Browse Primary Sources

Locate primary sources, including images, objects, media, and texts. Annotations by scholars contextualize sources.

Triumph of the Parisian Army and the People

Returning home from the October march to Versailles, the women and the guardsmen display the heads of troops who confronted the marchers. Note the use of tree branches, symbolizing support for the revolution here as in other prints.

Vanguard of Women Going to Versailles

Publicity about political machinations, coupled with the continued high price of bread, mobilized market women and encouraged many men to support them. They hoped to fetch the King and his family to end attempts against the Revolution and stabilize prices.

Memorable Day at Versailles, 5 October 1789

This engraving marks success and reconciliation among revolutionaries, as men and women, as well as soldiers and civilians, relax together.

The Day of 21 July 1789

More common than clashes by workers against employers were protests over the rising price of bread. This color drawing depicts events at the City Hall of Strasbourg on 21 July 1789. Notice that the protesters are tearing up the roof and throwing the tiles down into the street to ward off soldiers; similarly, protesters in other buildings are pitching objects out of windows.

Farewell Bastille

This hand–colored engraving equates the taking of the Bastille with the rise of the Third Estate against the clergy and nobility. A commoner in a black hat sporting a tricolor cockade plays the bagpipe triumphantly over the fallen lion of the absolutist monarchy. To the side, a revolutionary soldier raises his sword to menace a priest.

Demolition of the Bastille

This watercolor painting illustrates the "demolition" of what the text refers to as the "horrible prison" of the Bastille. As workmen tear down the spires on the roof, ordinary people rip stones off the base.

Punishment of Foulon

This engraving reveals the aftermath of the seizure of the Bastille. Here the crowd parades the severed head of the official, Foulon.

Attack on the Bastille

This engraving of the attack highlights the heroism of the people charging determinedly into the billowing clouds and firing relentlessly in the face of strong resistance emanating from the fortress.

Tobacco Workers

In addition to sugar, tobacco was important to Puerto Rico’s industrial agricultural order after the arrival of the United States. Puerto Rican women and men labored in a building called a fabrica (or factory). Women’s jobs consisted of being seated for long hours rolling tobacco leaves—as visible in this 1945 photograph of women working as tobacco-strippers in a factory.

Sugarcane Workers Strike

After the United States's occupation of Puerto Rico in 1898, agricultural production shifted from a diverse model of production to a mono-agricultural model of growth, where sugar was the main crop. American companies’ preference for cultivation of sugar over coffee and other crops broke with a long tradition of coffee haciendas or plantations.

Workers’ Celebration

When Americans arrived on the island, the labor movement in Puerto Rico was in its infancy. Labor leaders were aware of the reputation of the U.S. labor unions, so they worked to affiliate with the American Federation of Labor (AFL) as early as 1899. Local labor unions adopted the celebrations and rituals of similar unions in the United States and around the world.

Lady Florentia Sale Diary

Lady Florentia Sale (1790-1853), wife of Major-General Sir Robert Henry Sale, wrote a journal of her experiences during the First Afghan War. In January 1842, in what is usually seen as a humiliating defeat for the British army, 4,500 British and Indian troops with around 12,000 camp followers retreated 116 miles from Kabul back to the British garrison at Jalalabad.

Sati Engraving, Burning a Hindoo Widow

Toward the end of the 1700s, the evangelical movement in Britain argued that one’s commitment to Christ should be reflected in action, primarily the effort to end slavery in the British empire and to proselytize or seek converts among the “heathen.” Initially, the English East India Company had prohibited Christian missionaries from living within their territories and seeking Indian converts in

The True Woman

This is a 17th-century French engraving entitled The True Woman. Although its author and its circulation to the public in general is not precisely known, engravings such as this one were ever more popular in the 16th and 17th centuries, when the power of the newly-invented printing press to reach the masses became apparent.

Drawing of Khoi Dancers

In the late 17th century, an anonymous artist did a series of impromptu sketches and set pieces showing Khoikhoi at the Cape of Good Hope.

Woman with Lenin/Stalin Flag

Articles and images published in Soviet newspapers on March 8, International Communist Woman’s Day, provide the most obvious examples of how women were used as symbols in a propaganda campaign. These texts and images were clearly intended to convey a certain message about the changing role of women in the Soviet system.

Lila-Pilipina Brochure

The Lila-Pilipina Brochure is a creation of the feminist group of Filipino “comfort women" called Lila-Pilipina, who have banded together with feminist goals/messages for peace. "Comfort women" were women during World War II forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese military, although it took decades for this to be acknowledged, and to this day is not acknowledged in Japanese history books.

Lady of the Bridge, Tale of Genji Painting Scroll

The greatest work produced during the Heian era was The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu, lady-in-waiting to Empress Akiko. Considered the world’s first novel, Genji is written as an absorbing portrait of Heian court life, the splendor of its rituals, and aesthetic culture.

Taking of the Bastille

The "bravery of the citizens united against" the royal army, as the text suggests, enabled them to conquer in four hours a fortress that had defeated invasions since 1368.

Taking of the Bastille

This painting emphasizes the populace’s participation in the storming of the Bastille, showing the urban population fighting under a red banner with muskets, swords, and pikes against the royal soldiers.