Imperial/ Colonial
Dona Marina, Cortes’ Translator: Personal Account, Bernal Díaz del Castillo
Perhaps the most famous 16th-century portrayal of doña Marina, this description is also the most extensive from the period. Díaz del Castillo claims she was beautiful and intelligent, she could speak Nahuatl and Maya.
Caribbean Views
The online collection is of extraordinary quality, both in terms of the scanned images and the contextual detail provided.
Puerto Rican Labor Movement: Official Document, Sterilization
Thirty years after Mrs. Roosevelt visited the island of Puerto Rico, working women were still subject to exploitation in the industrial setting—in particular, to coerced sterilization.
Dona Marina, Cortes' Translator: Letter, Hernán Cortés
This excerpt from Cortés’s Second Letter, written to Charles V in 1519 and first published in 1522, is one of only two instances in Cortés’s letters to the King that explicitly mentions his indigenous translator.
Marxists Internet Archive
Because the Archive offers such a wide-ranging set of sources from the Marxist tradition, students can be encouraged to explore cross-cultural comparisons.
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.
Islamic Empire: Travel Narrative, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
In the 18th century, European travelers began to enjoy increased access to international destinations, and the Ottoman Empire was a particular favorite for many.
Declaration of Independence, 1776
The author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), was deeply influenced by the European Enlightenment. He spent many years in Paris and was just as much at home among European intellectuals as he was on his plantation in Virginia.
The Huejotzingo Codex of 1531
The Huexotzinco Codex (Huexotzinco Codex) is an eight-sheet legal document from sixteenth-century New Spain. The document is a part of the testimony by the Nahua people from Huexotzinco in a legal case against representatives of the Spanish colonial government in Mexico.
Execrable Human Traffick, or The Affectionate Slaves
This reproduction of a painting by George Morland (1789) has lurid colors and shows the sale of an enslaved person.