Rethinking Gender, Citizenship, and War: Female Enemy Aliens in Australia during World War I

ABSTRACT

Enemy aliens were undesirable migrants in Australia during World War I, right? Yet enemy alien women who sought naturalisation were largely successful. Using the concept of ‘desire’, this article uses quantitative and qualitative material from women’s naturalisation applications to consider why women applied and subsequent state decision-making. The narratives of applicants and administrators reflect wider negotiations over different types of citizenship, where women could challenge their very labelling as enemy aliens, or employ highly gendered notions of vulnerability and respectability. Particular groups were treated favourably, revealing practices which challenge existing historiography about how migration and citizenship laws worked throughout the British empire, especially concerning race and denaturalised women. This is part of a wider need to reassess the relationship between migration law and practice, especially the role of gender and the use of executive privilege. While important to recognise the overlapping push for a ‘global color line’ in creating the system which developed within the British empire, it was less a legal system and more of a constant negotiation between different actors, based on laws that were often imprecise. In this case they gave space for enemy alien women to circumvent the legislative restrictions on their naturalisation, despite the politics of war.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The most relevant recent studies of global migration control include Lake and Reynolds, Drawing the Global Color Line; Torpey, The Invention of the Passport. Surveillance, Citizenship and the State; Doulman and Lee, Every Assistance & Protection; Singha, “The Great War and a “Proper” Passport for the Colony”, 289–315; Caplan and Torpey (eds.), Documenting Individual Identity; Fairchild, Science at the Borders; McKeown, Melancholy Order; Castles and Miller, The Age of Migration; Robertson, Passport in America; Breckenridge and Szreter (eds.), Recognition and Registration; Bashford (ed.), Medicine at the Border; Irving, Citizenship, Alienage, and the Modern Constitutional State.

2. The figures cited are likely an underestimate. Since no specific question asked for the sex of applicants, ‘female’ applications have been identified by name, marital status, or other data within the files. When unclear, the applicant was omitted. It is worth noting that women who applied multiple times have only been counted once, in the year of their first application. The entire database, from 1901 to 1920, will be freely available once completed, at http://naturalisation.online.

3. Panayi, An Immigration History of Britain”, 214. See also Harmstorf (ed.), The German Experience of Australia, 1833–1938; Peter Weiss, In search of an identity; Williams, “German Anzacs and the First World War,” 153–186; Tampke, The Germans in Australia; Meyer, A history of Germans in Australia 1839–1945; Tampke and Doxford, Australia, willkommen; Monteath (ed.), Germans; Panayi (ed.), Germans as Minorities during the First World War; Panayi (ed.), Minorities in Wartime; Saunders and Daniels (eds.), Alien Justice; Fischer, Enemy Aliens. A similar narrative about Germans going from desirable to undesirable migrant status can be found in Francis, “From “Proven Worthy Settlers” to “Lawless Hunnish Brutes”“, 289–309.

4. Denness, “Gender and Germanophobia,” 71–98.

5. See overviews in Ziino, “The First World War in Australian History,” 118–134; Ziino, “Twenty-five years at the front line,” 5–16. Key work includes: Speck, “Women’s Memorials and Citizenship,” 129–145; Beaumont, “Australian Citizenship and the Two World Wars,” 171–182; Beaumont, “Whatever Happened to Patriotic Women, 1914–1918?,” 273–86; Oppenheimer, “‘The Best P.M. for the Empire in War’? 108–24; Haskins, “The girl who wanted to go to war,” 169–186; Damousi, “Socialist Women and Gendered Space,” 1–15; Cooper, “Textual Territories,” 403–21; Lake, “Mission Impossible,” 305–322; Damousi and Lake (eds.), Gender and War, Australians at War in the Twentieth Century; Bassett, “Ready to Serve”, 8–16; Grayzel, Women and the First World War.

6. See Race section below.

7. Fortier, “What’s the big deal?,” 697–711. See also Collins, “Desire as a theory for migration studies,” 964–980.

8. An overview of the link between Britain’s legal traditions and naturalisation law within settler colonies is in Bright, “Migration, naturalisation and the ‘British’ World, c.1900–1945ʹ, 27–44, at http://www.isc.meiji.ac.jp/~transfer/paper/pdf/10/02_Bright.pdf.

