Self-determination, race, and empire: Feminist nationalists in Britain, Ireland and the United States, 1830s to World War One

SynopsisThe nineteenth and twentieth centuries witnessed women's claims to political, cultural and social rights and agency, as well as the growth of imperial and anti-imperial nationalisms within the metropole and colonial locations. This article draws on three case studies, the black nationalist journalism of the 1830s in the United States, the black abolitionist journalism of the 1850s, the ‘English’ Edwardian feminism and suffrage periodical press, and Irish suffrage journalism of the First World War, to explore the ways in which feminism and nationalism interacted, and drew on the conceptual resources each offered. A particular focus of this article is on the extent to which suffrage and feminist social movements were not just shaped by nationalism, but also constitutive of it. The realm of print culture can be seen as a relatively novel ‘public sphere’ available to women who in general lacked access to other public spheres through their gender and racial marginality.