18. 1000-1600 Women Explorers and Leaders
|
While the focus of the age of exploration tends to be on what the male explores were doing and how they were getting funded by kings, there were women doing the same thing at the same time. From Viking women making trailblazing journeys to European Queens running countries and funding expeditions, women played just as big of a role as men in this era.
|
Female Figurehead on a contemporary ship, Public Domain
A prevailing superstition among sailors was that a woman on board a ship was bad luck. In fact, few crews included women because they were believed to distract the crew. Some believed that a woman’s presence would anger the sea and endanger them all. Others believed female mermaids would pull them into rocky coastlines. And mythical or otherwise, it was best to avoid women while on board. Sailors were also notoriously drunkards, and social customs encouraged women to avoid such behavior, so it was improper.
Women were felt aboard ships, however, which were addressed in the feminine “she” and “her.” In ancient history, ships were named after goddesses, but by the modern era, ships were increasingly named after mortal women. Despite their reservations about women aboard their ships, sailors believed that naked women calmed the sea, so most figureheads depicted beautiful and topless women as a gift to the sea gods.
When one thinks of the exploration of the New World, visions of ships filled with men claiming new lands come to mind. Yet, beyond being figureheads on ships, women were the financiers and at the helm of these explorations. The Old and New Worlds are on the brink of connection.
Women were felt aboard ships, however, which were addressed in the feminine “she” and “her.” In ancient history, ships were named after goddesses, but by the modern era, ships were increasingly named after mortal women. Despite their reservations about women aboard their ships, sailors believed that naked women calmed the sea, so most figureheads depicted beautiful and topless women as a gift to the sea gods.
When one thinks of the exploration of the New World, visions of ships filled with men claiming new lands come to mind. Yet, beyond being figureheads on ships, women were the financiers and at the helm of these explorations. The Old and New Worlds are on the brink of connection.
Chinese Voyagers: The Chinese under the rebounding Ming Dynasty sent male dominated explorations into the Pacific and Indian Oceans in the early 1400s. These voyages under the leadership of Zheng He put those of the Europeans to shame. By comparison, these fleets were so big that the entirety of Columbus's voyage would've fit on just one level of one of the ships the Chinese were using. But these explorations stopped just as quickly as they had begun, and China retreated into an isolated state. Their retreat led to the rise of European traders seeking to fill the void in the Indian trade. Silver obtained from mines in Spanish America enriched Western Europe and was brought to China in a one-way exchange for tea and spices.
It would be mostly Europeans on the other end of the “known” world who became the movers and shakers of the now “global” economy. They began to explore into the Atlantic looking for a more efficient trading path to the rich spices and teas of Asia– and of course women were leaders there too.
Gudrid the Viking: There were already millions of diverse peoples living in the Americas before the arrival of the Old World Ancient Egyptians are believed to have possibly explored and settled in the Americas over three thousand years ago. Another wave of African exploration is said to have begun several hundred years before Columbus. Further, if we are looking at his venture as the start of European discovery, we ignore the numerous Viking explorations of North America, for example, Gudrid’s exploration of Canada, more than 1,000 years ago.
Although women in the Viking Age (c. 790-1100 CE) lived in a male-dominated society, they were far from being powerless: they ran farms and households, were responsible for textile production, moved away from Scandinavia to help settle Viking territories abroad stretching from Greenland, Iceland, and the British Isles to Russia, and were perhaps even involved in trade in the sparse urban centers. Some were part of a rich upper class, such as the lady – perhaps a queen – who was buried in the ostentatious Oseberg ship burial in 834 CE. On the other end of the spectrum, slaves, among them many women, were taken from conquered territories during the Viking expansion and integrated into Viking Age society.
It would be mostly Europeans on the other end of the “known” world who became the movers and shakers of the now “global” economy. They began to explore into the Atlantic looking for a more efficient trading path to the rich spices and teas of Asia– and of course women were leaders there too.
Gudrid the Viking: There were already millions of diverse peoples living in the Americas before the arrival of the Old World Ancient Egyptians are believed to have possibly explored and settled in the Americas over three thousand years ago. Another wave of African exploration is said to have begun several hundred years before Columbus. Further, if we are looking at his venture as the start of European discovery, we ignore the numerous Viking explorations of North America, for example, Gudrid’s exploration of Canada, more than 1,000 years ago.
Although women in the Viking Age (c. 790-1100 CE) lived in a male-dominated society, they were far from being powerless: they ran farms and households, were responsible for textile production, moved away from Scandinavia to help settle Viking territories abroad stretching from Greenland, Iceland, and the British Isles to Russia, and were perhaps even involved in trade in the sparse urban centers. Some were part of a rich upper class, such as the lady – perhaps a queen – who was buried in the ostentatious Oseberg ship burial in 834 CE. On the other end of the spectrum, slaves, among them many women, were taken from conquered territories during the Viking expansion and integrated into Viking Age society.
