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Black Death

This resource is about the plague that broke out in England from 1348-49. It provides an overview of the plague in the British Isles beginning with the initial outbreak in Dorset, which then spread to England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. The resource includes many contemporary descriptions of the plague, the death toll ...

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Journey to the west - part 1

This is the first part of a Chinese folk story called Journey to the west: the adventures of Monkey, which dates back 1,300 years. The story is about a monkey that gets magical powers. In the second part of the story the monkey becomes a companion of a monk on a dangerous journey. The resource is 15 web pages in length ...

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The Mahabharata

This is the story of The Mahabharata, one of the world’s longest poems that was composed over 2,500 years ago in India. It is a story of family and friends and embodies Hindu mythology and philosophy. The message of the story is that rivalry leads to destruction. The story is 21 web pages long and includes text, illustrations, ...

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'Slavery as it exists in America. Slavery as it exists in England', 1850

This is a black-and-white print showing two contrasting scenes of 'slavery' produced by J Haven of Boston, USA. The top scene shows African American slaves in the US southern states dancing and playing the banjo after their day's work is over. The bottom scene shows four episodes of people lamenting the 'slavery' of work ...

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Slave decks of the bark Wildfire, 1860

This a black-and white engraving showing emaciated Africans on the slave decks of the ship Wildfire. Women are seen in the background on an upper deck, and in the foreground men and boys are crowded together. The engraving was published in Harper's Weekly on 2 June 1860. It was entitled 'The Africans of the slave bark "Wildfire." ...

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'Migrant mother', 1936

This is one of the most famous photographs of the Great Depression in the USA. It shows Florence Owens Thompson aged 32 huddled together with three of her seven children (the baby is obscured). The family as a whole are described in the Library of Congress catalogue as 'migrant' (ie itinerant) pea pickers in California ...

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'The parting - "Buy us too"', 1863

This is a colour lithographic card showing a shackled slave being taken away by his new owner as his wife and child beg to be bought as well so the family would not be separated. The owner gestures them away with his whip. The card was the fourth in a collectable series of 12 album cards entitled 'The slave in 1863. A thrilling ...

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Slaves using a cotton gin, 1869

This is a black-and-white illustration captioned 'The first cotton gin'. It shows how the US artist William L Sheppard imagined the scene of the first gin in operation, some 80 years after the actual event. Sheppard depicts two male slaves operating the machine with two white men examining the ginned cotton while female ...

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Thornhill plantation house, 2010

This is the two-storey Thornhill plantation house in Greene County, Alabama, showing the southern facade with its two-story portico of six Ionic columns across the front, and the eastern-side elevation. The photograph was taken by Carol Highsmith.

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'Old Negro (former slave) with horn with which slaves were called', 1939

This is a black-and-white photograph showing an old African American man sitting in a doorway and holding a horn once used to summon slaves to work at sunrise. The photograph was taken near Marshall in Texas, USA, by photographer Russell Lee.

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'Jitterbugging in Negro juke joint', 1939

This is a black-and-white photograph showing African Americans at a roadside dance hall outside Clarksdale in Mississippi, USA, one Saturday evening in November 1939. Couples are jitterbugging to music from a jukebox while other people, mostly men, are standing around. The photograph was taken by Marion Post Wolcott.

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'Effects of the Fugitive-Slave-Law', 1850

This is a black-and-white print showing four African Americans attacked in an ambush by six armed white men. One of the white men is firing as two others reload their guns, and two of the African Americans have been hit. The print is a denunciation of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, its effect reinforced by two quotations ...

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'Am I not a man and a brother?', 1837

This is a black-and-white illustration of a kneeling male slave in chains. It appeared on a broadside (a poster, often with a poem or news and sometimes with woodcut illustrations) published in New York. The broadside also featured John Greenleaf Whittier's anti-slavery poem, 'Our countrymen in chains' and two quotations, ...

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'The day of Jubelo', 1865

This is a black-and-white photographic print of a painting by Edmund Birckhead Bensell showing African Americans, probably freed slaves, dancing, drinking, making music and sliding down the banister in a large house in the US south. The print is attached to a cardboard mount. The printed caption gives the title and includes ...

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Proclamation of emancipation, c1864

This is a black-and-white print celebrating the Proclamation of Emancipation by US President Abraham Lincoln in 1863. The text includes the all-important words 'all persons held as slaves within any States, or designated part of the State, the people whereof shall be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, ...

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The first modern humans in south-east Asia

This is a multilayered resource about the theories and evidence of the origins of the first modern humans in south-east Asia. It has four sections: Theories; The sout-heast Asian fossil record; The appearance of sout-heast Asian features; and The first modern Indonesians. The Related sections, Related items and Related ...

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The Mongols' mark on global history

This resource, a component of the online resource The Mongols in world history, focuses on the contribution of the Mongol empire during the 13th and 14th centuries to world history. It examines the stereotype of the Mongol empire as being peopled by barbarians and juxtaposes it with the contributions of the Mongol empire. ...

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The Mongols in world history

This rich online resource is about the Mongol empire viewed in the context of the beginnings of world history. It provides a comprehensive set of materials about the Mongol culture and its history during the period from the birth of Temujin - later Chinggis (Genghis) Khan - in about 1162 to the end of the empire in 1368. ...

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Vindolanda

This resource is about the Roman garrison established at Vindolanda. It includes extracts from the Vindolanda tablets dating from the period AD 97-103, which documented details of everyday life for a Roman soldier on the north-west frontier of Roman Britain. The resource describes the discovery of the tablets and their ...

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Viking women

This resource is about the role of women in the Viking world. It includes text and some images. The resource is organised under six topic headings: Female Vikings?; Viking women in England; Scandinavian immigration; Daily life; Women of influence; and Find out more. The images are interposed in the text.