9. See Fortier, “Migration studies,” 84–93; Anderson, “New directions in migration studies,” 1–13; Gold and Nawyn (eds.), Routledge international handbook of migration studies.

10. Before 1948, British citizenship did not exist, although the term was used interchangeably with the correct term, subjecthood, by contemporaries. There are important differences between these terms, but for the sake of clarity, citizenship is largely used here. For a fuller discussion, see Bright, “Migration, naturalisation”.

11. Bosniak, “Citizenship Denationalized (The State of Citizenship Symposium)”. Psychologists have differentiated further by pointing out that group identity and individual identity may overlap, or even contradict, and are not necessarily the same thing. See Condor, “Towards a Social Psychology of Citizenship?,” 193–201; Rubenstein and Field, Australian Citizenship Law in Context.

12. While not analysising naturalisation records specifically, this point is made in Langfield, “Gender blind?,” 143–152.

13. Until 1914, Germans were the largest migrant group into Australia after the British and had generally been considered very desirable. See Gerhard Fischer, “Integration, “Negative Integration,” Disintegration: The Destruction of the German-Australian Community during the First World War.” in Saunders and Daniels, Alien Justice, p.4[1–27]. More recently, Fischer has explained the restrictions, and the general narrative about the shift from desirability to undesirability, in German experience in Australia during WW1 damaged road to multiculturalism, The Conversation, 22 April 2015, https://theconversation.com/german-experience-in-australia-during-ww1-damaged-road-to-multiculturalism-38594 [last accessed 16 August 2021].

14. The day after war was declared, the senior bureaucrat, Atlee Hunt, asked ministers if they wished to change procedures for Germans. NAA: A1, 1921/16414, Naturalisation of Enemy Subjects: Memorandum, Hunt, 5 August 1914, p.115. See also A461, A349/3/6 PART 1, Naturalisation – Main policy file, 1914–1946: excerpt from Hansard, Senate, 11 November 1914, Senator Gardiner, Minister of External Affairs. It is worth noting that the French, Russian, and Italian governments repeatedly asked that their male citizens not be naturalised, as this would allow them to avoid military service.

15. Naturalisation Act (1903), Section 7. The phrase is repeated in discussions about enemy aliens in 1914. See NAA: A1, 1921/16414, Naturalisation of Enemy Subjects, p.84.

16. Ministers in charge of the DEA were Paddy Glynn (24 June 1913–17 September 1914); John Arthur (17 September 1914–9 December 1914); Hugh Mahon (10 December 1914–13 November 1916). Ministers in charge of the DHT were Fred Bamford (14 November 1916–17 February 1917) and Paddy Glynn again (17 February 1917–3 February 1920).

17. National Archives of Australia (NAA): A1, 1903/2284, Nature of work carried on by External Affairs Department, report by report by Secretary, Atlee Hunt, 23 April 1903.

18. NAA: J3116, 14, Alien Immigration – correspondence relating to arrival of SS Duke of Argyll 25 January 1902 and an inquiry from a Customs Officer as to whether the Education Test is to apply to Europeans [White Aliens]. See also MS52/822, Atlee Hunt Papers, National Library of Australia, Series 14. Colonial Office and Commonwealth of Australia Offices, London: Correspondence with R. Muirhead Collins, 1908–12: Hunt to Collins, 1 May 1912; MS52/840, Collins to Hunt, 22 August 1912; MS 52/14/846. See a contrast with South Africa’s administration in Bright, “A ‘Great Deal of Discrimination Is Necessary in Administering the Law,” 27–53.

19. NAA: A1, 1914/16774, Friederike Caroline Marie Luise Remien.

20. Female applicants often had this notation, not just enemy aliens and not just during the war.

21. This is an estimate based on published official statistics, which often listed applicants as male or female, cross referenced with internal lists such as NAA: A1, 1914/19482. An enterprising officer in Perth decided to collect the names and addresses of all enemy aliens naturalised since July 1914 until October 1914 in the state. This listed 222 names, of which 10 were identified as women. This dataset may differ from official statistics, which did not always match each other. For example, Hunt informed the Prime Minister that 439 Germans were naturalised between the declaration of war and 13 October 1914. Elsewhere, he told the Cabinet that the number naturalised between 1 July 1914 and 30 September 1914 was 1335 Germans and 146 Austrians. Clearly both answers cannot be correct. See also NAA: A1, 1921/16414, Naturalisation of Enemy Subjects, 75; A6006, 1914/10/13, Naturalisation of Alien Enemies.

