ABSTRACT
Questions of ethnicity, “race” and empire in British women’s history have been subject to twofold neglect. In the first place, historians of British women, preoccupied with the relationship between gender and class, have paid little attention to questions of ethnicity and “race”. Studies of “British women” are often about English women to the exclusion of Scottish and Welsh women,2 and about white Protestant women to the exclusion of women of Irish, Jewish, African or Asian descent. Secondly, general studies of the politics of immigration, “race” and empire in Britain rarely address gender issues.3 Recently, however, scholars and activists have begun to explore questions of ethnicity, “race” and empire in British women’s history. The first sections of this chapter draw upon this research to consider in succession the histories of Jewish women, who originally came to Britain as foreign immigrants; of Irish women, who migrated to Britain from within the United Kingdom; and of black and Indian women, the majority of whom were Britain’s imperial subjects. The final section will explore white British women’s (particularly English women’s) relationship to imperialism and to racial politics.4 The chapter as a whole aims to highlight the need to broaden both the subject matter and the analytical base of British women’s history.5