Stone mentioning Hassmyra, Wikimedia Commons
Almost all Viking Age women were involved in socioeconomic roles one way or another. In fact, the most common goods found in female graves from this period are spindle whorls, wool combs, and weaving battens, especially in the countryside. Other tasks that do not show up in the archaeological record in such a direct way but are traditionally associated with women are child-rearing and caring for the sick or the elderly, and we might also imagine women doing odd jobs around the farm or even some carpentry or leatherworking. How exactly children were brought up and whether girls were treated any differently from boys is unclear; although daughters could perhaps be given in marriage at an appropriate age.
Viking women may have had a good degree of control over running the household and were likely left in charge of matters while their husbands were away, or dead. Although subordinate to their husbands, like their contemporaries, women arguably had a good degree of responsibility and perhaps even control over the running of the household, as symbolized by the fact they were often buried with keys, and they were likely on occasion left in charge of matters while their husbands were away, or dead. Anne-Sophie Gräslund, an archaeologist, has even suggested farms were like firms, "run by husband and wife together, in which the work of both partners was of equal importance although different and complementary" (Sørensen, 260). It must be noted, though, that the people who owned such (larger) farms and their adjoining lands would have had considerable means and would likely have belonged to the upper classes within society; they are not automatically reflective of all of Viking Age society. Throughout Viking Age society, though, marriage was a pivotal institution used to create new ties of kinship, also among Scandinavians and locals in conquered or settled areas, and, in line with the influence women could wield through their husbands, it seems unmarried women had very limited prospects. Before the advent of Christianity throughout Scandinavia and Viking territories around 1000 CE, concubinage (often connected to slavery), and plural marriages occurred at least among the royals.
In general, although it is hard to comment on the exact status of Viking Age housewives, we must remember their domestic role was a very central one and would not generally have gone unappreciated. The inscription found on a stone as Hassmyra (Vs 24) – the only verse found on a Swedish inscribed stone that commemorates a woman – certainly seems to confirm this.
Viking women may have had a good degree of control over running the household and were likely left in charge of matters while their husbands were away, or dead. Although subordinate to their husbands, like their contemporaries, women arguably had a good degree of responsibility and perhaps even control over the running of the household, as symbolized by the fact they were often buried with keys, and they were likely on occasion left in charge of matters while their husbands were away, or dead. Anne-Sophie Gräslund, an archaeologist, has even suggested farms were like firms, "run by husband and wife together, in which the work of both partners was of equal importance although different and complementary" (Sørensen, 260). It must be noted, though, that the people who owned such (larger) farms and their adjoining lands would have had considerable means and would likely have belonged to the upper classes within society; they are not automatically reflective of all of Viking Age society. Throughout Viking Age society, though, marriage was a pivotal institution used to create new ties of kinship, also among Scandinavians and locals in conquered or settled areas, and, in line with the influence women could wield through their husbands, it seems unmarried women had very limited prospects. Before the advent of Christianity throughout Scandinavia and Viking territories around 1000 CE, concubinage (often connected to slavery), and plural marriages occurred at least among the royals.
In general, although it is hard to comment on the exact status of Viking Age housewives, we must remember their domestic role was a very central one and would not generally have gone unappreciated. The inscription found on a stone as Hassmyra (Vs 24) – the only verse found on a Swedish inscribed stone that commemorates a woman – certainly seems to confirm this.
Gudrid the Viking, Public Domain
Gudrid’s identity is a bit of a mystery. She is described as beautiful, smart, and political. She appears in a few Viking sagas, but in some she is a poor woman who never even made it to Greenland during her venture, while in others she is a wealthy explorer who not only made it to Greenland but then on to Canada with her husband and a small crew. She landed in what the Vikings called Vinland (“wine land”), modern Newfoundland, where she would live for three years and create a settlement. She would later return to Iceland, but her exploring days were not done.
The sagas indicate that Gudrid toured well into her forties and fifties, which was pretty old for back then. In her lifetime it is said that she made eight crossings of the North Atlantic Sea. It is even suggested that she traveled farther than any other Viking, from Scandinavia to Greenland to North America to Rome and back again in her later life. With all figures of history, evidence is needed to separate the fantasy from the reality, and archaeologists have found what they believe to be Gudrid’s home in Iceland based on the sagas, and it is built in the style of those found in Newfoundland settlements, including the one she and her husband were said to have founded. While Gudrid would be the most famous, we can’t forget that there were likely other Viking women along with her crew to help form this settlement.
While Gudrid doesn’t get the same respect as others who made such voyages, historian Nancy Marie Brown points out the importance of the fact that Gudrid was never a tagalong. “She was not dragged along. This was her choice. She could have very easily stayed home in Greenland. She wanted to go.” Five hundred years before Columbus, and another several hundred years before even the heartiest of men were willing to make the leap to settle the New World, Gudrid had already come and gone.
Isabella and Spain:
Moving back to Columbus, let’s also not forget that he wouldn’t have had the money, ships, or crew for his “discovery” without Queen Isabella of Spain. Queen Isabella and her husband King Ferdinand were trying to unify a Catholic Spain, at the cost of the Muslims and Jews among their population, when Columbus was campaigning for his exploration. Money was not only key to Columbus’ proposed journey, but to the Queen’s and King’s continued unification of Spain, as much of their money had been spent in this pursuit. Columbus’ intent to find a new route to the Asian spice markets would save the Spanish quite a lot of money by avoiding the middle man on the land routes or the pirates on the sea routes.
