North/Central America
Puerto Rican Labor Movement: Newspaper, Needle Worker Strike
This is an excerpt from article published in the newspaper, La Democracía. This article shows how the labor press was an important source of information for the working class. The use of the press created a sense of solidarity among the workers on the island and around the world.
Puerto Rican Labor Movement: Magazine, Eleanor Roosevelt
After her trip in the Caribbean in the summer of 1934, Mrs. Roosevelt, who had a column in the magazine Women’s Home Companion, recorded her impressions of Puerto Rico, including the island’s people and culture.
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.
Reacting to German Reunification
On October 3, 1990, the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) and the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) were reunified as one single state, recreating a country that had not existed since the end of World War II.
A Positive American View
Benjamin Franklin Bache, grandson on Benjamin Franklin, was a supporter of Jefferson’s Republican Party. His sympathetically summarized the situation in France during the period when Louis XVI was put on trial and executed.
The Pennsylvania Gazette: U.S. Vigilance (13 December 1797)
The Haitian uprising stoked the fears of whites in the United States that a similar uprising would occur among enslaved populations in their country.
The Pennsylvania Gazette: Unrest Continues (28 September 1796)
This newspaper details how despite the abolition of slavery in Haiti, turbulence continued in many parts of the colony. The French relied on local generals, including Toussaint L’Ouverture, to try to restore order.
The Pennsylvania Gazette: Free blacks and mulattos flee (4 December 1793)
Along with whites, free blacks and mulattos were also among those who fled the Haitian uprising. Mulattos could own slaves and plantations, and many of them did. Free blacks often manned the militias used to hunt down runaway slaves.
The Pennsylvania Gazette: White Refugees (17 July 1793)
This newspaper article reports sympathetically on the situation of the white refugees fleeing Haiti because of uprising. The articles details how the cities of Baltimore and Philadelphia met the influx of these refugees.
The Pennsylvania Gazette: Blame Now Falls (16 May 1792)
The blame for the Haitian Revolution now falls, at least according to the author of this letter, on the "blood–thirsty aristocracy," which has created dissensions among the French. The author also expresses alarm at the thought of the revolt spreading to other islands in the Caribbean.