This document provides summaries of women's movements and involvement in various empires between 1820-2012. It includes 9 sections summarizing resources from the Habsburg Empire, British Empire, Japanese Empire, Ottoman Empire, Russian Empire, Dutch Empire, and French Empire. The resources described include publications, letters, interviews, and records that showcase women's roles in independence movements, education, labor issues, and resisting colonial rule and oppression across multiple regions in Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.

1. Women and Social Movements in
Modern Empires Since 1820
Selections from Document Clusters on
Europe, Middle East, Asia, Africa

2. The Habsburg Empire, 1820-1918
2
Reference books, newspapers, periodicals, and letters from across the
Habsburg Empire
A Biographical Dictionary of Women’s
Movements and Feminisms: Central,
Easter, and South Eastern Europe
The World's Women's
Congress in Budapest
Értesíto
General Austrian Women's Association, June
14, 1912
Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia,
Croatia, Romania, Poland, Ukraine, Serbia, and Italy

3. The British Empire, 1929-2012
Jo Coca-Cola Chahe, Ho Jaye!
The Story of How Coke
Deprives a Community of
Water
3
India South Africa
Part of a newspaper article about a
protest led by African women.
Includes photos of a burning bus,
armed policemen and women
protesters.
Ireland
The Ulsterwoman: A Monthly
Journal of Union and Progress,
Special Number, No. 1, July 12,
1919

4. British Empire: Women in the Anti-Apartheid Movement in
South Africa, 1960-1997
4
Interview of Emma Mashinini by Diana
Russell, South Africa, 1987.
Interview of Florence de Villiers by
Diana Russell, South Africa, 1987.
This cluster vividly brings mid-1980s
South Africa to life. With extensive
interviews that preserve the diverse
voices and perspectives of sixty women
activists of the anti-apartheid
movement, photographs and
contemporary publications, this rich
collection conveys a bitter but bracing
taste of the determination and power
with which South African women
collectively confronted racial
supremacy and gender inequality.

5. The Japanese Empire, 1842-2001
The Woman’s Suffrage League in Japan began
publishing a bimonthly journal, Japanese
Women, in 1938. The president of the league,
Ichikawa Fusae (also, Fusaye), served as the
journal’s editor-in-chief. During the late
1930s, as Japan’s imperial expansionism in
Asia eroded international trust, friendship
and cooperation, the league envisioned the
journal as a way to stay in touch with
feminists around the world. In the
introductory essay of the first issue, Ichikawa
expressed that goal, identifying fellow
feminists as “co-workers” in the present
“chaotic days” and “reactionary period.” Most
issues contained a News in Brief column and
described recent events as they affected
women. These features show that a
remarkable number of Japanese women
continued to attend meetings abroad and
foreign women leaders traveled to meetings in
Japan despite international tensions.
5
From Comfort Women Speak: Testimony by Sex
Slaves of the Japanese Military. Hwang Keum-ju
was unmarried and eighteen years old when she
received an official draft notice from the Japanese
military. Under the impression that she would be
working in a factory, she arrived at her departure
point in Hamheung, Korea, dressed in nice clothes
and with family in tow to see her off. Her train
took her to Manchuria where, instead of doing
factory work, she was forced to have sex with
Japanese soldiers until Japan's surrender, four
years later. She shared her story in 1994 and her
desire not for monetary compensation but a show
of "true repentance" from Japan.
Korea

6. The Ottoman Empire and Post-Ottoman Empires in the
Balkans, 1820-1990
6
Essays, photographs, periodicals, conferences, and newspapers
from across the Ottoman Empire
Bulgarian Women's Union
Women’s World, Istanbul
Turkey, Greece, Bulgaria, Macedonia, and
Romania
The resources in this cluster include
documents related to aspects of women’s
struggles for emancipation and the history
of women’s organizations in Ottoman and
Post-Ottoman Bulgaria, 1840-1940;
government documents, reports and
information from the period 1967-1973,
regarding a variety of issues about women in
socialist Albania; autobiographies, letters-in
place of book prefaces, articles in women’s
journals or newpapers, educational and
electoral laws/decrees/circulars, cartoons,
photos, and fiction from Greece, 1920-1990;
and manuscripts, newspaper clippings,
letters, posters and pictures gathered by two
of the most important representatives of the
Romanian feminism in the interwar period.

