Imperial Feminists and the Irish Question

In the early 20th century, women across the British Isles united to fight for the right to vote, for fair pay and good working conditions. But what did this unity look like across the colonial border between Ireland and England? This book offers a fresh perspective on the history of empire and feminism by exploring the changing nature of political solidarity between English and Irish women during this time.Demonstrating how Ireland offered English women a space in which to act upon their ‘patriotic duty’ as mothers of empire, in order to alleviate the degraded status of their ‘colonial sisters’, Geraghty shows how this imperial feminism was an integral part of English women’s demand for political freedoms. These demands, which did not disappear at the outbreak of WWI in 1914 nor when the franchise was achieved in 1918, remained a pervasive part of their politics and impacted the ways in which they engaged with the Irish struggle for independence and Irish women’s political emancipation. Imperial Interventions traces the attempts at solidarity by English women in Ireland, the resistance to English interventions by Irish women, and the broader religious, moral, and psychological issues raised by this uneasy political truce.