The sagas indicate that Gudrid toured well into her forties and fifties, which was pretty old for back then. In her lifetime it is said that she made eight crossings of the North Atlantic Sea. It is even suggested that she traveled farther than any other Viking, from Scandinavia to Greenland to North America to Rome and back again in her later life. With all figures of history, evidence is needed to separate the fantasy from the reality, and archaeologists have found what they believe to be Gudrid’s home in Iceland based on the sagas, and it is built in the style of those found in Newfoundland settlements, including the one she and her husband were said to have founded. While Gudrid would be the most famous, we can’t forget that there were likely other Viking women along with her crew to help form this settlement.
While Gudrid doesn’t get the same respect as others who made such voyages, historian Nancy Marie Brown points out the importance of the fact that Gudrid was never a tagalong. “She was not dragged along. This was her choice. She could have very easily stayed home in Greenland. She wanted to go.” Five hundred years before Columbus, and another several hundred years before even the heartiest of men were willing to make the leap to settle the New World, Gudrid had already come and gone.
Isabella and Spain:
Moving back to Columbus, let’s also not forget that he wouldn’t have had the money, ships, or crew for his “discovery” without Queen Isabella of Spain. Queen Isabella and her husband King Ferdinand were trying to unify a Catholic Spain, at the cost of the Muslims and Jews among their population, when Columbus was campaigning for his exploration. Money was not only key to Columbus’ proposed journey, but to the Queen’s and King’s continued unification of Spain, as much of their money had been spent in this pursuit. Columbus’ intent to find a new route to the Asian spice markets would save the Spanish quite a lot of money by avoiding the middle man on the land routes or the pirates on the sea routes.
portrait of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, wikimedia commons
Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I, wikimedia commons
Upon Columbus’ supposed discovery of a new route to Asia, he returned with a number of “Indians” that represented peoples whom Isabella then believed she would rule. She had ordered some of these captured slaves to be freed, and was even considering the prospect of rights under the Spanish crown, but she would die in 1504 before it was recognized that this was not Asia at all, but something entirely new.
Isabella would not be the only Spanish royal to fund expeditions to the New World, but she did help to unify the nation and establish a strong and profitable court to make future expeditions possible. As a result, Spain would hold a monopoly on the exploration and riches of the New World for hundreds of years.
Spain’s influence would spread throughout South and Central America, and as is typical of European exploration, the indigenous people fell in the crosshairs. Often this was done purely by biology, as diseases spread rapidly throughout native population; other times this was done through pure malice as greater and greater resources were found. Natives were slaughtered, brutalized, and made homeless by the rampaging Spanish conquistadors. Women were not only victimized but also helped to support resistance efforts as well as protect their families through cooperation.
Queen Elizabeth and England:
The New World became the obsession of all Europeans, and soon the Spanish would not be the only group to be exploring and conquering the Americas. The Portuguese, French, Dutch, and Swedish would all make their presence known, but much like Queen Isabella, it would be Queen Elizabeth I who would make exploration a cornerstone of her reign.
Queen of England from 1558-1603, Elizabeth remains one of the most famous and successful European monarchs. She would not only defeat the mighty Spanish Armada and become a powerhouse of politics, economic growth, and art, but she would also set the stage for England to become a primary power in the New World. She was thoroughly educated, with one of her tutors, Roger Ascham, stating that “Her mind has no womanly weakness, […] her perseverance is equal to that of a man, and her memory long keeps what it quickly picks up.” For example, the number of people she saw executed by her father, Henry the VIII– including her mother–had taught her to keep her political and religious views close to her chest until she found herself in power.
She quickly restructured the whole power system. She was perpetually scrutinized by a society that viewed women as mere detours to the real figures of power: men. They largely believed women unfit and too temperamental for power. Instead, their job in this game of monarchy was to bring the right men into power by marrying or birthing them. Elizabeth refused to play this role. Both before her crowning and after, she refused to marry. She had English nobles courting her, international nobles courting her, but still she refused each, proclaiming that she had to make a careful decision for the protection of England. In reality, she likely didn’t want to give up her power and actually helped to protect this further by having these individual parties trying to claw their way in. While many feared a civil war if the queen did not bear a natural heir, she played her game well.
Isabella would not be the only Spanish royal to fund expeditions to the New World, but she did help to unify the nation and establish a strong and profitable court to make future expeditions possible. As a result, Spain would hold a monopoly on the exploration and riches of the New World for hundreds of years.
Spain’s influence would spread throughout South and Central America, and as is typical of European exploration, the indigenous people fell in the crosshairs. Often this was done purely by biology, as diseases spread rapidly throughout native population; other times this was done through pure malice as greater and greater resources were found. Natives were slaughtered, brutalized, and made homeless by the rampaging Spanish conquistadors. Women were not only victimized but also helped to support resistance efforts as well as protect their families through cooperation.
Queen Elizabeth and England:
The New World became the obsession of all Europeans, and soon the Spanish would not be the only group to be exploring and conquering the Americas. The Portuguese, French, Dutch, and Swedish would all make their presence known, but much like Queen Isabella, it would be Queen Elizabeth I who would make exploration a cornerstone of her reign.
