Connecting Women's Histories

The local and the global

Barbara Bush, June Purvis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351602068
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Reflecting upon the diverse aspects of the entangled histories of women across the world (mainly, but not exclusively, during the twentieth century), this book explores the range of ways in which women's history, international history, transnational history and imperial and global histories are interwoven.

Contributors cover a diverse range of topics, including the work of British women's activist networks in defence of, and opposition, to empire; the Society for the Overseas Settlement of British Women; suffrage networks in Britain and South Africa; white Zimbabwean women and belonging in the diaspora; migrant female workers as traditional agents in Tasmania; Indian 'coolie' women's lives in British Malaya; Irish female medical missionary work; emigration to North America from Irish women's convict prisons; the Women's Party of Great Britain (1917-1919); the national and international in the making of the Finnish feminist Alexandra Gripenberg; and the relationship between the World Congress of Mothers and the Japan Mothers' Congress.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the Women's History Review.

Feminising Empire? British Women’s Activist Networks in Defending and Challenging Empire from 1918 to Decolonisation

Barbara Bush

ABSTRACT

This article addresses female activism spanning the Empire and creating interconnected networks linking the local and global dimensions of Britain’s imperial mission in an era of increasing uncertainty. The transition from empire to commonwealth and, ultimately, independence was marked by anti-colonial challenges from within Britain and in the colonies and threats to empire from international developments post-1918. This era also witnessed a more proactive role for women as both defenders and critics of empire who had an influence on shaping a new discourse of welfare and development, purportedly a ‘feminisation’ of empire. Continuities existed between female activism pre- and post-1918 but also significant differences as the late imperial era witnessed more nuanced and diverse interventions into empire affairs than the ‘maternalist imperial feminism’ of the era before the First World War.

Introduction

In a masculinist imperial culture white women were commonly regarded as ‘the ruin of empire’,¹ potential threats to racial boundaries or disruptive of male culture in the colonies and interfering ‘do-gooders’ in the metropolitan centre. Yet women’s activism was arguably important in both defending and challenging empire. Elite women’s activism in furthering the imperial project was evident before the First World War² but in the late Empire after 1918, emancipated women in the metropole and colonies were able to take a more proactive role in imperial politics. A minority of women also became involved in organisations and initiatives critical of empire and the racial orders that supported it.³ These were influenced by socialism and communism, the growth of anti-colonialism and/ or international feminist networks that developed in tandem with the international peace movement. Feminists in Britain and the Dominions were now interconnected through the British Commonwealth League (BCL), established in 1925 by Australian feminists, in pursuing an agenda of human rights and equal citizenship in international forums.⁴

My focus is mainly on metropolitan-based activism, but also significant is the growth of white female activism in the white settler colonies, where women were forging identities independent of the metropolitan centre. Organisations like the BCL were establishing their own agendas, including the rights of colonised women. In the case of Kenya and Rhodesia settler women’s agendas relating to race, African nationalism, and settler autonomy could conflict with those of metropolitan female activists.⁵ Thus, local initiatives in the Empire, particularly in the white settler colonies, were part of vertical networks of power linking colony and metropole but horizontal, transnational networks also interconnected colonies with each other, the metropolitan centre, and with international organisations. British women’s activism was embedded in these networks of empire, but also, increasingly, had a wider international dimension as more women from the metropole and the Dominions participated in international forums.⁶

Thus, white women’s activism went beyond the pre-war philanthropic imperial feminist initiatives critiqued by historians who have highlighted the relationships between ‘maternalist’ campaigns for emancipation in Britain, empire activism and racial supremacy.⁷ With the exception of such studies, most research into gender and empire has focused on white women’s role in the colonies in strengthening the race and gender orders that sustained colonial rule. Migration and experiences of settler women before the Second World War have also received attention.⁸ Few academic works address women’s imperial activism in the metropolitan context, particularly after 1918, and, as Clare Midgley has stressed, this remains a relatively neglected area.⁹ Here I am interpreting ‘activism’ as all activities which engaged with, or influenced, imperial policies, either in defence of empire, or critical of European colonialism and the racial exclusions which it promoted. The nature of women’s political activism and their attitudes to race and empire was not uniform but mediated by class (with middle and upper class women constituting the activists, in the main), political affiliation (conservative, liberal or left wing) and age (older women tended to be more conservative and patronising towards the colonised than the younger generation). Also influential were developments in imperial discourse and practice, with a greater emphasis on colonial development as decolonisation approached. Additionally, women’s activism was informed by the new liberal humanitarian agenda of the League of Nations that placed more emphasis on the welfare of the colonised peoples, an agenda that was much expanded by the post-1945 United Nations.

This article, then, assesses and critiques the extent to which empire activism was ‘feminised’ after 1918. By ‘feminised’ I refer to the wider participation of women in imperial politics but also the increased influence of ‘female’ values of compassion and concern for the welfare of the colonised. ‘Feminisation’ of imperial discourse and practice was reflected in greater emphasis on colonial reforms and development and the wider significance of gender in colonial policy and practice.¹⁰ This ‘feminisation’ arguably went beyond the philanthropic maternalist concern for oppressed colonised women of the pre-1914 era in that female influence was more varied and extensive as decolonisation approached. Though masculine eyes, ‘feminisation’ was also associated with the weakening and decline of empire; a loss of masculine vigour. First, I trace the important developments spanning the pre- and post-war period that brought white women more predominantly into imperial politics, and highlight key aspects of continuity and change. This is followed by an analysis of the nature of women’s activism from the end of the First World War up to decolonisation.

