In this excerpt, an adult Horeta Te Taniwha recounts childhood memories of a cultural encounter with Europeans for a Pakeha researcher. Te Taniwha, as an indigenous child of Aotearoa/New Zealand, participated in one of the first meetings between… [more]

The overt moral tone of the advice reproduced on page 51 of this particular diary was neither unusual nor exceptional for the period. Similar sentiments were to be found in the schoolbooks of the era, many of which were produced and distributed by… [more]

Children's literature in this case study uses Louisa May Alcott's Little Women (1868-69) to explore changing notions about childhood, giving insight into the changing position of girls and women in American society, from the ordinary aspects of children's daily lives in the late 19th century to the ethical and moral assumptions that guided young people at this time in their thinking about class, gender, nationality, friendship, marriage, parenthood, and other issues. echo [more]

E. J. Wakefield was 19 years of age when he sailed from England, in 1839, on the New Zealand Company vessel, Tory, as secretary to his uncle, Colonel William Wakefield. Wakefield was to oversee the foundation of a Company settlement in the Cook… [more]

The story of Camila O'Gorman (1828-1848), the daughter of a prominent merchant in the Buenos Aires community, is one of the most famous cases of a young person challenging both parental and state authority. In 1847, at the height of Rosas's power,… [more]

Shifting boundaries of parental roles and expectations, young people's behaviors, and social status in early to mid-19th century Argentina are examined through a variety of primary sources, helping students to understand the reasons for underdevelopment, authoritarianism, and political instability in Argentina past and shedding light on such continuing problems in Latin America today.

One of the very first slave narratives, The Interesting Narrative of Olaudah Equiano (1745-1797), served as a prototype for the well-known slave autobiographies of the 19th century written by such fugitive slaves as Frederick Douglass and Harriet… [more]

Analysis of excerpts from The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa the African helps students to reconstruct children's experience under slavery, to place slavery in a world history perspective, and to explore the problems facing historians in assessing evidence and addressing the problematic nature of sources. echo [more]

Joseph Thomson traveled through Kenya Maasailand from 1883 to 1884 on a journey of exploration from the coast to Mt Kenya and Lake Victoria, under the auspices of the Royal Geographical Society. He was the second European to visit the area. Thomson… [more]

Documents from 1880 to 1973 on the Eastern African Maasai provide a case study with a specifically African and a world history context, in which students examine how this age-set society divides the male life-cycle into distinct stages, and how societies socialize the young and manage generational tension. echo [more]