Queen of England from 1558-1603, Elizabeth remains one of the most famous and successful European monarchs. She would not only defeat the mighty Spanish Armada and become a powerhouse of politics, economic growth, and art, but she would also set the stage for England to become a primary power in the New World. She was thoroughly educated, with one of her tutors, Roger Ascham, stating that “Her mind has no womanly weakness, […] her perseverance is equal to that of a man, and her memory long keeps what it quickly picks up.” For example, the number of people she saw executed by her father, Henry the VIII– including her mother–had taught her to keep her political and religious views close to her chest until she found herself in power.
She quickly restructured the whole power system. She was perpetually scrutinized by a society that viewed women as mere detours to the real figures of power: men. They largely believed women unfit and too temperamental for power. Instead, their job in this game of monarchy was to bring the right men into power by marrying or birthing them. Elizabeth refused to play this role. Both before her crowning and after, she refused to marry. She had English nobles courting her, international nobles courting her, but still she refused each, proclaiming that she had to make a careful decision for the protection of England. In reality, she likely didn’t want to give up her power and actually helped to protect this further by having these individual parties trying to claw their way in. While many feared a civil war if the queen did not bear a natural heir, she played her game well.
She was leading a weak, impoverished nation without a standing army, and a corrupt political system. She used every weapon available to her, including her gender and society’s expectation that she should marry, to manipulate suitors into helping her country. Despite their fears of a woman remaining in power, she convinced many of the love she had for her country through these efforts.
Throughout her reign she would face opposition, both internal and external, religious and secular, but she remained vigilant in her vision of England rising in power. She poked the European bears of France and Spain with sanctioned privateering and raids on their international ports, and despite its general weakness, her naval forces defeated the mighty Spanish Armada. Here, too, she played on society’s gender roles by parading in front of her men in armor, promising them great reward if victorious, and proclaiming, “I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too.” Their victory rocketed them into a position of naval strength, which would soon become naval superiority.
Her reign is not without controversy. Executions, bursts of rage, political manipulation, attempts to subjugate the Irish, famines, and more would pepper her reputation, but in her efforts to compete with her European counterparts, she too would look to the possibilities of the New World. Not unlike what the Spanish experienced in their conquest of South and Central America, the English found themselves facing populations of indigenous people occupying the lands the Europeans felt they so deserved.
Conclusion: Women were at the forefront of European efforts to discover a better path to Asian markets. When looking at this period through a wider lens that includes the roles of women, how does your perspective of exploration change? How are women’s efforts remembered, and how can they be better celebrated or analyzed?
Throughout her reign she would face opposition, both internal and external, religious and secular, but she remained vigilant in her vision of England rising in power. She poked the European bears of France and Spain with sanctioned privateering and raids on their international ports, and despite its general weakness, her naval forces defeated the mighty Spanish Armada. Here, too, she played on society’s gender roles by parading in front of her men in armor, promising them great reward if victorious, and proclaiming, “I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too.” Their victory rocketed them into a position of naval strength, which would soon become naval superiority.
Her reign is not without controversy. Executions, bursts of rage, political manipulation, attempts to subjugate the Irish, famines, and more would pepper her reputation, but in her efforts to compete with her European counterparts, she too would look to the possibilities of the New World. Not unlike what the Spanish experienced in their conquest of South and Central America, the English found themselves facing populations of indigenous people occupying the lands the Europeans felt they so deserved.
Conclusion: Women were at the forefront of European efforts to discover a better path to Asian markets. When looking at this period through a wider lens that includes the roles of women, how does your perspective of exploration change? How are women’s efforts remembered, and how can they be better celebrated or analyzed?
Draw your own conclusions
Radegund, Wikimedia Commons
Death of Brunhild, Public Domain
|
Did Queen Isabella's pressure cause genocide?
She commissioned Columbus' voyage. How much did she know? How much did she control? Should she take responsibility for the genocide of Native Americans? Coming soon! Did monarchies provide a stronger path to power for women?
Examining the lives of queen regents who ruled in monarchies, students will examine how stable their power was. Coming soon! |
Lesson Plans from Other Organizations
- This website, Women in World History has primary source based lesson plans on women's history in a whole range of topics. Some are free while others have a cost.
- The Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media has produced recommendations for teaching women's history with primary sources and provided a collection of sources for world history. Check them out!
- The Stanford History Education Group has a number of lesson plans about women in World History.
Remedial Herstory Editors. "18. 1000-1600 WOMEN EXPLORERS AND LEADERS." The Remedial Herstory Project. November 1, 2022. www.remedialherstory.com.
