Baden-Powell took many ideas from the experiences he made with the Mafeking Cadet Corps. This corps was a paramilitary group made of boys. It was formed during a siege in the Second Boer War. The boys mainly carried messages. This was so the soldiers could focus on defending the city.
Originally, the Scout movement was for boys only. A similar movement for girls, called "Girl Guides" was started in 1910. In most countries there are associations for Scouts and for Girl Guides. Today the Scouts often accept girls, too.
In the Scout movement, people learn to work together to achieve a goal. They also train their character to become better adults.
Usually Scouts give a promise to live by certain rules, and to help others when they can.
Scouts spend their time outdoors, whenever possible.
In 2005, there were more than 28 million Boy Scouts and over 10 million Girl Guides. They came from 216 different countries. There were only six countries with no Scout movement in 2006. They were Andorra, People's Republic of China, Cuba, Laos, Myanmar and North Korea.
In Cuba, there was a Scout organisation, but the Communist government replaced it by the José Martí Pioneer Organization, which is similar to Scouts, but without the international brotherhood and the peace mission.
Scouting organisations have been banned in People's Republic of China. They have been replaced by Young Pioneers of China and Communist Youth League of China. These organisations are a bit similar to Scouts, but without the international brotherhood and the peace mission. There is a Scout Association in Hong Kong and one in Macau. Hong Kong and Macau are Special Autonomous Regions of the People's Republic of China, so the Scout associations there are still allowed to exist. In the Republic of China (Taiwan) Scouting was never banned.
There are no Scouting organisations in Myanmar, but there are a few Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts (headed by the US Scout movement) in Yangon.
Robert Baden-Powell was a military officer. He was stationed in India and Africa in the 1880s and 1890s. Since his youth, he was fond of woodcraft and military scouting. He therefore showed his men how to survive in the wilderness. He noticed that if he taught the soldiers to develop independence, they would no longer follow the orders given by their officers blindly.
In 1896, during the Second Matabele War, Baden-Powell first met and became friends with the American-born British Army Chief of Scouts Frederick Russell Burnham. From Burnham he learned the ways of cowboy and Indian scouts of the Western United States, he started to wear a scout hat like the one worn by Burnham and he discussed with Burnham a scout training programme for boys. Three years later during the Second Boer War, Baden-Powell was besieged in the small town of Mafeking by a much larger Boer army (the Siege of Mafeking). The Mafeking Cadet Corps was a group of youths that supported the troops. The cadets carried messages. This freed the men for military duties. It also kept the boys occupied during the long siege. The Cadet Corps performed well, helping in the defence of the town (1899–1900). This experience was one of the many factors that inspired Baden-Powell to form the Scouting movement. Each member received a badge that showed a combined compass point and spearhead. The badge's logo was similar to the fleur-de-lis that Scouting later adopted as its international symbol.
In the United Kingdom the public followed his struggle to hold Mafeking through newspapers. After the siege, Baden-Powell had become a national hero. This pushed the sales of a small instruction book he had written about military scouting, "Aids to Scouting".
On his return to England he noticed the large interest of boys in this book, which was also used by teachers and youth organisations. Several people suggested to him to rewrite this book for boys, especially during an inspection of the Boys' Brigade. This brigade was a large youth movement, drilled with military precision. Baden-Powell thought this would not be attractive and suggested that it could grow much larger when scouting would be used. He studied other schemes, parts of which he used for Scouting.
In his original book on boy scouting, General Baden-Powell introduced the Scout promise, as follows:
Since the Scouts were formed, other people have tried to form scout-like movements. These movements are a bit like the Scouts but they put more weight on different things. There are for example Scout-like movements that focus more on the fact that the young people should get a good education in religious matters. The movements that have been formed in countries such as Cuba or China are much like Scouts; they leave out some elements though, that the national governments thought would harm the country.
History of Indonesia
The History of Indonesia or more precisely of the Indonesian archipelago in South East Asia with 17,508 islands goes back to "Homo erectus" (popularly known as the "Java Man"). There have been found fossilised remains of about one million years ago.
Austronesian people, who form the majority of the modern population, came to South East Asia from Taiwan. They arrived in Indonesia around 2000 BC. The native Melanesian peoples went to the far eastern regions. The agricultural conditions were very good. When wet-field rice cultivation was developed as early as the eighth century BC,
villages and towns developed, and small kingdoms began to flourish by the first century CE. Indonesia's sea-lane position helped with management of international trade, where trade with both Indian kingdoms and China already occured for several centuries BCE. Therefore, trade has since fundamentally shaped Indonesian history.
From the seventh century CE, the powerful Srivijaya naval kingdom flourished as a result of trade. Hinduism and Buddhism were imported with it. In the late 13th century, the Hindu kingdom was founded in eastern Java and under Gajah Mada, its influence stretched over much of Indonesia; this period is often referred to as a "Golden Age" in Indonesian history.
During the 13th century Islam spread to the in northern Sumatra. More and more Indonesian areas gradually adopted Islam. By the end of the 16th century it was the dominant religion in Java and Sumatra. But it mixed with existing cultural and religious influences.
The first Europeans arrived in Indonesia in 1512, when Portuguese traders, led by Francisco Serrão, sought to monopolise the sources of nutmeg, cloves, and cubeb pepper in Maluku. Dutch and British traders followed. In 1602 the Dutch established the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and became the dominant European power. But Dutch control stretched not very far. Only in the early 20th century it extended to borders of today.
During the Second World War the Dutch lost control and in August 1945, Sukarno, an influential nationalist leader, declared independence and was appointed president. After some fights the Netherlands formally recognised Indonesian independence in December 1949 (with the exception of The Dutch territory of West New Guinea).
Sukarno moved from democracy towards dictatorship. But Sukarno lost power to the head of the military, General Suharto who was formally appointed president in March 1968. He was supported by the US government, and encouraged foreign direct investment in Indonesia, which helped economic growth during the following thirty years. But his rule went along with corruption and suppression of political opposition.