Across the United States and Britain, during which period did women's suffrage…

Concept

Suffrage means the legal right to vote.

To date a suffrage movement, historians distinguish isolated arguments from a sustained movement marked by national organizations, conventions, petitions, and coordinated public campaigning.

Application

1. The 1848 Seneca Falls Convention, near the middle of the century, was an important organizing milestone rather than evidence for the early-century period.

2. Permanent national organizations and coordinated campaigning expanded in the second half of the 19th century; major American associations were formed in 1869.

3. In Britain, suffrage societies multiplied from the late 1860s and consolidated nationally by 1897, while New Zealand enacted national voting rights for women in 1893.

Contrast and cross-check

• The early 18th century predates the sustained organizations and conventions used to identify the movement.

• The late 18th century produced important rights arguments, but not yet the movement's broad organizational momentum.

• The early 19th century supplied reform networks and antecedents; organized suffrage activity became prominent around mid-century and afterward.

• The late 19th century is the period in which national associations, petitions, conventions, and public campaigns expanded markedly in both countries.

• This chronology also separates the movement from later legal victories: equal or universal adult suffrage was completed in many places only in the 20th century.

Result

Therefore, the best-supported period among the given choices is the late 19th century.