22. Take, for example, NAA: A1, 1919/15700, Henrietta Frederika McFie, a German-born widow who applied in October 1914. Her husband was a ‘Scotchman’, so she was already naturalised.

23. An example is NAA: A1, 1916/2346, Pauline Reindel, a ‘German Pole’. Her husband was naturalised in NSW but in 1916 they were living in Victoria. She was approved because Hunt considered the situation ‘anomalous’.

24. See Bright, “Asian Migration and the British World, 1850–1914,” 128–149; Huttenback, “The British Empire as a ‘White Man’s Country”, 111 [108–137]; Lake, “Translating Needs into Rights,” 203 [199–219].

25. UK Parliamentary Papers (PP), Cd8596, 1897 Colonial Conference, London Proceedings, 139.

26. Karatani, Defining British Citizenship, 70–83.

27. Bright, “A “Great Deal of Discrimination”“; Bright, “Migration, Naturalisation”.

28. Lake and Reynolds, Drawing. They borrowed this term from W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, 1903.

29. PP, Cd8596, 1897 Colonial Conference, London Proceedings, 140. Britain also sought to define their use of ‘exceptional’ naturalisation of enemy aliens, although it too left significant scope for interpretation: ‘persons performing public services or work of utility or for other special reasons.’ Quote from NAA: A1, 1921/16414: De-code of cablegram from Secretary of State for the Colonies, London, 29 September 1914, 98.

30. See the discussion of the 1917 full cabinet approval below.

31. Irving, Citizenship.

32. NAA: A1, 1914/20462, Sophie Louise Eliese Wilhelmina French: they approved her without a police report in January 1915.

33. NAA: A1, 1922/3058, Wilhellmina Hilcke: She was treated as a German, because her father was German; her mother was English. She was ‘not proceeded with’ in 1917 but approved in 1922. See also NAA: A1, 1916/10090, Alice Coy, an application approved without any question.

34. See also A1, 1926/21499: D. L. Knonagel, German-born, married to a Russian, and treated as an enemy alien.

35. See, for instance, NAA: A1, 1915/11727, Pauline Botchen: Police Report, 3 August 1915, 4. She is described as from ‘Poland in Germany’.

36. NAA: A1, 1916/16457, Elsa Cecil Emmalina Bolsdon, 4,7; A1, 1917/4623, Johanna Katrina Stehbens. See also a German-Polish example: A1, 1915/11727, Pauline Botchen; a French-German example: A1, 1916/3212, Julia Emily Tiedemann.

37. NAA: A1, 1916/10246, Ceska Rubinstein.

38. NAA: A1, 1921/16414: Mahon Memorandum, undated draft, 44; draft, 4 February 1916, 58; final version, 5 February 1916, 42–3.

39. Contemporary newspapers regularly referred to suspect Germans as ‘men’ or ‘he’. For instance, the government kept a clipping from the Age, 15 October 1914, which described how a ‘man may be accepted, on his oath, as a friend of Great Britain, while all the while he is secretly intriguing to convey information to the foe.’ Clipping in NAA: A1, 1921/16414, Naturalisation of Enemy Subjects, 104. See also excerpt from the New Zealand Herald, Auckland, 18 February 1916, 35.

40. See, for instance, NAA: A435, 1944/4/4347, Uniformity of naturalisation throughout the Empire, 1903–1918; A367, C1145 PART 1, Naturalisation, 1916–1925; A11804, 1915/70, Naturalisation, 1914–1916; PP14/1, 4/3/531, Naturalised Women of Enemy Origin Married to Alien Enemies: Chief of the General Staff to Commandant, 5^th Military District, 27 May 1918, 3.

41. NAA: A1, 1921/16414: Secretary, Prime Minister’s Department, to Secretary, DHT, 14 December 1917, 29.

42. NAA: A1, 1921/16414: Atlee Hunt to Cabinet, 12 October 1914, 74. See also Atlee Hunt Papers, MS52/1517, Hunt to Mahon, 19 January 1916. Contrast this with his ready desire to stop allowing Turkish applications for naturalisation in NAA: A1, 1921/16414: Memorandum, Atlee Hunt, 2 November 1914, approved by Mahon on the same day. An identical Memorandum, 8 November 1915, 61, stopped Bulgarian applications.

