Early Modern (1450 CE - 1800 CE)
Excerpt from Memoirs by Catharina Schrader
This is a memoir written by a Protestant midwife, Catharina Schrader, who lived in Germany during the 1600s. It offers an important window into the daily lives and life cycles of non-elite women living in early modern Europe.
Excerpt from Memoirs by Glikl
The is a diary written by a Jewish merchant, Glikl of Hameln, a woman living in northern Germany in the 17th century.
Analyzing Newspapers
The modules in Methods present case studies that demonstrate how scholars interpret different kinds of historical evidence in world history.
People Reading the Gazette
This is an image of the reading public in 18th century France. This image can tell us about who read newspapers, how they read them, and how easy or difficult it was to access newspapers.
Taking of the Bastille
This color print 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.
Taking of Weapons at the Invalides
From the City Hall, the crowd that had gathered on the morning of 14 July crossed the Seine River and sacked the royal veterans’ hospital known as the Invalides, where it hoped to capture arms. In Berthault’s engraving, the scene appears chaotic.
Speech in the Garden of the Palais-Royal
In this artistic rendition, on 12 July 1789 Camille Desmoulins stands on a table and encourages his listeners to rise against the threat to the Estates–General. He, and others of his ilk, would be successful in bringing about the fall of the Bastille on 14 July.
Fraternity
Using a woman to represent "Fraternity" seems ironic at best, although theoretically the term might mean the community of humanity. In actuality, when the revolutionaries considered "community," they certainly thought of men far more than women.
National Assembly Relinquishes All Privileges
This image, part of a series produced to show the most important events of the Revolution, focuses on 4 and 5 August 1789, when the system of privileges came to an end. This legal structure, characteristic of the old regime, guaranteed different rights for different people.
Transportation of Voltaire to the French Panthéon, 8 July 1792
Although Voltaire’s contribution to the Revolution has been much debated, the revolutionaries themselves had absolutely no doubt of his significance. After 1789 he was much in vogue, in that his plays were often performed and other artists lionized him in various ways.