For much of the colonial period, Spain claimed almost all of North America as Spanish territory. It displayed this claim on maps and in the administrative units it created to govern this vast territory: New Spain and La Florida. Charles...
In 1682, the first Assembly of Pennsylvania and the Delaware counties met in Chester, Pennsylvania, and adopted “the Great Law,” a humanitarian code that guaranteed the people of Pennsylvania liberty of conscience. “The Great Law” created an...
The histories of early North America and the Caribbean are intimately intertwined. The same European empires we encounter in our study of early America also appear in the Caribbean and the colonies in these respective empires often traded goods...
Historians research history in archives. But how do you gain access to one? And how do you use an archive once you find that it likely contains the information you seek? In this third episode of our “Doing History: How Historians Work” series, we...
How did enslaved African and African American women experience slavery? What were their daily lives like? And how do historians know as much as they do about enslaved women? Today, we explore the answers to these questions with Jennifer L. Morgan, a...