtful and sharply worded, this book finds great complexity in its subjects.
* American Historical ReviISBN: 9781501716188
Dimensions: 229mm x 152mm x 30mm
Weight: 907g
392 pages