43. See The Argus (Melbourne, Victoria), 27 September 1922, 1 Family Notices: Lancelot Terence Foenander death.

44. The Mirror of Australia (Sydney, NSW: 1915–1917), 8 January 1916, 5.

45. NAA: A1, 1915/10360, Maria Liebeknecht: Police Report, 27 July 1915, 4.

46. NAA: A1, 1915/10675, Anna Maria Weckert: DEA Memorandum, 12 July 1915.

47. Research into German men, especially those who arrived as children, and of farmers more generally, would be valuable. Here, comparisons with male relatives have been made when possible.

48. NAA: A1, 1916/6296, Ida Beatrice Fechner: DEA Memorandum, 27 March 1916, 3.

49. See the focus on the husband in a similarly successful application: NAA: A1, 1916/6041, Bertha Sophie Pirnbaum.

50. NAA: A1, 1921/16414: Hunt, Memorandum for the Chief Clerk, 1 September 1914, 110.

51. Langfield, “Gender Blind?,” 143.

52. NAA: A6006, 1914/10/30, Naturalisation of Enemy Subjects: Mahon, 30 October 1914; A1, 1921/16414, Naturalisation of Enemy Subjects, 67.

53. For more on financial restrictions of enemy aliens during wartime, see footnote 16.

54. NAA: A1, 1917/4159, Dorothea Elizabeth Krause. See also A659, 1943/1/2134, Louise Modra; A1, 1915/10220, Maria Rust; A1, 1916/21500, Isabella Schultze; A1, 1915/14103, Fredericka Frommholz; A1, 1915/8191, Caroline F. Reinholtz; A1, 1915/13605, Johanna E. Ernstine Franke, Police Report, 3; A1, 1916/21400, Adele Koehncke, DEA Memorandum, 31 August 1916, 3. Approval was explicitly linked to church affiliation. In contrast, Bertha Schofer’s Police Report considered her attendance at the ‘German church’ with her husband as a factor against her: A1, 1915/8839. See also Harmstorf, “God Ordered Their Estate,” in Harmstorf, The German Experience, 39–53.

55. NAA: A1, 1915/8949, A.C. Spangler. DEA Memorandum, 3 June 1915, 2.

56. See NAA: A1, 1915/13830, P.M. Pauline Maria Elizabeth Geschte; A1, 1916/7373, Ellen Westendorf; A1, 1918/11807, Mary Miller (Schaupps); A1, 1915/7693, Margarethe Koch.

57. NAA: A1, 1916/22165, Teresa Schimel; A1, 1916/21469, Christina Schimel.

58. See footnote 17. Another clear example is NAA: A1, 1916/18557, Mary Klowss.

59. NAA: A11803, 1917/89/969, Caroline Draghiceviz; A1, 1918/16453, Caroline Draghicevitz.

60. NAA: A1, 1915/23704, Caroline D.H. Petersen. Contrast with her elderly mother’s approval: A1, 1915/13656, Eliese Magerethe Christine Petersen.

61. Fischer, “Integration,” 10 [1–27]; Fischer, “Empire, Trade, Race: The War Aims of William Morris Hughes,” in Enemy Aliens, 38–57.

62. He was rejected in 1914 despite official exemption from military service from the German Consul and being described as an excellent character by police: NAA: A1, 1914/16880, Otto Leonhard.

63. NAA: A659, 1943/1/1176, Elizabeth Leonhard. Police Report,16 June 1915.

64. NAA: A659, 1943/1/1176, Elizabeth Leonhard. Handwritten note from Hunt, 24 June 1915, ‘Notwithstanding police report I suggest that this stand over.’ Another handwritten note, ‘Defer’ from Mahon, 24 June 1915.

65. NAA: A659, 1941/1/6493, C. M. M. Passow. Hunt to her, 14 October 1916; solicitor’s reply, 20 October 1916; and Hunt reply, 26 October 1916.

66. The Homburgs were a well-connected migrant family from Germany. They included state legislators (Liberal party), justices, and an Attorney General. See, for instance, “Death of Mr. Justice Homburg,” The Advertiser (SA), 25 March 1912, 9. They supported a relative of Margaret Passow: NAA: A1, 1921/19575, Robert Friedrich Carl Passow, and acted in this wartime case: A1, 1921/3659, Louise Marie Emma Agnes Bauer.