Primary AUTHOR: |
Jacqui Nelson
|
Primary Reviewer: |
Dr. Katherine Koh
|
Consulting Team |
Editors |
|
Kelsie Brook Eckert, Project Director
Coordinator of Social Studies Education at Plymouth State University Dr. Nancy Locklin-Sofer, Consultant Professor of History at Maryville College. Chloe Gardner, Consultant PhD Candidate in Religious Studies at Edinburgh University Dr. Whitney Howarth, Consultant Former Professor of History at Plymouth State University Jacqui Nelson, Consultant Teaching Lecturer of Military History at Plymouth State University Maria Concepcion Marquez Sandoval PhD Candidate in History at Arizona University |
Amy Flanders
Humanities Teacher, Moultonborough Academy ReviewersAncient:
Dr. Kristin Heineman Professor of History at Colorado State University Dr. Bonnie Rock-McCutcheon Professor of History at Wilson College Sarah Stone PhD Candidate in Religious Studies at Edinburgh University Medieval: Dr. Katherine Koh Professor of History at La Sierra University Dr. Jonathan Couser Professor of History at Plymouth State University Dr. Shahla Haeri Professor of History at Boston University Lauren Cole PhD Candidate in History at Northwestern University |
Survey's on womens World History
In this landmark study, Shahla Haeri offers the extraordinary biographies of several Muslim women rulers and leaders who reached the apex of political systems of their times.
|
The history of the world is the history of great women, their names should be shouted from the rooftops and that is exactly what Jenni Murray is here to do.
|
Recording the important milestones in the birth of the modern feminist movement and the rise of women into greater social, economic, and political power, Miles takes us through through a colorful pageant of astonishing women
|
Jenni Murray presents the history of Britain as you’ve never seen it before, through the lives of twenty-one women who refused to succumb to the established laws of society, whose lives embodied hope and change, and who still have the power to inspire us today..
|
Meet the unsung sheroes of history: the diverse, defiant and daring (wo)men who changed the rules, and their identities, to get sh*t done.
|
Beginning in seventh-century Mecca and Medina, A History of Islam in 21 Women takes us around the globe, through eleventh-century Yemen and Khorasan, and into sixteenth-century Spain, Istanbul and India. From there to nineteenth-century Persia and the African savannah, to twentieth-century Russia, Turkey, Egypt and Iraq, before reaching present day London.
|
A trailblazing, conversation-starting history of women’s health—from the earliest medical ideas about women’s illnesses to hormones and autoimmune diseases—brought together in a fascinating sweeping narrative.
|
Pre-History (3,300,000-3000 BCE)
According to the myth of matriarchal prehistory, men and women lived together peacefully before recorded history. Society was centered around women, with their mysterious life-giving powers, and they were honored as incarnations and priestesses of the Great Goddess. Then a transformation occurred, and men thereafter dominated society.
Among surviving Greek tragedies only Euripides' Trojan Women shows us the extinction of a whole city, an entire people. Despite its grim theme, or more likely because of the centrality of that theme to the deepest fears of our own age, this is one of the relatively few Greek tragedies that regularly finds its way to the stage. The theme is really a double one: the suffering of the victims of war, exemplified by the woman who survive the fall of Troy, and the degradation of the victors, shown by the Greeks' reckless and ultimately self-destructive behavior.
Women in Prehistory challenges and undertakes an examination of the archaeological record informed by insights into the cultural construction of gender that have emerged from scholarship in history, anthropology, biology, and related disciplines.
|
Lucy is a 3.2-million-year-old skeleton who has become the spokeswoman for human evolution. She is perhaps the best known and most studied fossil hominid of the twentieth century, the benchmark by which other discoveries of human ancestors are judged.”–From Lucy’s Legacy
Women, Gender and Identity in Third Intermediate Period Egypt clarifies the role of women in Egyptian society during the first millennium BCE, allowing for more nuanced discussions of women in the Third Intermediate Period. It is an intensive study of a corpus that is both geographically and temporally localized around the city of Thebes, which was the cultural and religious centre of Egypt during this period and home to a major national necropolis.
|
The Chalice and the Blade tells a new story of our cultural origins. It shows that warfare and the war of the sexes are neither divinely nor biologically ordained. It provides verification that a better future is possible—and is in fact firmly rooted in the haunting dramas of what happened in our past.
Women of Babylon is a much-needed historical/art historical study that investigates the concepts of femininity which prevailed in Assyro-Babylonian society. Zainab Bahrani's detailed analysis of how the culture of ancient Mesopotamia defined sexuality and gender roles both in, and through, representation is enhanced by a rich selection of visual material extending from 6500 BC - 1891 AD. Professor Bahrani also investigates the ways in which women of the ancient Near East have been perceived in classical scholarship up to the nineteenth century.
|
Ancient History (3000 BC-500 AD)
Historians Helen Bond and Joan Taylor explore the way in which Mary the mother of Jesus, Mary Magdalene, Mary, Martha and a whole host of other women - named and unnamed - have been remembered by posterity, noting how many were silenced, tamed or slurred by innuendo - though occasionally they get to slay dragons.
Hatshepsut successfully negotiated a path from the royal nursery to the very pinnacle of authority, and her reign saw one of Ancient Egypt's most prolific building periods. Scholars have long speculated as to why her monuments were destroyed within a few decades of her death, all but erasing evidence of her unprecedented rule. Constructing a rich narrative history using the artifacts that remain, noted Egyptologist Kara Cooney offers a remarkable interpretation of how Hatshepsut rapidly but methodically consolidated power - and why she fell from public favor just as quickly. The Woman Who Would Be King traces the unconventional life of an almost-forgotten pharaoh and explores our complicated reactions to women in power.
|
Byzantine Intersectionality reveals the fascinating, little-examined conversations in medieval thought and visual culture around sexual and reproductive consent, bullying and slut-shaming, homosocial and homoerotic relationships, trans and nonbinary gender identities, and the depiction of racialized minorities.