7. The Ottoman Empire and Post-Ottoman Empires in the
Eastern Mediterranean, 1860-2015
7
Conference participants, The
Arab Woman and the Case of
Palestine, Eastern Women's
Conference, Cairo, 1938.
Egypt, Greece, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon,
Syria, and North Africa
Gnomi Feministou
[An Opinion of a Male
Feminist].
This collection of documents presents a unique window into
women collaborating with and contesting the Ottoman Empire
in the Eastern Mediterranean from 1860 to 1960. A series of
imperial transitions from the 1880s to the early 1950s brought
national independence. During these transitions, elite women
often delivered services that colonial governments failed to
provide, such as basic healthcare and primary education for
girls. Documents in this collection include the voices of
indigenous women’s rights activists—Turks, Syrians,
Palestinians, Egyptians—discussing campaigns for national
independence and women’s rights in the pages of women’s
journals, pamphlets and conference proceedings. Of special
interest are the Arabic original and the first English translation
of the proceedings of Egyptian Women’s Union 1838 Cairo
conference. Documents in this collection are drawn from
archives in the United States as well as personal and state
archives in Turkey, Egypt, and Lebanon.

8. The Russian Empire, 1920-1929
8
This document cluster offers texts and translations from
the early 20th century Tatar women's movement in
Russia, and from Uzbek women writing between 1906
and the 1930s. Central Eurasian women were subjects of
the Russian Empire until the 1917 revolutions, and then
became Soviet citizens whose conditions were shaped by
the Communist Party of the USSR. Writers of the earlier
documents were associated with the "Muslim Women's
Association" in Russia. Of special interest are
translations from the Uzbek women's journal Yangi Yo'l
(New Path). From 1925 through 1929 its authors
discussed modern-style schools for Uzbek girls,
replacing Islamic family law with Soviet ideas of equality,
and Uzbek women unveiling and interacting with men in
society and work. Marianne Kamp is the translator and
editor of those documents. Translator Claire Roosien
provides Uzbek poetry from the early 1930s.
Uzbekistan
Yangi Yo’l

9. The Dutch Empire, 1899-1965
9
South Africa
The South African War between
British settlers and descendants of
Dutch settlers known as Boers (and
later as Afrikaners) was a defining
moment in South African history.
The war was part of the scramble for
Africa, in which European powers
seized most of Africa for exploitation.
However, in this case the combatants
on both sides were white, Christian
and European. Diaries by women
show the great extent to which this
was a women’s war. British women
served as nurses and teachers in the
British concentration camps
established to contain Boer civilians.
About 10 percent of the Boer
population died in the camps.
This seminar was
held in Jakarta
during 17- 20
January 1961. The
representatives
were selected by
their own villages.
The seminar was a
vital part of
GERWANI’s
advocacy work on
behalf of women
farm workers and
peasants.
Indonesia
National Seminar for Women FarmersReport on the Concentration
Camps in South Africa

10. The French Empire, 1880-2005
1
Algeria
Tunisia
Assia Djebar, one of the most distinguished woman writers to
emerge from the Arab world, wrote Children of the New World
following her own involvement in the Algerian resistance to
colonial French rule. Djebar's novel sheds light on current
regional conflicts by revealing, from the inside out, a
determined Arab insurgency against foreign occupation.
Memoire de Femmes compiles oral histories of Tunisian
women. Interviews were supported by the French and Tunisian
scholarly institutions. The book is printed in both French and
Arabic with different oral histories in each section. The original
interviews were conducted in dialectal Tunisian Arabic and
translated into modern standard Arabic for publication.