Deakin Fellow seminar: 'Organising across the imperial and global space. Women's organizations and networks at the end of the French Empire'

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Anna Nasser (St Antony's College, Oxford), Natalya Vince (University College, Oxford)
Paul Betts (St Antony's College, University of Oxford)

The question of space has been a crucial one in the development and maintenance of empires, particularly those that claimed and exercised sovereignty over overseas territories. A similar question shaped the experiences of women's groups and organizations at the end of the empire, in an even more urgent way, as they sought to rebuild the ties between France and its colonies after World War II and the Vichy period. This seminar examines how women's groups framed their activism across a plurality of spaces - national, imperial, and transnational - between 1945 and the late 1950s. By focusing on both pro-imperial and anticolonial groups, it explores political and social organization across space, as well as the nature of the different networks involved in developing contacts and cooperation between France and its West African territories. As women's groups drew on existing networks (diplomatic, administrative, party-related, and organizational) while also creating new ones, they encountered both opportunities and constraints. The seminar will thus reflect on how the nature and form of these specific networks, as well as on their vertical, horizontal, and transversal interactions over time, influenced the expansion of French women's groups in French overseas territories.