This first comprehensive work on women in pre-Columbian American cultures describes gender roles and relationships in North, Central, and South America from 12,000 B.C. to the A.D. 1500s. Utilizing many key archaeological works, Karen Olsen Bruhns and Karen E. Stothert redress some of the long-standing male bias in writing about ancient Native American lifeways.
|
This riveting narrative explores the lives of six remarkable female pharaohs, from Hatshepsut to Cleopatra--women who ruled with real power--and shines a piercing light on our own perceptions of women in power today.
|
middle ages (500-1500 AD)
A history of peasants in the Middle Ages, the story takes the listener into the life of Marion, the carpenter's wife, and her extended family as they struggle to survive through hardship, featuring a year in their lives at the mercy of the weather and the Lord of the Manor.
This important study provides the only comprehensive survey of Chinese women during the early medieval period of disunion, which lasted from the fall of the Eastern Han dynasty in 220 AD to the reunification of China by the Sui dynasty in 581 AD, also known as the Six Dynasties. Bret Hinsch offers rich descriptions of the most important aspects of female life in this era, including family and marriage, motherhood, political power, work, inheritance, education, and religious roles.
This critical anthology presents the poems of more than 200 Arabic women poets active from the 600s through the 1400s CE. It marks the first appearance in English translation for many of these poems. The volume includes biographical information about the poets, as well as an analysis of the development of women’s poetry in classical Arabic literature that places the women and the poems within their cultural context.
This book presents a synthetic history of the family--the most basic building block of medieval Jewish communities--in Germany and northern France during the High Middle Ages. Concentrating on the special roles of mothers and children, it also advances recent efforts to write a comparative Jewish-Christian social history.
|
Medieval history is often written as a series of battles and territorial shifts. But the essential contributions of women during this period have been too often relegated to the dustbin of history. In Women in the Middle Ages, Frances and Joseph Gies reclaim this lost history, in a lively historical survey that charts the evolution of women’s roles throughout the period and profiles eight individual women in depth.
These pages capture a thousand years of medieval women's visionary writing, from late antiquity to the 15th century. Written by hermits, recluses, wives, mothers, wandering teachers, founders of religious communities, and reformers, the selections reveal how medieval women felt about their lives, the kind of education they received, how they perceived the religion of their time, and why ascetic life attracted them.
Berenice II (c. 264-221 BCE), daughter of King Magas of Cyrene and wife of Ptolemy III Euergetes, came to embody all the key religious, political, and artistic ideals of Ptolemaic Alexandria. Though she arrived there nearly friendless, with the taint of murder around her, she became one of the most accomplished and powerful of the Macedonian queens descended from the successors of Alexander the Great.
For history and biography lovers, the 15th-century life and travels of the extraordinary Margery Kempe, who left her family to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
|
The Middle Ages are seen as a bloodthirsty time of Vikings, saints and kings; a patriarchal society that oppressed and excluded women. But when we dig a little deeper into the truth, we can see that the “Dark” Ages were anything but.
A thousand years ago, a young Japanese girl embarked on a journey from deep in the countryside of eastern Japan to the capital. Forty years later, with the long account of that journey as a foundation, the mature woman skillfully created an autobiography that incorporates many moments of heightened awareness from her long life. Married at age thirty-three, she identified herself as a reader and writer more than as a wife and mother; enthralled by fiction, she bore witness to the dangers of romantic fantasy as well as the enduring consolation of self-expression.
In Royal Witches, Gemma Hollman explores the lives and the cases of these so-called witches, placing them in the historical context of 15th-century England, a setting rife with political upheaval and war. In a time when the line between science and magic was blurred, these trials offer tantalizing insight into how malicious magic would be used and would later cause such mass hysteria in centuries to come.
Today, the name of Marie, who became countess of Champagne, is associated with the medieval courts of love, and she is recognized as one of the greatest literary patrons of her day. As the crusades tore her life apart, she ruled over one of the largest domains in France for almost two decades. During that time, and well aware of the disadvantage of being a woman, she was compelled to defend her rights and those of her children--even to the point of going to war against her half-brother, Philip Augustus.
|
early modern (1500-1800 ad)
An important selection from the largely unknown writings of women philosophers of the early modern period. Each selection is prefaced by a headnote giving a biographical account of its author and setting the piece in historical context. Atherton’s Introduction provides a solid framework for assessing these works and their place in modern philosophy.
Women and Community in Medieval and Early Modern Iberia draws on recent research to underscore the various ways Iberian women influenced and contributed to their communities, engaging with a broader academic discussion of women’s agency and cultural impact in the Iberian Peninsula. By focusing on women from across the socioeconomic and religious spectrum—elite, bourgeois, and peasant Christian women, Jewish, Muslim, converso, and Morisco women, and married, widowed, and single women—this volume highlights the diversity of women’s experiences, examining women’s social, economic, political, and religious ties to their families and communities in both urban and rural environments.