67. NAA: A659, 1941/1/6493: Hunt, Minute, 9 January 1919. See also Homburg, Melrose, & Homburg to Hunt, 6 January 1918.

68. NAA: A659, 1941/1/6493: Homburg, Melrose, & Homburg to Hunt, 6 February 1919.

69. NAA: A659, 1941/1/6493: DHT Memorandum, 12 February 1919. Cabinet approved on 18 February 1919.

70. NAA: A1, 1916/15554, Augusta Wilhelmine Frank.

71. NAA: A1, 1915/17095, Hermine Emilie Rumps.

72. NAA: A1, 1916/1933, Mary Atta.

73. NAA: A1, 1916/2275, Johanna Wilhelmine Rosenzweig; A1, 1916/10644, Anne Hoch; A1, 1918/11228, Catherine Margarett Reimer; A1, 1915/9088, Sophia Marquison.

74. NAA: A1, 1918/9969, Wilhelmine Ernestine Henriette Lablack.

75. The idea of sacrifice for the nation during wartime has been central to scholarly understandings of the war throughout the British empire. See, for instance, Gregory, “Redemption through war,” 152–186.

76. Speck, “Women”s Memorials,” 129–145.

77. Lake, “Feminist History as National History,” 154–69:157.

78. Grayzel, Women’s Identities at War, especially chapter 3: Promoting Motherhood and Regulating Women: Women’s Labour and the Nation”; Andrew, “Women as Citizens in Canada,” 95–106.

79. NAA: A1, 1919/1250, Annie Marie Nielsen.

80. NAA: A1, 1916/28849, Annie Louisa Forster.

81. NAA: A1, 1916/28500, Catherine Jentzsch.

82. NAA: A1, 1916/27474, Elizabeth Conrad.

83. NAA: A1, 1920/20261, Bertha (Maria Ellena) Specht. Other notable cases include NAA: A1, 1916/27430, Auguste Anna Dorothea Grossman; A1, 1916/24884, Jane Fisher Koychen; A1, 1916/23185, Susanna Lubcke; A1, 1916/7559, Sarah Wendt; A1, 1920/2958, Louisa Wilhelmina Schultz.

84. NAA: A1, 1916/7264, Henrietta Greenwald/Grunewald; A1, 1915/7819, Mabel C. von Schweda; A1, 1916/15258, Augusta Christina Mohr. Contrast Mohr’s success with the failed application of another well-regarded hospital worker: A1, 1916/7964, Pauline Baldenbach, who was rejected for having no exceptional circumstances.

85. NAA: A1, 1926/21499, Dorothy Luise Knonagel.

86. See Grayzel; Lake, “Feminist History”; Speck, “Women’s Memorials”.

87. See NAA: A1, 1931/4475, Bertha Ehlert; NAA: A1, 1915/7819, Mabel C. von Schweda.

88. This will be explored further in the author’s upcoming book on applications between 1901 and 1920.

89. NAA: A1, 1916/29434, Maria Elizabeth Homburg.

90. NAA: A1, 1916/6511, Louisa Sempf, 3.

91. NAA: A1, 1916/7264, Henrietta Greenwald/Grunewald, 16: Leon L. Cohen, Solicitor, Sydney, to DEA, 17 February 1916. Timing was important in her case because, as laid out in the DEA Memorandum, 10 March 1916, 4: she had ‘applied on the 3^rd ultimo to be naturalized (Cabinet decided not to naturalize such applicants on the 8^th ultimo).’

92. NAA: A1, 1916/10246, Ceska (NAA file misnamed Elska) Rubinstein: letter to Hunt, 31 March 1916, 13.

93. The main texts on the subject are Irving, Citizenship; Baldwin, “Subject to Empire: Married Women and the British Nationality and Status of Aliens Act,” 522–556; Tabili, “Outsiders in the Land of Their Birth, 796–815.

94. Section 17 (1870): ‘“Disability” shall mean the status of being an infant, lunatic, idiot, or married woman’; Section 27 (1914): ‘The expression “disability” means the status of being a married woman, or a minor, lunatic, or idiot’. See Irving, Citizenship.

95. From Dutton, David, “Women – Citizenship in Australia: A Guide to Commonwealth Government Records,” http://guides.naa.gov.au/citizenship/chapter3/women.aspx [last accessed 27 March 2018].

