Samuel K. Cohn jr. Popular Protest and Ideals of Democracy in Late Renaissance Italy Oxford University Press, Oxford 2022. xx, 260 pp. Ill. £75.00.

Abstract

above all the role that, through personal and political relationships, the ICW inherited from the AFUW and its idea of women’s rights, especially at the level of couples and families. On the other hand, the chapter demonstrates how, from 1960 onwards, the WIDF was increasingly oriented towards emphasizing the claims of African women, mostly throughWomen of the Whole World, which hosted articles by African activists about daily life, family responsibilities, and militancy, as exemplified in the case of Sira Diop (p. 265). The author also stresses the commitment of African women at the transnational level, in the African–Asian women’s conference (Cairo, December 1960), and in the construction of the pan-African women’s union, renamed the Pan-African Women’s Organization (PAWO) in 1974. This book is of great value for historians on women’s movements across national borders and will inspire scholars to study the Cold War period and anti-colonialism from the perspective of French and African women’s politics. The balance between the individual trajectories of women and the collective histories of groups and associations also stands out, offering avenues for research into the points of contact and ambivalence in the political biographies of individual activists and in collective groups. What is missing, in my opinion, is also the main innovation in the field of research on women’s activism. The author does not contextualize the politics of women’s groups in the political landscape of existing parties. The lack of contextualization does not mean ignorance of political parties on the part of the author; for instance, the documentary references also cover the PCF (Archives départementales de la Seine-Saint-Denis, Bobigny) and the RDA (Archives nationales du Sénégal). However, the starting point of the research seems not to be the derivation or the more or less strong connection of women’s groups with existing political parties, but the relationship between forms of women’s activism in a context of colonialism and anti-colonialism. This approach allows for a transnational perspective – in line with the postcolonial, decolonial, and Afro-feminist literature of recent decades – not only because the author studies more than one national context, but also because she does not confine individual biographies or group histories within the interpretation of a national case nor, indeed, within the context of the link to a political party.