Modern (1800 CE - 1950 CE)
Analyzing Personal Accounts
Personal accounts, including memoirs, journals, diaries, autobiographies, and life histories, are important historical sources that help us understand the human condition. These are the stories we tell about our lives that usually portray a larger picture of a life in historical context.
Dreams of Trespass by Fatima Mernissi
Written by Moroccan feminist and sociologist Fatima Mernissi, Dreams of Trespass: Tales of a Harem Girlhood is a semi-fictional tale about a young girl growing up in a traditional Moroccan harem in the 1940s and 1950s.
Memoirs and Poems of Phillis Wheatley
Phillis Wheatley (c.1753-1784) was an enslaved African American poet and author. Despite this, the work Memoirs and Poems of Phillis Wheatley was compiled and the memoirs themselves written by Margaretta Matilda Odell, a supposed "collateral descendent of Mrs.
Original Manuscripts of Anne Frank
Born to a Jewish family in 1929, Anne Frank is most known for the diary she kept while in hiding from Nazi forces during World War II. The War broke out in 1939 when Anne was ten-years-old.
Primer: Transnational Mobility and State Formation
Modern nation-states and transnational mobility – the movement of people, things, and ideas across borders – are two important subjects for historians to study. They are two fundamental features of the modern world and have influenced one another constantly over the last several centuries.
Chilean Consul Writes of Immigrants Seeking to Avoid Military Service, 1865
This document is a portion of a letter, written by José de la Cruz Zenteno, the Chilean consul in Mendoza, Argentina to the Minister of Foreign Relations in Chile is from the National Archive of Chile. Mendoza was and is an Argentinian province that borders Chile.
Chilean Consul Writes of Immigrants Needing Assistance, 1864
Found in the National Archive of Chile, this is a letter from José de la Cruz Zenteno, the Chilean consul in Mendoza, Argentina to the Minister of Foreign Relations in Chile. Mendoza was and is a province that borders Chile.
Sewing Classes at Mount Margaret Mission
These two photographs, from the State Library of Western Australia, show Aboriginal girls learning to sew from Dorothy Lovick at the Mount Margaret Mission in Laverton, Australia, in the 1930s. The first photograph shows a middle school class, while the second one features a senior class.
South African Native Affairs Commission report on education
In 1903, Alfred Milner, the British High Commissioner for South Africa, appointed the South African Native Affairs Commission to examine “the status and condition of the Natives” and to provide recommendations “on questions concerning Native policy” (1-2).
“Maori Girls School”
This article, which was published in the newspaper Manawatu Times on April 14, 1905, announces the opening of a school for Māori girls.