The Great War in the History of British Feminism: Debates and Controversies, 1914 to the Present

This article explores the three ‘historical configurations’ through which the historiography of British feminism during the Great War has passed to date. It attempts to show that each was shaped by specific questions, themselves emerging form a unique political context, and answered through the prism of a distinct scholarly paradigm. This in turn had important consequences for how historians approached feminism as a historical object at each juncture and for the ‘place’ they awarded the Great War in their narratives of British feminism’s historical evolution. Having taken stock of this diversity, the article attempts, in conclusion, to tentatively suggest some fruitful avenues of research for the next century, or at least the next decade