This chapter reflects on Sean O’Casey’s work from a postcolonial critical perspective. The focus is firstly upon his early Abbey plays, especially The Plough and the Stars, which are shown to be significant for postcolonial criticism because of their content, the contexts of their initial Abbey productions, and the ways that key aspects of their critical history play outsized roles in framing understandings of the postcolonial critical endeavour. The chapter shows how O’Casey responded to the political complexities of Ireland’s revolutionary era of the 1910s and 1920s. The chapter then examines O’Casey’s later plays, showing how his responses to the revolutionary era evolved as he dealt directly with postcolonial Ireland and the fascism of the 1930s–1960s.

Chapter 5 studies memory work in the international movement for women’s suffrage at the turn of the century. The 1880s saw the rise of official international women’s rights advocacy organisations, which became increasingly focused on the campaign for women’s suffrage. The chapter explores how, in the quest to legitimate their movement, feminist internationalists produced a body of comparative histories which narrated the rise of the feminist movement as a transnational phenomenon. Movement leaders formulated a powerful concept of international ‘sisterhood’ which implicitly relied on a narrow conception of the nature of the struggle for women’s rights and its advocates. Focusing on retellings of the ‘antislavery origin myth’ of organised feminism, this chapter shows how the memory work performed in these ‘movement histories’ contributed to this process and gives a sense of the life of these histories, tracing their reception in different popular media of the time, including national exhibitions.

This chapter explores the oscillations of political power and the “revolutions” – both violent and subtle – that appeared on the US stage throughout the nineteenth century. While many dramatists sought to avoid political debate, all too aware of the potential consequences (from boycotts to riots), timely issues of the day, including the abolition of slavery, the eradication of Indigenous populations, temperance, and women’s suffrage, inevitably made their way onto the stage. Some playwrights struck out boldly, naming issues of substance misuse and miscegenation in dramas such as The Drunkard or The Octoroon. Others infused politics into their depictions of everyday life, including Ossawattomie Brown (which retells John Brown’s history as a romantic family plot) and the labor melodrama Bertha, the Sewing Machine Girl. These homely narratives reminded viewers of how inescapable these issues had become. But whether starkly challenging or subtly questioning, nineteenth-century US theater never escaped the pressing political issues of the day.

The first ladies of the United States are often not thought about as activists. But in fact, many used their political position strategically to advocate for important reforms that benefited minorities and other underrepresented groups. Their activism from the White House helped social and political causes in different eras. Their unsung work contributed to their administration’s public profile and legacy. It also aided larger social justice campaigns going on throughout US history. This chapter explores the frequently unsung efforts of US first ladies in the realm of social advocacy to shed greater light on the significant work done by these women. It challenges the notion that first ladies were simply ornaments or companions for their husbands and highlights the actions that they took to create change.

The 1870s were a watershed decade for British feminism. Major changes were afoot that had a profound impact on women’s legal, educational, and social status. The first bill aiming to give women the vote may have failed in Parliament in 1870, but it was the start of a decade that saw enormous progress in women’s position in society at large, from the establishment of the first women’s colleges in Oxbridge to opportunities for employment in the civil service. Feminist campaigners including Annie Besant, Josephine Butler, Frances Power Cobbe, and Millicent Garrett Fawcett advocated for women’s increasing economic, educational, and bodily autonomy in public speaking and journalism. Writers including George Eliot, Dinah Craik, and Augusta Webster wrote novels and poetry to intervene in parliamentary debates ranging from the right of married women to own property to the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Act. Combining data on women writers with close reading, this chapter explores the powerful role that women’s writing played in imagining and advocating for women’s rights in the 1870s

US first ladies have exercised a complicated kind of activism when it comes to women’s rights. Some have acted as vocal advocates to insist that women’s equality should be a national priority. Others have used their platform more quietly to intervene on behalf of women’s rights. Still others have held and promoted views that have contradicted, undermined, or altogether avoided efforts to advance women’s rights. This chapter traces how US first ladies have addressed and influenced the prevailing women’s rights issues of their day, with a focus on two national campaigns: a federal amendment for women’s suffrage and a federal amendment for equal rights. By engaging or avoiding the debates surrounding women’s suffrage and the ERA, these women stretched the political and rhetorical boundaries of their platform and shaped public understanding about the ongoing struggle for women’s equality in the United States.

