2023 – Page 12 – Manchester Historian

When the Spanish colonized Ecuador in 1531 it began a rule of Catholicism, defining the figure of women as pure and virginal, and certainly in no condition to vote. Two incredibly important women: Matilde Hidalgo de Procel and Dolores Cacuango, born just 8 years apart, fought for the rights of women and indigenous people to try and incite change in a country ruled by elitist white men.

Toni Morrison, beloved American author and literary scholar, is best remembered for her razor-sharp prose. In the wake of her death in 2019, scholars have revisited her life’s works, revealing a depth of understanding of black American history previously unappreciated.

Many people in Poland saw the 1st of August 1944 as a call for change. By 1944, German occupation of Poland had persisted for five years, yet the Polish Home Army, an underground resistance group, took it upon themselves to liberate the capital of Warsaw. Jadwiga Klarner-Szymanowska, a 22 year old student, awaited this announcement for months. With just a first aid kit, she left her family home, and presented herself to the Polish Home Army.

At the dawn of Stalin’s rule, the Soviet state envisaged a new, unwaveringly socialist Central Asia. The Uzbekistan Communist Party declared a hujum (assault) in Central Asia that attacked Muslim women’s practice of veiling their faces in late 1926. The party alleged this proposal was launched to free women and create a more equal society when in reality, it was part of the Soviet Union’s ideology of scientific atheism, an anti-religious policy.