Geographies of Belonging: white women and black history

This article discusses the need for, and possibilities of, writing integrated and multicultural histories of Britain by focusing on the relationships formed between white and black women in the workplace but primarily through their families. The article presents examples from the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries which illustrate possibilities for examining integrated histories in urban and rural locations utilising ongoing research undertaken by community-based scholars. The article draws upon Hazel Carby's 1982 essay on the Boundaries of Sisterhood' to make connections between critics of the making of women's history in the 1980s and the continuing need for black histories to be integrated into British history.