Women
Women's Union Telegram
That women in significant numbers were active participants in the Puerto Rican labor movement of the 1930s did not escape the attention of the government. Women’s unions demanded their rights through political channels as well as protest and striking.
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.
The High-Caste Hindu Woman
Literacy among Indian women was low during the 19th century, and so primary sources written by Indian women are rare for this period. One notable exception is Pandita Ramabai (1858-1922), an influential Indian woman social reformer from Maharashtra in western India.
India’s Cries to British Humanity
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 p
Wanderings of a Pilgrim in Search of the Picturesque
From 1600 to the early 1800s, few officials of the English East Indian Company lived with English wives in India. This practice began to change as transportation became easier with the development of steamships.
Rajah Rammohun Roy Excerpts
Ram Mohan Roy (1774-1832), a highly educated Bengali brahman from a well-to-do landed family, had worked in the lower levels of the Company bureaucracy.
Letter to Panduranga Joshi Kulkarni
Although the self-immolation of Hindu widows was less common in western India than in Bengal, this letter confirms its occurrence in Maratha-ruled areas during the 1700s.
Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
The following are excerpts from the letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762), a noted English essayist and one of the earliest advocates of women’s rights.
The Whole Duty of Woman
The following selection comes from a late 17th-century English advice book for women.
Peter Kolb Travel Narrative 2
Peter Kolb was a German astronomer and mathematician who lived at the Cape from 1705 to 1713. He was initially sponsored by a German baron to make astronomical observations in pursuit of a way to calculate longitude accurately.