96. NAA: A1, 1916/6296, Ida Beatrice Fechner: DEA Memorandum, 27 March 1916, 3.

97. NAA: A659, 1943/1/2126: Pipgras to Hunt, 2 March 1915.

98. Ibid.

99. Ibid: Police Report, 17 March 1915.

100. NAA: A1, 1934/10232, Clara Harriet Greenland (aka Clara Harriet Groenlund).

101. Ibid, DEA Memorandum, 12 October 1916.

102. Ibid, Hunt to her solicitors, Rawlinson & Hamilton, Sydney, 11 September 1916.

103. Ibid, Hunt to Inspector-General of Police, Sydney, 26 September 1916.

104. NAA: A1, 1916/16097, Bridget Cissy Rombach.

105. See Race section below.

106. From Dutton, “Women”.

107. NAA: A1, 1904/7646, Naturalisation of Married Women in NSW: Hunt to Attorney General, 17 May 1904.

108. Rubenstein, Australian Citizenship, 37–8. The only specific reference to women in the Australian Naturalisation Act of 1903 is section 9: ‘A women who, not being a British subject, marries a British subject, shall in the Commonwealth be deemed to be thereby naturalized, and have the same rights powers and privileges, and be subject to the same obligations, as a person who has obtained a certificate of naturalization.’

109. NAA: A63, A1910/7244: Isaac A Isaacs, Attorney General, Opinion: Franchise-British Woman Married to an Alien, 29 March 1906: ‘The extent of the application of the Imperial Act is by no means clear’; A456, W8/13/96: Australian Naturalisation of Enemy Subjects During War, Opinion of W. Harrison Moore, 1 March 1916; A435, 1944/4/4347: Attorney-General’s Opinion, Eligibility of the Wives of Aliens for Naturalisation, 31 May 1916.

110. Rubenstein, Australian Citizenship, 37–8.

111. NAA: A63, A1910/7244: Isaacs, Opinion, 29 March 1906.

112. He referenced Australia Parliamentary Debates (1903), Vol.14, 2200.

113. NAA: A63, A1910/7244: Isaacs, Opinion, 29 March 1906. The NSW law stated: A married woman shall be deemed to be a subject of the state of which her husband is for the time being a subject.’

114. NAA: A1, 1904/7646: Opinion from the Attorney General, 29 August 1904, 2–3; A63, A1910/7244: C. Hughes, Attorney-General, Opinion: Eligibility of a British Born Woman Who Has Married an Alien to Apply for a Certificate of Naturalisation, 7 November 1910.

115. NAA: A11803, 1917/89/248, Naturalisation of Subjects of Enemy States: Bonar Law, British Prime Minister, to Governor General, Australia, 5 December 1916.

116. NAA: A2863, 1917/25, Naturalisation Act No.25, 1917: handwritten note by Mahon, 18 April 1916, 8. See also J. F. Williams, Colonial Office, to Secretary of State, Colonial Office (to be sent to Australian Gov-General), 24 February 1916.

117. NAA: A435, 1944/4/4347: Attorney-General’s Opinion, Eligibility of the Wives of Aliens for Naturalisation, 31 May 1916; DEA Memorandum, 7 June 1916, handwritten comment from Hunt, 8 July 1916.

118. NAA: A1, 1918/2644, Mary Ratke.

119. See note 31 above.

120. Atlee Hunt Papers, MS52/1536, Hunt to Professor Harrison Moore, 17 March 1916.

121. Irving, Citizenship; Baldwin, “Subject to Empire”; Girard, “‘If two ride a horse, one must ride in front”, 28–54; Tabili, “Outsiders”; Price, “Naturalising Subjects, Creating Citizens,” 1–21.

122. This was despite internal discussion of the matter. See NAA: A1, 1914/20769, Imperial Naturalisation Act (Rights of Women under) National Status of Australian Women married to Foreigners: Hunt to Prime Minister’s Secretary, 5 August 1914, 27–8. See also A1, 1926/3450, Women’s Societies in Australia, Naturalisation of Women: Memorandum to the Prime Minister’s Department, Hunt, 4 June 1918, 22–23; Hunt to the International Secretary, National Council of Women of New South Wales, 14 June 1918.

