Songs of Sisterhood: Feminist Political Practice between Empire and Internationalism 1910–20

Abstract

This article seeks to understand how feminist thought and practice in the early twentieth century intersected with emergent movements against British imperialism. By tracing relations between Indian, Irish and British feminists, it delineates the diverse ways in which women, across imperial spaces, adopted emergent languages of internationalism and female fraternity to further their political ambitions. This article moves beyond the geographical boundaries of colony and metropole to uncover a much wider circulation of ideas, practices and solidarities amongst feminist networks in the early twentieth century. Collectively, the stories presented in this article convey multiple feminist political imaginaries in an era defined at once by imperial crisis and the rise of internationalism. They show that women's choices of political association in the autumn of empire were determined by their ideological affinity, political practice and social class rather than their country of origin or ethnic identity alone.