Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen adopted

Its equality language became a resource later used by abolitionists, women’s rights advocates and labor movements, while its original political community excluded enslaved people, women and many...

Quaker and evangelical campaigners formed an organized national antislavery society. Its petitioning, print campaigns and consumer boycotts helped create a model for civil-society pressure on...

De Gouges rewrote revolutionary rights language to include women as citizens. Her text challenged the gender boundary of republican inclusion and became a landmark in feminist political writing.

Wollstonecraft argued that women’s apparent inferiority was produced by unequal education and social arrangements. Her writing made access to education and civic participation central political...

Parliament prohibited British participation in the transatlantic slave trade after decades of abolitionist organizing and resistance by enslaved people. It did not abolish slavery itself, illustrating...

The act legislated emancipation across most British colonies, but delayed freedom through an apprenticeship system and compensated slaveowners. Formerly enslaved people received no equivalent...

The end of apprenticeship followed resistance by formerly enslaved people and criticism of the coercive labor system. Legal freedom did not bring equal land, pay or political power.