Introduction

In this book I focus on this wider context to the history of feminism in Britain, looking specifically at the relationship between the development of British imperialism and the origins of modern feminism in Britain in the period between the 1790s, when Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman was published, and the mid-1860s, when a concerted campaign for women’s suffragewas launched. My aim is to explore the influence thatBritain’s position as a leading imperial power had on the formulation of discussions of the ‘woman question’, and to examine the openings that campaigns around Empire offered for assertions of feminine agency and power both in relation to British men and in relation to colonised peoples, particularly women. In the process, I aim also to draw out the ways in which womenwere actively involved in shaping colonial discourse, debates on Empire, and projects of imperial reform.