Gender, Nationhood, and Transnational Networks: Anti-Suffrage within the British Empire, 1880-1914

这个博士项目将采用跨国的方法来探索反选举权的想法是如何在英国、白领地、印度和南非传播和解释的。通过将种族、国家和性别等级制度的考虑与跨国沟通渠道融合在一起，这项研究将提出三个主要问题：1)为什么整个帝国的女性不想要选举权？2)为什么这些女性不希望整个帝国的其他女性获得选举权？3)关于19世纪末和20世纪初的地方、国家和帝国治理的概念，反选举权能告诉我们什么？作为对大英帝国女性跨国反选举权网络和活动的第一次研究，该项目旨在展示女性反选举权是如何在帝国大都会之外的背景下形成的一场全球运动。该项目旨在展示整个帝国的反选举权联盟如何利用女性投票的概念来阐明围绕种族、国籍、公民身份和发展的复杂政治争论。这不仅将揭示当代选举权辩论的轮廓，也将揭示当代帝国政治的细微差别。因此，妇女及其选举权问题将被证明牢牢地处于这一时期帝国统治思想的中心。尽管爱尔兰、新西兰、澳大利亚、加拿大、印度和南非都有反对选举权的运动，但目前还没有关于大英帝国内部反对选举权的史学考虑。这代表了皇室和女性历史上的一个重大差距。反选举权在很大程度上被认为是争取妇女选举权运动的一个脚注。这种对支持选举权的立场的关注，导致人们对这一时期大英帝国内部所有女性活动家的认识不足。因此，这个项目提供了发现另类女性网络的机会，同时也提供了细微差别，与家庭领域以外的支持选举权的同行一样，存在着对女性身份的细微差别。将反选举权作为其自身运动的考虑是有限的。最重要的是，朱莉娅·布什和玛蒂娜·法劳特分别辩称，反选举权是代表英国女权主义的不同面孔之一的支持女性的论点。尽管这些论点加深了人们对英国反妇女参政运动某些方面的理解，但这并没有说明这场运动在多大程度上受到了帝国主义的影响。通过展示整个帝国的反选举权看起来是如何不同的，这个项目将挑战现有的以盎格鲁为中心的学术研究，以阐明存在于帝国大都会之外的各种复杂的运动。该项目将依靠一系列档案和数字资源来探索大英帝国各地的反选举权个人和组织。通过平衡大体上提出反对选举权的理由的方式与这场运动在个人层面上对女性意味着什么的细微差别，这种方法将挑战主流观点，即反选举权是一种同质化的反运动。伊迪丝·科尔克洪、泽西夫人、诺拉·泰南·奥马奥尼、莫德·伯纳德等反选举权女性的出版作品和记录将被用来审视整个帝国反选举权人士之间的跨国遭遇，以及他们对彼此的影响。对著名的反选举权帝国主义者克罗默勋爵和柯松勋爵的记录的探索，也将寻求展示反对选举权的立场是如何植根于帝国政策制定的。妇女全国反选举权联盟和全国反对妇女选举权联盟的记录将揭示帝国言论如何影响反选举权思想，并阐明与爱尔兰、新西兰、澳大利亚、加拿大、印度和南非反选举权联盟的联系。

This doctoral project will take a transnational approach to explore how anti-suffrage ideas were spread and interpreted across the United Kingdom, the 'white Dominions', India and South Africa. Through fusing considerations of racial, national, and gendered hierarchies with transnational communication channels, the study will ask three main questions: 1) Why did women across the Empire not want enfranchisement? 2) Why did these women not want other women across the Empire to be enfranchised? 3) What can anti-suffrage tell us about notions of local, national and imperial governance in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century? As the first study of women's transnational anti-suffrage networks and activisms across the British Empire, this project aims to show how women's anti-suffrage was a global movement shaped by contexts beyond the imperial metropole. The project aims to show how notions of the female vote were used by anti-suffrage leagues across the Empire to articulate complex political arguments around race, nationality, citizenship, and development. This will illuminate not only contours of contemporary suffrage debates, but the nuances of contemporary imperial politics. As a result, women, and the issue of their enfranchisement, will be shown to have sat firmly at the centre of ideas of imperial governance in this period. There is currently no historiographical consideration of anti-suffrage within the British Empire, despite movements across Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, India, and South Africa. This represents a significant gap within both imperial and women's history. Anti-suffrage has largely been considered as little more than a footnote to the campaign for women's enfranchisement. This focus on pro-suffrage positions has led to a lack of recognition of the full spectrum of female activism within the British Empire in this period. This project thus provides opportunities to uncover alternative female networks, while also nuancing 'conservative' ideas of womanhood that existed, just as much as their pro-suffrage counterparts, beyond the domestic sphere. Consideration of anti-suffrage as its own movement has been limited. Most significantly, Julia Bush and Martine Faraut have respectively argued that anti-suffrage was a 'pro-woman' argument that represented 'one of the different faces of British feminism'. Although these arguments have deepened understanding of some aspects of English anti-suffragism, it does not account for the degree to which the movement was shaped by imperialism. Through showing how anti-suffrage did not look the same across the Empire, this project will challenge existing Anglo-centric scholarship to illuminate diverse and complex movements that existed beyond the imperial metropole. This project will rely upon a range of archival and digital sources to explore anti-suffrage individuals and organisations across the British Empire. Through balancing the way in which anti-suffrage arguments were broadly made with the nuance of what the movement meant to women on an individual level, this approach will challenge the prevailing view of anti-suffrage as a homogenous counter-movement. The published works and records of anti-suffrage women such as Edith Colquhon, Lady Jersey, Nora Tynan O'Mahony, Maud Bernard and others will be used to examine transnational encounters between anti-suffrage individuals throughout the Empire, and the influence that they had on each other. Exploration of the records of prominent anti-suffrage imperialists Lord Cromer and Lord Curzon will also seek to show how anti-suffrage stances were embedded within imperial policy-making. Records of the Women's National Anti-Suffrage League and National League for Opposing Women's Suffrage will reveal how imperial rhetoric influenced anti-suffrage ideology, and illuminate links with anti-suffrage leagues in Ireland, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, India, and South Africa.