Phaer was a lawyer and a physician who wrote the first work in English devoted solely to the health of children. It was first published in 1544 and went through many editions. The audience for the book according to Phaer was everyone who cared about… [more]
Born in present-day Ghana, young Ottobah Cugoano was kidnapped and sold into slavery at the young age of 13. Cugoano worked in the sugar fields of a Grenadan plantation until 1773. That year, Cugoano traveled to England with his owner where he… [more]
This excerpt is of a request made by Playden Onely to the members of the Royal African Company in 1721 for 130 children to be taken from West Africa to the West Indies for sale as slaves. The RAC commissioned the slave ship Kent for the task, and… [more]
The Dolben's Act of 1788 was proposed by noted abolitionist Sir William Dolben before the English Parliament. While it was meant to restrict the slave trade, it actually had an adverse effect on children. The act mandated that no more than two fifths… [more]
Official interest in the rights of children has grown over the course of the 20th century. Urbanization and industrialization led reformers at the turn of the century to focus on child welfare and on children's rights as separate from those of… [more]
The years following World War II marked a key shift in international policy related to human rights. Few, however, connect the history of human rights to the children's rights movement. By the early 20th century, urbanization and industrialization… [more]
Like much of early modern Europe, France saw increasing numbers of abandoned children, and new institutions designed to care for them. Orphanage records are one of a few rare types of sources available for historians to chart the histories of the… [more]
The case study essay outlines a student project using orphanage records from early modern France in a manner that helps students to frame historical questions and make preliminary conclusions about how these silent masses of children lived at the margins of society during the period. echo [more]
Much of early modern Europe saw increasing numbers of abandoned children, and new institutions designed to care for them. Published notarial documents, such as the two excerpted here, allow a glimpse into the fortunes of individual orphaned children… [more]
In recent years, testimonies, diaries and memoirs of Holocaust victims (those who perished and those who survived) have gained belated recognition as essential (not auxiliary) data for historical reconstruction. Early postwar children's… [more]