In Engendering Islands Ashley M. Williard argues that early Caribbean reconstructions of masculinity and femininity sustained occupation, slavery, and nascent ideas of race. In the face of historical silences, Williard’s close readings of archival and narrative texts reveals the words, images, and perspectives that reflected and produced new ideas of human difference. Juridical, religious, and medical discourses expose the interdependence of multiple conditions—male and female, enslaved and free, Black and white, Indigenous and displaced, normative and disabled—in the islands claimed for the French Crown.
Exploring the works of key women writers within their cultural, artistic and socio-political contexts, this book considers changes in the perception of women in early modern China. The sixteenth century brought rapid developments in technology, commerce and the publishing industry that saw women emerging in new roles as both consumers and producers of culture.
An innovative and valuable resource for understanding women's roles in changing societies, this book brings together the history of Africa, the Atlantic and gender before the 20th century. It explores trade, slavery and migrationin the context of the Euro-African encounter.
In June 1846 Susan Shelby Magoffin, eighteen years old and a bride of less than eight months, set out with her husband, a veteran Santa Fe trader, on a trek from Independence, Missouri, through New Mexico and south to Chihuahua. Her travel journal was written at a crucial time, when the Mexican War was beginning and New Mexico was occupied by Stephen Watts Kearny and the Army of the West.
|
|
leaders and explorers
Focusing on the century between the introduction of Christianity in Japan by Portuguese Jesuit missionaries in 1549 and the Japanese government's commitment to the eradication of Christianity in the mid-seventeenth century, this book outlines how women provided crucial leadership in the spread, nurture, and maintenance of the faith through various apostolic ministries.
Medieval women were normally denied access to public educational institutions, and so also denied the gateways to most leadership positions. Modern scholars have therefore tended to study learned medieval women as simply anomalies, and women generally as victims. This volume, however, argues instead for a via media. Drawing upon manuscript and archival sources, scholars here show that more medieval women attained some form of learning than hitherto imagined, and that women with such legal, social or ecclesiastical knowledge also often exercised professional or communal leadership.
The year was 1765. Eminent botanist Philibert Commerson had just been appointed to a grand new expedition: the first French circumnavigation of the world. As the ships’ official naturalist, Commerson would seek out resources—medicines, spices, timber, food—that could give the French an edge in the ever-accelerating race for empire. Jeanne Baret, Commerson’s young mistress and collaborator, was desperate not to be left behind. She disguised herself as a teenage boy and signed on as his assistant. The journey made the twenty-six-year-old, known to her shipmates as “Jean” rather than “Jeanne,” the first woman to ever sail around the globe. Yet so little is known about this extraordinary woman, whose accomplishments were considered to be subversive, even impossible for someone of her sex and class.
Much of her life is shrouded in mystery. Putting aside Cecilys role as mother and wife, who was she really? Matriarch of the York dynasty, she navigated through a tumultuous period and lived to see the birth of the future Henry VIII. From seeing the house of York defeat their Lancastrian cousins; to witnessing the defeat of her own son, Richard III, at the battle of Bosworth, Cecily then saw one of her granddaughters become Henry VIIs queen consort. Her story is full of controversy and the few published books on her life are full of guesswork. In this highly original history, Dr John Ashdown-Hill seeks to dispel the myths surrounding Cecily using previously unexamined contemporary sources.
|
|
Prehistory (3,300,000-3000 BC)
They live in caves and huddle around fires, but they are fully human, though they belong to our most ancient history. Risa the Arbiter has now spent years in her role and is known and respected throughout the area. Her children are half-grown and exhibiting traits of independence, both of thought and action. Her tribe has grown along with her and now needs more than one Arbiter can provide alone. Risa struggles with how best to organize her duties and establishes acolytes in each village to screen petitioners.
Ancient HISTORY (3000 BC - 500 AD)
The men of Athens gather to determine the truth. Meanwhile, the women of the city, who have no vote, are gathering in the shadows. The women know truth is a slippery thing in the hands of men. There are two sides to every story, and theirs has gone unheard. Until now.
Timely, unflinching, and transportive, Laura Shepperson’s Phaedra carves open long-accepted wounds to give voice to one of the most maligned figures of mythology and offers a stunning story of how truth bends under the weight of patriarchy but can be broken open by the force of one woman’s bravery. |
|
Middle ages (500-1500 ad)
The earl of Trent's Norman widow, Blanche, and her English steward, Miles Edwulfson, take possession of Blanche's estates, hoping to live a life of peace and quiet. However, they run afoul of a baron named Aimerie, who is building an illegal castle and taxing the surrounding manors--including Blanche's--to pay for it. Aimerie has ambitions that go far beyond this castle, to the heart of the English throne, and he won't let anyone stand in his way. What's more, Aimerie's hot-headed son, Ernoul, lusts after Blanche and wants to make her his wife. When Blanche and Miles refuse to pay Aimerie's taxes, Aimerie vows to crush them.
Though Japan has been devastated by a century of civil war, Risuko just wants to climb trees. Growing up far from the battlefields and court intrigues, the fatherless girl finds herself pulled into a plot that may reunite Japan -- or may destroy it. She is torn from her home and what is left of her family, but finds new friends at a school that may not be what it seems
|
For all fifteen years of her life, Pauline de Pamiers has witnessed an attack on her family, friends, and faith. It’s the early thirteenth century and the Pope and King of France are conducting a Crusade against the Cathars; the only crusade on European soil and against another Christian sect. As a member of this sect in France that sits outside the dominant Roman Church, Pauline is an outsider: young, but independent and bold.
