Julie Carlier

Forgotten Transnational Connections and National Contexts: an ‘entangled history’ of the political transfers that shaped Belgian feminism, 1890–1914

The history of Belgian feminism before World War I has hitherto been written almost exclusively from within a national framework. Using the perspective of ‘entangled history’, this article focuses on the forgotten transnational influences that shaped the pre‐war movement for women’s rights in Belgium, starting with the Dutch and French political transfers that triggered the birth of organised feminism in the early 1890s, followed by the interventions of the International Council of Women and the International Woman Suffrage Alliance aimed at creating a Belgian affiliation. This entangled history profoundly upsets the prevailing categorisation of socialist versus so‐called ‘bourgeois’ feminism and thus contributes to the growing international body of work that criticises these accepted concepts in feminist historiography.

Entangled Feminisms. Rethinking the History of the Belgian Movement for Women’s Rights Through Transnational Intersections

The history of Belgian feminism has hitherto been written almost exclusively from within a national framework, portraying the image of a moderate and backward movement fragmented along party-political lines. Following the relational and reflexive approach of ‘entangled history’, this article argues that the transnational intersections of Belgian, Dutch and French feminisms, profoundly challenge this ‘pillarisated’ categorisation, allowing in particular for a reassessment of the socialist and the catholic wing of the movement for women’s rights. The transnational perspective brings to light, first, the introduction and persistence in Belgium of a radical left-wing feminist tradition and, second, the French-Belgian-Dutch intersections of catholic feminism. In both cases these transnational entanglements, cutting across the presumed boundaries of ideology, (class) and party-politics, demonstrate that the framework of ‘pillarisation’ cannot cover the overtones of Belgian feminism. This contribution concludes with a tentative exploration of how the First World War impacted on these transnational connections and collective identities.

An entangled history of ideas and ideals: feminism, social and educational reform in children's libraries in Belgium before the First World War

This article examines one of the first children’s libraries in continental Europe, founded by Belgian feminists in Ghent around 1910. The transnational cultural transfer and transformation of the American children’s‐library paradigm is studied from the perspective of “entangled history”. The authors reveal a history entangled in transnational processes and partially overlapping intellectual networks of feminists, social and Lebens‐reformers and progressive educationalists. It is contended that the American notion of children’s libraries served the founders’ feminist, educational, social and Lebens‐reformist views. Discussion includes both national and transnational resonances, notably the interconnections with the Heures Joyeuses in Brussels and with similar Dutch initiatives.