How, given the murder of those demanding a more representative political system at Peterloo in 1819, did more Britons, at home and in the colonies, get to vote by 1885?

Between the 1870s and the 1930s in England an unprecedented number of women writers entered the public sphere as essayists. Whereas George Eliot established the Victorian ‘woman of letters’ as a commanding presence, a generation later the New Woman arose as a complex figure shaping ‘The Woman Question’ for twentieth-century writers like Virginia Woolf. This period between the Victorian and modernist eras saw an increase in women’s political writing on suffrage and the anti-war movement. Yet, the literary place of women’s protest writing in this period remains opaque. Focusing on Woolf’s experiments with a hybrid ‘novel-essay’ in The Years and Three Guineas alongside Vernon Lee’s political essays as precursors, this chapter argues that the modern literary essay developed in tandem with the protest essay. This approach allows for a consideration of the political stakes and achievements of hybrid experiments with the essay that revealed the inseparability of politics and aesthetics.

Amid imperial expansion in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, white settlers were a tiny minority in most newer colonies, and in some cases, a non-white middle class arose that was educated in the colonizer's language and political system. This produced three main outcomes. (1) White settlers became a sizable minority in certain parts of Africa, which yielded electoral representation. Settler-minority regimes strongly opposed political rights for non-whites. (2) Settlers reversed their support for electoral institutions when their dominance was threatened. In the British West Indies in the mid-nineteenth century, white planters responded to the prospect of political control by Black politicians by disbanding their elected legislatures and accepting direct British Crown rule. (3) In some colonies with few settlers, a non-white middle class educated in the colonizer's language emerged. These elites were especially strong in the major port cities in South Asia and West Africa, and in colonies with emancipated slaves. Non-white elites in these areas gained representation by the 1920s, although with limited autonomy and a narrow franchise.

This chapter develops a theoretical framework centered on three actors: metropolitan officials, white settlers, and non-Europeans. Colonists could pressure the colonial state through lobbying/agitation, nonparticipation, and revolt; and metropolitan officials could respond by offering electoral concessions. What mattered? (1) Metropoles with pluralistic institutions should be more responsive to demands for electoral representation. (2) Sizable white settlements should trigger early electoral institutions (prodemocratic effect), but resistance by smaller settler minorities to franchise expansion could undermine the democratic foundations created by early elections (antidemocratic effect). (3) Where local elites were weak, non-Europeans should not gain early elections. Instead, they would move rapidly to mass-franchise elections with high autonomy after World War II, when the threat of revolt spiked. In cases with a large non-white middle class, we expect early elections with small franchises and low autonomy, which should broaden peacefully over time. Finally, cases with a national monarch should correspond with high autonomy but without meaningful electoral bodies.

Colonial electoral institutions influenced postindependence democracy levels. (1) Lengthy democratic exposure under colonialism usually produced stable postcolonial democracies. Often, a non-white middle class pushed for and participated in elections for multiple decades prior to independence. Early colonial elections involved a tiny segment of the population, but electoral reforms deepened over time and yielded institutionalized parties. After independence, institutionalized parties and democratically socialized elites acted as a buffer against military coups and executive power grabs. Some settler colonies followed this path as well. (2) Many colonies inherited democratic-looking institutions at independence, but these institutions reflected relatively shallow, post-WWII concessions. Few colonies with short colonial pluralism were democratic within a decade of independence, although some experienced post-Cold War democratization episodes. (3) Other colonies gained no meaningful electoral experience. Regimes established by successful anticolonial rebels and monarchies monopolized military power and constructed durable authoritarian regimes after independence.

This chapter summarizes the main findings thematically, including the theory (actors, goals, and strategic options), the pluralism of metropolitan institutions, the dual effects of white settlers, pressure from non-Europeans, and postcolonial persistence. We also develop broader implications for numerous segments of the democratization literature, including top-down democratic transitions, social classes and democratization, democratic sequencing, dominant-party democracies, non-Western institutions and democracy, and international democracy promotion.

