Esther Breitenbach – författare

The continuing under-representation of women in political and public life remains a matter of concern across a wide range of countries, including the UK and Ireland. Within the UK it is a topical issue as political parties currently debate strategies, often controversial, which will increase women's representation. At the same time, devolution has ushered in significant change in the level of women's representation in Scotland and Wales and improved representation for women in Northern Ireland. That such increases in women's representation in political institutions have been slow in coming is indisputable, given that full enfranchisement of women on equal terms with men was achieved in Ireland in 1921 and in the UK in 1928.

This book examines how participation in the British Empire shaped constructions of Scottish national identity. It makes an important contribution to our understanding of 19th-century and early 20th-century Scottish society through its original use of a wide range of primary sources, and covers new ground in its assessment of the impact of empire at home.Esther Breitenbach shows how, in the course of the 19th century, Scots acquired a knowledge of empire and voiced opinions on imperial administration and on imperialism itself through philanthropic and religious, learned and scientific, and imperial propagandist activities. She explores the role that the foreign mission movement of the leading Presbyterian churches played in creating a vision of empire. And, focusing on Edinburgh as a case study, she discusses the social basis of support for the movement, including the increasingly prominent role played by women. Through analysing writings by and about missionaries in the missionary and secular press, Empire and Scottish Society asks how the foreign mission movement came to be a source of national pride, and provides new insights into the shaping of Scottish national identity and its relationship to the concept of Britishness.

Drawing on a wide range of source materials from across Scotland, this sourcebook provides new insights into women’s attitudes to the society in which they lived, and how they negotiated their identities within private and public life.Organised in thematic chapters, it moves from the private and intimate experiences of sexuality, health and sickness to Scotswomen's migrations across the British empire, illustrating many facets of women's lives - domesticity and waged work, defiance of law and convention, religious faith and respectability, political action and public influence. A range of fascinating and rich source material sheds new light on the lives of women across Scotland throughout the long nineteenth century, demonstrating the pervasiveness of discourses of appropriate feminine behaviour, but also women’s subversion of this. It raises challenging questions for researchers about the identification of women’s voices, where these have been muted by class, religion, or ethnicity, while at the same time providing a methodology for uncovering these. Thought-provoking and innovative, this text will prove an invaluable resource for students, teachers and researchers. It will enable them to discover new ways of understanding the Scottish past and serve as a guide to redressing the gender imbalance of historical narratives.