123. This was made even more difficult in December 1917, when the Australian Prime Minister banned naturalisation of Germans for the rest of the war, although exceptions remained. See NAA: A435, 1944/4/4347; A367, C1145 part I; A11804, 1915/70; A1, 1921/16414: Secretary, Prime Minister’s Department, to Secretary, DHT, 14 December 1917, 29.

124. NAA: A1, 1921/1658, Louisa Alice Heinrich; A1, 1917/8205, Cecilia Tietz; A1, 1917/14687, Josie Schultz. See also Fischer, Enemy Aliens, 38–57.

125. NAA: A1, 1917/14627: DHT Memorandum, 13 September 1917, and accompanying lists, 3–14.

126. NAA: A1, 1917/12490, Ann Paulmann; A1, 1931/4475, Bertha Ehlert; A1, 1917/12847, J. F. Schweizer.

127. NAA: A1, 1917/12115, Marie Breken.

128. NAA: A1, 1917/13680, Emily von Stranz; A1, 1918/1922, Amelia Wagner; MT269/1, VIC/AUSTRIA/ROSENTHAL CORNELIA; B741, V/1835, Cornelia Rosenthal.

129. NAA: A1, 1917/15094, Mathilde Isernhagen; A1, 1917/11128, Gretchen Eckermann; MT269/1, VIC/GERMANY/ECKERMANN GRETCHEN.

130. NAA: A1, 1917/7316, Frederick Symphronius Hilcke.

131. See also NAA: ST1233/1/0, N1913, The case of Max Edward Stelter, and Louisa Clara Stelter, Tasmania, adopted siblings found guilty of failing to register as enemy aliens: they did not know they were adopted, but only he was punished.

132. NAA: A1, 1922/3058, Wilhellmina Hilcke; A1, 1917/7316, Frederick Symphronius Hilcke; MT269/1, Vic/Germany/Hilckee Wilhelmina. She was later approved without difficulty in 1922, a reminder of how transient many of these concerns were.

133. Langfield, “Gender blind?”.

134. She was approved as an exceptional case by the Cabinet in 1918. See NAA: A1, 1918/1922, Amelia Wagner.

135. See the case of Elizabeth Leonhard, footnotes 66–68.

136. NAA: A1, 1921/11142, Emma Maria Martha Engler.

137. NAA: A1, 1915/13705, Violet Isabel Risius (written as Risins in NAA).

138. Irving, 19–21. She discusses how women’s legal status as essentially the property of her husband and possessing a single legal identity with him; ‘couverture’ was entrenched in citizenship law internationally just as women were increasingly defined in other laws as legal entities in their own right.

139. NAA: A1, 1915/20706, May Lothringer: Police Report, 28 December 1915, 4.

140. NAA: A1, 1915/3572, Ida Schreiterer: DEA Memorandum, 12 March 1915.

141. NAA: A1, 1917/10767, Janina Wiktorya Berenda Czaykowska: especially the DEA rejection letter to her, 15; Hunt to Glynn, 1 May 1917, 16; DEA Memorandum, 16 March 1917, 18–29.

142. NAA: A1, 1915/22313, Louis[e] Johanna Mathese: R. E. Williams, Commandant, 3^rd Military District, to Hunt, 8 December 1915, 3; Police Report, 28 November 1915, 5–6. All of this ignores what she wrote on her application (9), that her father was French and mother German, and she was born in Germany. Normally, this was investigated further.

143. NAA: A1, 1920/8215, Anna Wilhelmina Melke: DEA Memorandum, 17 July 1916, 9. She was refused in 1914 and 1916. A similar claim is found in NAA: A1, 1914/15498, Auguste Hamburg.

144. NAA: A1, 1915/19297, Wilhelmine Hoffmann. See also A1, 1916/31591, Helena Homburg: DEA Memorandum, 5 January 1917, 4.

145. NAA: A1, 1916/9772, May Stadler.

146. NAA: A1, 1917/14622, Marie Lauth. She waged a separate argument with administrators about whether she was French or German, as she and her husband were from the Alsace region.

147. See Langfield, “Recruiting immigrants,” 55–65.

148. NAA: A1, 1918/13094, V. Venera Melita; A1, 1917/15209, Leonarda Palessi.

149. See footnote 13.

150. The literature on White Australia is extensive. See especially Lake and Reynolds, Drawing; Day, “The “White Australia” Policy” ; Lester, Making Migration Law; Richards, Destination Australia Jupp, From White Australia to Woomera; Yarwood, Asian Migration to Australia; Tavan, The long, slow death of white Australia; Jayasuriya, Walker and Gothard (eds.), Legacies of White Australia.

