Olympe de Gouges publishes Declaration of the Rights of Woman

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...

The revolutionary declaration made equal citizenship a powerful political claim. Women, enslaved people and colonial subjects exposed its limits by demanding that its universal language apply to...

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.

The pamphlet framed class conflict and collective political organization for an international readership. Its influence on labor movements also prompted debate about how class politics should...