'Hollandsche vecht-suffragettes'? Een kwestie uit de geschiedenis van het Nederlandse feminisme

Abstract

‘Holland’s Militant Suffragettes’? A Theme from the History of Dutch FeminismThe historiography of feminism is bristling with international comparative surveys. It is precisely because of this that the use of national frameworks has been acknowledged, albeit unintentionally and indirectly. Nevertheless, this paper adopts the opposite stance, and argues that both national and internal affairs, as well as international and foreign affairs, can be viewed as categories which serve certain political agendas, thereby making it possible to distinguish between friends and foes in the political struggle. Historians should not reproduce such a differentiation but analyze it instead. To give an example of such an analysis, this paper outlines how the customary distinction between a moderate Dutch and a radical English electoral feminism gained an important impetus at a key moment: when in 1907 the discordant entanglement of political and personal contacts between feminists on both sides of the Channel eventually led to a schism in the Dutch Society for Women’s Right to Vote.