151. Kay Saunders and Roger Daniels, “Ethnicity and Citizenship: The Contemporary Legacy,” in Saunders and Daniels, Alien Justice, xii [i–xix].

152. 11 July 1915, 6, quoted in Robertson, “Norman Lindsay and the “Asianisation” of the German Soldier in Australia during the First World War,” 221–2 [211–231]. See also Beaumont, “Australian Citizenship,” 177. She states: ‘Naturalised Australians … found that ethnicity was more important than any formal legal entitlement they had to citizenship.’

153. Davin, “Imperialism and Motherhood,” 9–65.

154. NAA: A1, 1921/16414: DEA Memorandum, Hunt, 2 November 1914, banned Turkish migrants. An identical Memorandum on 8 November 1915, 61, stopped Bulgarian applications. See also Langfield, “Recruiting immigrants”.

155. NAA: A1, 1916/8129, Christina Louise Marie Miatke: DEA Memorandum, 10 May 1916, 3.

156. NAA: A1, 1916/1933, Mary Atta; A1, 1915/22972, Ellen Sing; A1, 1915/22818, Mary Ah Mee. This policy only changed when re-naturalisation cases were stopped for married women with living husbands in 1916.

157. NAA: A1, 1916/17733, Sophia Kruger, 2. See also A1, 1915/20402, Rosa Lewald.

158. NAA: A1, 1915/16937, Emily Ann Merkel. See his similar comments in A1, 1916/9177, Harriett Mary Kreitmayer: DEA Memorandum, 11 April 1916, 4.

159. NAA: A1, 1915/14143, Anna R. Rosina Stiller.

160. A small number of examples have been cited here; further examples are available on the Trove database, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/, using the keyword search of ‘naturalisation’ or ‘naturalization’. Any mention of this in relation to women was rare, and normally only briefly to highlight the plight of denaturalised women.

161. The records offer considerable information about why women applied. The discussion here is short but will be further discussed in the upcoming book.

162. See Naffine, Criminal Law and the Man Problem; Naffine, Law and the Sexes; Jones et al., (eds.), Gender, sexualities and law; Graycar and Morgan, The Hidden Gender of Law; Ryan, “‘She Lives with a Chinaman,” 149–59.

163. NAA: A1, 1934/10232, 1105315, Clara Harriet Greenland: Hunt to her solicitors, Rawlinson & Hamilton, Sydney, 11 September 1916.

164. In addition to several of the articles in this special edition, see Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White; Bright, “A Great Deal of Discrimination”; Dewhirst, “Collaborating on whiteness; Higman, “Testing the boundaries of white Australia,” 1–21; Piperoglou, “Greeks or Turks, “White” or “Asiatic”,” 387–402.

165. Torpey, The Invention of the Passport. for instance, does not discuss gender at all. See Irving, Citizenship, esp. 30–47.

166. Most notably in Lake and Reynolds, Drawing.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Menzies Australia Institute, King’s College, London through the Menzies Australia Institute, King’s College, London Australian Bicentennial Research Fellowship, a Keele University Research Grant, and an Australia National University Visiting Research Fellowship.

Notes on contributors

Rachel Bright

Rachel Bright is a Senior Lecturer in Imperial and Global History at Keele University. She earned her PhD from King’s College, London before securing a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of East Anglia, and lecturing at the London School of Economics and Goldsmith’s College, London. She is currently researching the creation of naturalisation systems and how this connects to modern global systems of migration and citizenship within South Africa and Australia, and how this connects to modern global systems of migration control. Her book, Chinese Labour in South Africa, 1902-10: Race, Violence, and Global Spectacle (Palgrave-Macmillan Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies Series, 2013), explored why Chinese indentured labour was imported into South Africa at the height of ‘yellow’ and ‘black’ perils within settler societies. Her numerous articles include one for a special edition on Gender and Empire in the Journal of World History, and a critique of the British World concept with Andrew Dilley in The Historical Journal. She has twice been elected to the Committee of the Social History Society, where she also co-convenes their Deviance: Inclusion and Exclusion strand.