Feminist Foresight in Statelessness issue in 1905. 15 Nevertheless, as this article is largely reliant on secondary sources to recount early twentieth century activism — the majority of which focus on the interwar period — the 1920s and ’30s are the main period of attention. Before detailing highlights of those campaigns, it is instructive to look at a brief history of the origins of ‘nationality’, and the simultaneous growth of feminist activism throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Background 1 The 1791 Citoyennes Passives The concept of ‘nationality’ and its codification began over a hundred years prior to the citizenship equality campaigns of the early twentieth century. 16 This historical account begins in France, the first modern nation to codify nationality. 17 In the wake of the dissolution of the feudal system in France in 1789, revolutionaries claimed to represent universal principles and combat class oppression. 18 However, this articulation of freedom and equality was noted by feminists of the era as completely oblivious to women’s subordination. 19 A 1791 manifesto of feminist claims, by Olympe de Gouges, was a most radical critique of the new nation. 20 Her fight was against the exclusion of women from equal enjoyment of liberty and equality on the grounds that women ‘naturally’ belonged to the family. 21 Women’s subordination and exclusion was in fact written into France’s 1791 constitution, defining women as citoyennes passives. 22 Citizenship in the constitution was status-driven, and women, as ‘passive citizens’, did not possess full political rights. 23 The majority of men, on the other hand, were defined as ‘active citizens’. 24 Women were joined in their passive category by children, servants and a ‘motley assortment of civic outsiders’. 25 Unlike most of the ‘marginal comrades’, Annie Smart points out that women were born ‘passive’ and remained so, without any opportunity to grow up or out of their category. 26 In 1793, de Gouges was rewarded for her ‘vehement feminist attacks’ on revolutionaries with death by guillotine, and subsequently all women’s clubs were declared illegal. 27 De Gouges had been specifically campaigning for the civil and political rights associated with citizenship — as opposed to citizenship as a legal status. Had she lived another decade, however, she would have witnessed (and likely campaigned against) the 1804 Napoleonic Code, which made a woman’s 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 ibid 143. In conformity with statelessness academia, nationality and citizenship are used interchangeably to denote the legal tie between a person and the state. Verena Stolcke, ‘The “Nature” of Nationality’ in Veit Bader (ed), Citizenship and Exclusion (Palgrave Macmillan 1997) 61, 66. ibid 67. ibid. ibid. ibid. La Constitution du 3 septembre 1791 [French Constitution of 3 September 1791]. See also Annie K Smart, Citoyennes: Women and the Ideal of Citizenship in Eighteenth-Century France (University of Delaware Press 2011) 134. Smart (n 22) 134. ibid. ibid. ibid. Stolcke (n 17) 67. 47