Modern (1800 CE - 1950 CE)
American and Zanzibari Trade Contract, 1841
This contract, one of few bilingual agreements that survive, illustrates the practical commercial system that Indian, Arab, and American traders developed on Zanzibar. The document outlines the quantity, quality, and price of the cloves being sold as well as their expected delivery date.
Advertisement for the Auction of the Ann’s Cargo, 1827
This flyer advertises the Ann’s 1827 arrival in Salem, Massachusetts, after making one of the first American trips to Zanzibar.
Rockefeller Foundation Report Concerning the Yellow Fever Vaccine
The creation of the yellow fever vaccine turned out to be quite controversial. Many of these controversies are revealed in documents such as this summary of correspondence between Georges Stefanopoulo, a Pastorian microbiologist, and his colleagues at the Rockefeller Foundation in New York.
"Yellow fever in Dakar – There is no epidemic"
This is an excerpt from an interview with Blaise Diagne, the Senegalese deputy to the National Assembly, published in Le Matin, one of the major national dailies in metropolitan France.
Disinfection of Dakar houses with a Clayton Apparatus
This is a photograph from the collections of the Rockefeller Archive Center depicting a Clayton apparatus disinfecting African houses during the yellow fever outbreak of 1927. The image illustrates a number of transnational linkages that shaped the epidemic.
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.