Browse Primary Sources
Locate primary sources, including images, objects, media, and texts. Annotations by scholars contextualize sources.
Gender and Health in Latin America: Interview, Abortion Rights (Chile)
As a topic of discussion in the United States, abortion has long raised red flags. Not surprisingly, it is hardly a neutral subject in other national settings. Yet, apart from questions about the origin of life and legal questions about abortion rights, there are other dimensions to the history of abortion that relate to the lives of individual people on the local level.
Gender and Health in Latin America: Law, Maternity Leave (Cuba)
Motherhood and the many requirements that come with it provide a good starting point for analysis of women’s need for protection, on the one hand, and the limits on women’s decision-making imposed in protective legislation, on the other. When women entered the labor market, it became necessary to address their needs and concerns as both women and workers.
Gender and Health in Latin America: Newspaper, Domestic Violence (Brazil)
Domestic violence is hardly a new topic in the global history of gender relations. Scholars and counselors have long been familiar with responses to domestic violence, ranging from emergency hotlines and family counseling to restraining orders placed on abusive spouses or partners.
Gender and Health in Latin America: Committee Hearing, Sterilization (Peru)
Eugenics, defined as controlled human reproduction based on notions of desirable and undesirable populations or genotypes, have gained attention predominantly in the context of European fascist regimes that aimed at eliminating or controlling populations. Hitler’s campaign to eliminate Jews is perhaps the best known case in recent history.
Child Re-enacting Krishna Story
Krishna is known in the stories of the Bhagavata-Purana as the eighth incarnation, or avatar, of the god Vishnu. He is a very popular deity, a divine hero who personifies superhuman powers as well as human hopes and failings.
Divorce in the Soviet Union
One of Mikhail Gorbachev's most famous reform movements was 'glasnost' (openness), which allowed partial freedom of the press to address social problems and corruption within the Soviet Union. Among the issues raised during the 'glasnost' era were previously forbidden subjects such as the high rate of divorce.
British Empire: Autobiography, Head Above Water
Buchi Emecheta was born in Nigeria in 1944 to Igbo parents. She was orphaned at a young age, and subsequently educated at a missionary school in Nigeria. She was married at the age of 16 to Sylvester Onwordi, a student she had been engaged to since childhood. In 1960, she moved to Britain with her husband and children, where she worked as a librarian.
British Empire: Fiction, Indian Tales of the Great Ones
Born in 1870 into a Parsee family in India, Cornelia Sorabji (1870–1954) became a writer and a lawyer. By the end of the Victorian period, many elite Indian men had traveled to Britain to study. Cornelia Sorabji became the first female law student at Oxford University, where she studied from 1889 to 1894.
British Empire: Fiction, Nervous Conditions
In 1959, Tsitsi Dangarembga was born in Africa in the British colony known as Rhodesia, now called Zimbabwe. From the age of two, she spent four years living in Britain. On her return to Rhodesia, she attended a missionary school in Mutare.
British Empire: Travel Narrative, Mary Kingsley
Mary Kingsley (1862-1900) is one of the best known British women to have visited West Africa during the period historians call the Age of New Imperialism. Her early life gave no indication of her future renown. She spent the early part of her life confined to her home taking care of an invalid father.
British Empire: Autobiography, Mary Seacole
In 1857, only 24 years after the British had abolished slavery in the empire, Mary Seacole (1805-1881) published her autobiography entitled the Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands. Written in Britain, following Seacole’s experiences working among sick and wounded British soldiers fighting in the Crimean War, the book became an immediate bestseller.
British Empire: Letter, Mary Moffat
Mary Moffat (1795-1871) was the wife of Robert Moffat, the missionary for the London Missionary Society who established a mission center at Kuruman in southern Africa. Their daughter married David Livingstone. In 1816, Robert Moffat was ordained and accepted as a missionary by the London Missionary Society (LMS).
Sati: Letter, Francois Bernier
During the 17th century, Louis XIV of France sought to strengthen the power of the monarchy in France and to enhance France’s position in world politics. In 1664, Jean Colbert, his finance minister, established the French East India Company to develop French trade with India.
Early Modern Period: Autobiography, Glückel of Hameln
The following passages offer us a glimpse into the margins of early modern European society. Glückel of Hameln (1645-1724) was born into the Jewish community of Hamburg, a thriving German commercial center. When Glückel was four, the city expulsed its Jewish residents, forcing her family’s exile. Ten years later, Glückel married Hayim of Hameln, with whom she had twelve children.
Early Modern Period: Autobiography, Bahina Bai
This selection comes from the autobiography of Bahina Bai (1628-1700), a Hindu poetess. Most of what we know about Bahina comes from her own writings, where she tells her life story. Born into a family of the Brahmin—or priestly—caste, she was married at the age of five to a widowed thirty-year-old priest, in keeping with the practices of the time.
Early Modern Period: Nonfiction, Jesuit Relations
This excerpt comes from a 1639 letter written by Mother Marie de Saint Joseph, a French Ursuline nun in Canada. The letter is part of the Jesuit Relations, a collection of official yearly reports on the progress of Catholic missionary efforts based on the first-hand accounts of field missionaries.
Early Modern Period: Petition, Ming China
This letter is an official petition to the Ming Emperor of China, Shi Zong (r. 1522-67). Written around 1566, it is attributed to Lady Chang, only wife of Shên Shu, a high bureaucrat in the Chinese court. However, it was likely coauthored by his favorite concubine, whose name is unknown.
Early Modern Period: Nonfiction, Confucian Doctrine
This excerpt comes from Onna daigaku, or Greater Learning for Women, which is commonly attributed to Kaibara Ekiken (1630-1714), a Japanese botanist and Neo-Confucian philosopher. Ekiken was most concerned with translating Confucian doctrine into terms people from all classes could understand.
Early Modern Period: Fiction, Gargantua and Pantagruel
The following passage comes from one of the most famous literary works of early modern Europe: François Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel, first published in four volumes between 1532 and 1552.
Cultural Contact in Southern Africa: Law, Slave Women and Children
Although marriage was not forbidden between Europeans and slaves or other non-Europeans, it was quite rare and entailed a drop in social status for the European. Nevertheless, sexual relationships occurred—sometimes coerced, sometimes by mutual agreement.