Enlightenment
Viefville des Essars, On the Emancipation of the Negroes (1790)
This project to free enslaved people in the French colonies was presented to the National Assembly. The defensive tone and rhetorical structure that emerge in the course of this document demonstrate the power of the interests opposed to even cautious steps toward emancipation.
A Woman’s Cahier
This grievance was signed by a certain Madame B*** B*** whose identity is unknown. The provenance appears to be Normandy. Another version of this text, located and republished in the late nineteenth century, is signed by Marie, veuve de Vuigneras, also from Normandy.
Madame de Beaumer, Editorial, Journal des Dames (March 1762)
Madame de Beaumer (d. 1766) was the first of three women editors of the Journal des Dames, a newspaper founded in Paris in 1759 to encourage women to write seriously.
Article from the Encyclopedia: "Woman"
The article "Woman" was written by four contributors who considered the question from four angles: medicine and the history of opinions about women’s nature; writings about women’s place in the state and marriage; the social differences between men and women; and women’s legal status in different
New York Public Library Digital Collections
The NYPL Digital Collection provides access to over 755,000 images digitized from primary sources and printed rarities, including illuminated manuscripts, vintage posters, illustrated books, and printed ephemera.
In Motion: The African-American Migration Project
In Motion: The African-American Migration Project portrays the history of 13 defining migrations that formed and transformed African Americans from the 16th century to the present.
The Abolition of Negro Slavery or Means for Ameliorating Their Lot, 1789
The passage of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, explicitly cited in this pamphlet, did not go unnoticed by those who favored abolition of the slave trade and eventual emancipation of the slaves.
On Education
This essay was printed in the periodical Meiroku Zasshi in May 1874. The magazine was produced by a small group of intellectuals committed to the study of Europe and America.
Antislavery Agitation: Abbé Raynal, Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Trade of the Europeans in the East and West Indies (1770)
Abbé Guillaume–Thomas Raynal (1711–96), known by his clerical title [abbé refers to ecclesiastical training], first published his multivolume history of European colonization anonymously in French in 1770.
Rousseau’s The Social Contract
Jean–Jacques Rousseau was the maverick of the Enlightenment. Born a Protestant in Geneva in 1712 (d. 1778), he had to support himself as a music copyist. Unlike Voltaire and Montesquieu, both of whom came from rich families, Rousseau faced poverty nearly all his life.