Prospects for successful mass revolts increased dramatically after 1945, but the pace of reform and approaches to decolonization varied. Some colonizers moved to mass-franchise elections and high autonomy, ending with formal independence – whereas others sought to cling to power. This yielded three main outcomes. (1) Franchise size and legislative autonomy expanded rapidly in most colonies ruled by democratic powers. These processes tended to occur earlier when left-wing governments were in power, who were less tied to the colonial project. (2) White settler elites and the governing class in authoritarian metropoles opposed empowerment for non-whites, who they perceived as an existential threat to their social status and economic rents. This prompted anticolonial revolts by disenfranchised Africans and Arabs. (3) Colonial officials sometimes granted autonomy to nonelectoral institutions if doing so would avoid revolt and be acceptable to metropolitan opinion. This desire led to a distinct type of authoritarian decolonization, prevalent among British colonies, in which the colonizer handed off power to a national monarch.

Why are some countries more democratic than others? For most non-European countries, elections began under Western colonial rule. However, existing research largely overlooks these democratic origins. This book analyzes a global sample of colonies across four centuries to explain the emergence of colonial electoral institutions and their lasting impact. The degree of democracy in the metropole, the size of the white settler population, and pressure from non-Europeans shaped the timing and form of colonial elections. White settlers and non-white middle classes educated in the colonizer’s language usually gained early elections, but settler minorities resisted subsequent franchise expansion. Authoritarian metropoles blocked elections entirely. Countries with lengthy exposure to competitive colonial institutions tended to consolidate democracies after independence. By contrast, countries with shorter electoral episodes usually shed democratic institutions, and countries that were denied colonial elections consolidated stable dictatorships. Regime trajectories shaped by colonial rule persist to the present day.

Before the nineteenth century, most European colonies were located in the New World. British colonies experienced more electoral competition because of parliamentary institutions at home. British-settled colonies in North America, the West Indies, and Oceania routinely gained fully elected assemblies shortly after settlement. However, the early British empire was far from democratic: voting rights were confined to white property-owning men, London occasionally pushed back on settlers’ policymaking autonomy (prompting the American Revolution), and colonies with Catholic or convict populations experienced long delays before gaining electoral representation. Prior to the French Revolution, colonists in the French, Spanish, and Portuguese empires lacked electoral representation beyond the municipal level. Afterward, political transformations in authoritarian metropoles triggered reforms to colonial institutions. France fluctuated between democratic and authoritarian institutions after the French Revolution, and colonial institutions closely tracked metropolitan patterns. Spain and Portugal engaged in abortive electoral reforms in their colonies, which preceded the dissolution of their American empires.

This chapter explores William Morris’s developing views about the ‘woman question’ across his life, focusing in particular on his comments within press interviews, his literary works, and his interpersonal relationships, be this with employees, friends, or family. It considers the past scholarship on this topic, which has tended to focus on debating whether Morris can be considered a ‘feminist’ or not. It emphasises that although Morris agreed in the need for adult suffrage for all and at times actively promoted progressive causes such as equal pay and the need for sexual freedom (even within marriage), he did still believe women had different roles to play to men in society, although these views could be inchoate and ill defined. The chapter showcases how Morris’s views were shaped by the male-orientated networks he inhabited in his political and professional life and by contemporary anxieties about the supposed effeminacy of artistic men. Moreover, it examines his views in relation to others within the networks of fellowship which made up the socialist and women’s movements, to situate and compare his views, and to best explore how Morris’s writings and ideas contributed to public discourse about women and gender at the brink of the twentieth century.

The issue of the civil rights of women and more generally of the role of women in public life is another great issue where the importance of rhetoric has been felt by both the advocates of the womens movement and its critics. This section consists of a selection of speeches that mimics the contentious character of this question. The speakers include Sojourner Truth, Susan Anthony, Joseph Jewell Dodge, Lucy Parkman Scott, Gloria Steinem, Phyllis Schlafly, Samantha Powers, and Christina Hoff Sommers.