11th century North Africa. In an attempt to change her destiny, love-struck Zaynab makes a false prophecy: that she is destined to marry a man who will create an empire. Although her plan backfires, Zaynab’s intelligence, beauty and ambition leads to four marriages, each lifting her status higher.
|
Eleanor of Aquitaine, one of the most powerful women in Europe, is crowned queen of England beside her young husband Henry II. While Henry battles their enemies and lays his plans, Eleanor is an adept acting ruler and mother to their growing brood of children. But she yearns for more than this - if only Henry would listen.
England, 1364: When married off at aged twelve to an elderly farmer, brazen redheaded Eleanor quickly realizes it won’t matter what she says or does, God is not on her side—or any poor woman’s for that matter. But then again, Eleanor was born under the joint signs of Venus and Mars, making her both a lover and a fighter.
|
Early modern (1500-1800 ad)
Runner-up for the National Book Award for Children's Literature in 1969, Constance is a classic of historical young adult fiction, recounting the daily life, hardships, romances, and marriage of a young girl during the early years of the Pilgrim settlement at Plymouth.
Sirma used to be happy. She had a home, loving parents, and wonderful friends. But her quiet mountain village changed forever when she lost her two best friends to a gang of outlaws. The village elders did nothing, fearing the wrath of Hamza Bei – the head outlaw in the area. Not long after, the same outlaws returned and devastated her village. Sirma has had enough. On St. George’s day, she disguised herself as a man and lead her own mountain gang dedicated to protecting the mountain villages and searching for Hamza Bei to put a stop to his tyranny. But the path she has chosen is harsh and merciless. Clashing with gangs of outlaws, surviving the elements in the mountain wilderness, and keeping her men from becoming the scoundrels they’ve sworn to fight are just a few of the challenges. But the biggest issue was the fact that her comrades had no idea they were led by a woman.
The author of The Soong Dynasty gives us our most vivid and reliable biography yet of the Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi, remembered through the exaggeration and falsehood of legend as the ruthless Manchu concubine who seduced and murdered her way to the Chinese throne in 1861.
|
|
Explorers and leaders
Eccentric Lady Jane Franklin makes an outlandish offer to adventurer Virginia Reeve: take a dozen women, trek into the Arctic, and find her husband's lost expedition. Four parties have failed to find him, and Lady Franklin wants a radical new approach: put the women in charge. A year later, Virginia stands trial for murder. Survivors of the expedition willing to publicly support her sit in the front row. There are only five. What happened out there on the ice?
Captain Thurídur, born in Iceland in 1777, lived a life that was both controversial and unconventional. Her first time fishing, on the open unprotected rowboats of her time, was at age 11. Soon after, she audaciously began wearing trousers. She later became an acclaimed fishing captain brilliant at weather-reading and seacraft and consistently brought in the largest catches. In the Arctic seas where drownings occurred with terrifying regularity, she never lost a single crewmember. Renowned for her acute powers of observation, she also solved a notorious crime. In this extremely unequal society, she used the courts to fight for justice for the abused, and in her sixties, embarked on perilous journeys over trackless mountains.
|
Elizabeth of York, her life already tainted by dishonour and tragedy, now queen to the first Tudor king, Henry the VII. Joan Vaux, servant of the court, straining against marriage and motherhood and privy to the deepest and darkest secrets of her queen. Like the ravens, Joan must use her eyes and her senses, as conspiracy whispers through the dark corridors of the Tower. Through Joan’s eyes, The Lady of the Ravens inhabits the squalid streets of Tudor London, the imposing walls of its most fearsome fortress and the glamorous court of a kingdom in crisis.
|
Brunhild was a foreign princess, raised to be married off for the sake of alliance-building. Her sister-in-law Fredegund started out as a lowly palace slave. And yet-in sixth-century Merovingian France, where women were excluded from noble succession and royal politics was a blood sport-these two iron-willed strategists reigned over vast realms, changing the face of Europe.
|
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Durn, Sara. “Did a Viking Woman Named Gudrid Really Travel to North America in 1000 A.D.?.” Smithsonian. March 3, 2021. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/did-viking-woman-named-gudrid-really-travel-north-america-1000-years-ago-180977126/.
Groeneveld, Emma. "Women in the Viking Age." World History Encyclopedia. Last modified July 11, 2018. https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1251/women-in-the-viking-age/.
Miles, Rosalind. The Women’s History of the World. London, UK: Harper Collins Publishers, 1988.
Strayer, R. and Nelson, E., Ways Of The World. 3rd ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2016.
Groeneveld, Emma. "Women in the Viking Age." World History Encyclopedia. Last modified July 11, 2018. https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1251/women-in-the-viking-age/.
Miles, Rosalind. The Women’s History of the World. London, UK: Harper Collins Publishers, 1988.
Strayer, R. and Nelson, E., Ways Of The World. 3rd ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2016.