Female emancipation and empire activism: continuity and change

Continuities existed from the pre-1914 era up to decolonisation in elite women’s support for the imperial mission and participation in pro-imperial organisations. ‘Maternalist’ concern for colonised women’s welfare persisted. Additionally, some women activists, particularly those involved with white settler colonies, also retained pre-war concepts of hierarchical racial orders and their importance to white prestige and power. However, there were also important changes as the confident imperial expansion of the pre-war period was increasingly undermined by anti-colonialism and emergent discourses that challenged scientific racism. Female emancipation and the higher profile of an international feminist agenda also had a significant impact on British women’s imperial activism. Before 1918, women were denied full citizenship, although women were active in female emigration societies and a minority of women were influential in the high echelons of imperial power. Flora Shaw, wife of Frederick (Lord) Lugard, the first Governor of Nigeria, was a Times journalist writing on colonial affairs. The Fabian socialist, Beatrice Webb, ‘invented’ the Coefficients, ‘a club to discuss the aims and methods of imperial policy’ in 1904. Club members included influential male imperialists.¹¹ Beatrice Webb was arguably one of the few women at the heart of imperial politics, particularly when Sidney Webb (now Lord Passfield) became Colonial Secretary in 1929. The Webbs were ‘Empire Socialists’, committed to strengthening the Empire through reforms.¹² Both Flora Shaw and Beatrice Webb were great admirers of the politician and leading imperialist before 1914, Joseph Chamberlain. Other imperial ‘groupies’ were attracted to powerful male imperialists; for instance, the liberal imperialist, Violet Markham, and Violet Cecil, wife of Lord Edward Cecil, who subsequently married Alfred (Lord) Milner, High Commissioner of South Africa at the time of the South African (Boer) War and Colonial Secretary, 1919 to 1921. As Riedi points out, such influential elite women rejected a ‘feminised’ imperialism based on social welfare in favour of a ‘masculine’ model of empire informed by imperial conservatism.¹³

Female interventions into the masculine world of imperial politics provoked strong criticism. In 1902 Arnold White, who was concerned with growing threats to empire and Britain’s economy, complained that the War Office, hub of imperial defence, was ‘largely under the control of women’ and warned that such ‘petticoat influence’ was ‘pernicious to the nation’.¹⁴ Such prejudices persisted after 1918 but enfranchisement of women over thirty, combined with women’s contribution to the war effort, including the defence of empire, and broader social and cultural changes catalysed by the war, forced men to take women’s contribution to the continued health of empire more seriously. In 1919, at the Jubilee dinner of the Royal Colonial Institute (RCI), as President, the Duke of Connaught spoke of the ‘present shortcomings’ of the organisation, including the fact that ‘Lady Associates’ who attended RCI meetings were still excluded from full membership.¹⁵

Emancipation reconfigured British women’s relationship to empire and imperial politics and women became more proactive in such organisations and other forms of activism on more equal terms. The 1919 Sex Disqualification Removal Act opened ‘male’ professions to women and more women benefited from a university education.¹⁶ After 1928 all women over twenty-one were full ‘empire citizens’, a concept which became central to evolving conceptions of a modern empire. Empowered by citizenship, women in Britain and its white Dominions could now assume a higher profile, which men had to accept, if reluctantly. At the same time, the post-war years also witnessed a perceived crisis in masculinity and related ‘feminisation’ of British society. Sir Ralph Furse, head of recruitment at the Colonial Office, complained of the ‘hollow men’ of the ‘straw generation’ who lacked the qualities needed to run the Empire. Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen), the Danish author and Kenyan settler, spoke of the purposelessness of young men, particularly the disillusioned elite. Physical strength no longer defined masculinity in opp...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation information
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction – Connecting Women’s Histories: the local and the global
• 1. Feminising Empire? British Women’s Activist Networks in Defending and Challenging Empire from 1918 to Decolonisation
• 2. ‘The Women’s Branch of the Commonwealth Relations Office’: the Society for the Overseas Settlement of British Women and the long life of empire migration
• 3. ‘Going on with our little movement in the hum drum-way which alone is possible in a land like this’: Olive Schreiner and suffrage networks in Britain and South Africa, 1905–1913
• 4. From Settlers to Strays: white Zimbabwean women, historical memory and belonging in the diaspora c.1980–2010
• 5. ‘Belles from Bristol and Bournville in New Surroundings’: female confectionery workers as transnational agents, 1918–1928
• 6. ‘Immorality’, Nationalism and the Colonial State in British Malaya: Indian ‘coolie’ women’s intimate lives as ideological battleground
• 7. International and Modern Ideals in Irish Female Medical Missionary Activity, 1937–1962
• 8. ‘The salvation of them’: emigration to North America from the nineteenth-century Irish women’s convict prison
• 9. The Women’s Party of Great Britain (1917–1919): a forgotten episode in British women’s political history
• 10. The National and International in Making a Feminist: the case of Alexandra Gripenberg
• 11. From Hiroshima to Lausanne: the World Congress of Mothers and the Hahaoya Taikai in the 1950s
• Index