Post-colonial suffrage histories: Race and empire in the British suffrage movement

The British suffrage movement took place at the height of the British Empire. In analysing this major political movement and its approach to the pressing questions of democracy, participation, citizenship and status, historians have begun to consider some of the ways in which empire and imperialism were understood and inflected in suffrage organisations and their campaigns. This chapter considers how such an approach has demonstrated the importance of historical understandings of race and empire to understanding the suffrage movement and reflects on how more recent public interpretations of suffrage that sidestep the relationship between suffrage and imperialism narrow popular conceptions of who was involved in the campaign and have lasting ramifications for social inclusion in contemporary Britain.