HIST 295: Overthrowing Empire: Digitized Collections for Primary Sources

A Source Set from the Digital Public Library of America

A Source Set from the Digital Public Library of America

A unique glimpse into 19th century Hawaii, this project digitized materials relating to mission houses in Hawaii.

The Office of Hawaiian Affairs’ (OHA’s) Papakilo Database, is the ongoing development of varied collections pertaining to historically and culturally significant places, events, and documents in Hawai'i’s history.

Genealogies, government documents, speeches, passenger manifests and more.

The Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) is a cooperative digital library for resources from and about the Caribbean and circum-Caribbean. Browse by country or search!

Collection of primary sources curated by the National Archives.

Collection of primary sources curated by the National Archives.

A Collection of Sources curated by the National History Center.

A Collection of Sources curated by the National History Center.

Anti-Slavery International has digitised its collection of 18th and 19th century literature on the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Recovered Histories captures the narratives of the enslaved, enslavers, slave ship surgeons, abolitionists, parliamentarians, clergy, planters and rebels.

The goal of this project is to create a digital collection of Latin American travel accounts written in the 16th-19th centuries. The works selected are linked to critical essays produced by undergraduate students who are enrolled in Prof. Green's courses on Latin American history. This site will serve as a free-access visual and research tool for students and scholars alike.

Collection of historical materials curated by the University of Hawaii. Includes documents relating to the annexation of Hawaii and more.

"First Blacks in the Americas," the first digital bilingual platform devoted to disseminating the history of the early inhabitants of black-African ancestry of today's Dominican Republic, then a Spanish colony named La Española (Hispaniola, in English) that occupied the entire island of the same name, shared today by the Dominican Republic and the Republic of Haiti.

Scarce and unique pamphlets, primarily from Chile, Cuba, Bolivia and Mexico, published during the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Over 1,200 images, maps and texts from the 18th and 19th centuries reveal contrasting experiences of life in the former British colonies.

Slave Biographies: The Atlantic Database Network is an open access data repository of information on the identities of enslaved people in the Atlantic World. It includes the names, ethnicities, skills, occupations, and illnesses of individual slaves. Phase one of a multi-phase project is presented here. Users of the website can access three data sets: one about slaves in Maranhão, Brazil, one about slaves in colonial Louisiana, and another about freed slaves in Antebellum Louisiana

Collection of primary sources from the Digital Public Library of America

traces the evolution of Mexico during this pivotal period. Comprising nearly 1,000 titles from Mexico’s pre-independence, independence and revolutionary periods (1807-1929), the newspapers in this collection provide rare documentation of the dramatic events of this era and include coverage of Mexican partisan politics, yellow press, political and social satire, as well as local, regional, national and international news. While holdings of many of the newspapers in this collection are available only in very short runs, the titles are often unique and, in many cases, represent the only existing record of a newspaper’s short-lived publication.

an open access collection of pre-twentieth-century Caribbean texts, maps, and images. Texts include travel narratives, novels, poetry, natural histories, and diaries that have not been brought together before as a single collection focused on the Caribbean.
Plantation slavery and settler colonialism are defining aspects of the early Caribbean—both sit at the origin of the modern capitalist world. The texts and images collected here tell the story of European imperial domination, and of the enslaved African and Indigenous American people whose lives, labor, and land shaped the culture and development of the Atlantic world.

A Collection of Sources curated by the History Department of Fordham University.

A Collection of Sources curated by the History Department of Fordham Unviersity.

From Harvard University:
These late-19th- and early-20th-century trade cards and illustrations offer insight into European perspectives on the colonial experience.

Collection of Imperialism related primary sources from a course at University of Massachusetts.

A Collection of sources curated by a faculty member at Buffalo State University.

A collection of sources from the National History Center.

A collection of sources curated by the History Department at Fordham University.

A collection of sources curated by the History Department at Fordham University.

Video of British involvement in India

British Pathé was at the forefront of cinematic journalism, blending information with entertainment to popular effect. Over the course of a century, it documented everything from major armed conflicts and seismic political crises to the curious hobbies and eccentric lives of ordinary people. If it happened, British Pathé filmed it.

The Indian Opinion was a newspaper established by Indian leader Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. The publication was an important tool for the political movement led by Gandhi and the Natal Indian Congress to fight racial discrimination and win civil rights for the Indian immigrant community in South Africa.

The Digital South Asia Library provides digital materials for reference and research on South Asia to scholars, public officials, business leaders, and other users.

Glimpses of South Asia before 1947

The Digital Colonial Documents Project (India) is intended to promote study of the rare seminal documents which were influential in the formation of the notions of nation, state and culture during the colonial period. The project makes available rare colonial documents as searchable internet documents

A preliminary guide to archival collections relating to American Protestant missionary activity in South Asia (including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Burma/Myanmar, Ceylon/Sri Lanka, India, Nepal, and Pakistan) - with a focus on the holdings of undergraduate liberal arts colleges in the United States.

A Collection of Sources curated by the National History Center.

The India Office Records are the archives of the administration in London of the East India Company and the pre-1947 government of India. The official archives of the India Office Records are complemented by deposits of private papers relating to the British experience in India.

The Medical History of British India collection consists of official publications varying from short reports to multi-volume histories related to disease, public health and medical research between circa 1850 to 1920.

A collection of interviews conducted in the 1970s and 1980s with both Indian and British people describing their experiences of life in British India, the events leading up to independence in 1947 and the early years of independent India and Pakistan. Covers all aspects of South Asian society, from a wide range of perspectives and includes interviews with prominent figures in the movements for independence, senior civil servants, labourers, poets, writers, broadcasters, soldiers etc. There are a total of 400 interviews, all transcribed, totalling over 1,000 hours of recordings.

A collection of sources curated by the National Archives of the United Kingdom.

Bernhard von Bülow (1849-1929), who served as Reich chancellor from 1900 to 1909, gave his
famous speech on Germany’s “place in the sun” when he was foreign minister. His vision of
Germany as a colonial power became the ideological foundation of German naval expansion,
which began shortly thereafter.

A Collection of Sources digitized and made available by the University of Frankfurt.

A collection of documents provided by the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London.

BHO was founded by the Institute of Historical Research and the History of Parliament Trust in 2003. Our collection currently contains over 1,270 volumes and is always growing.

The aim of this AHRC funded project is to produce a unique digital research resource on the oral history of the Commonwealth since 1965. When completed, it will include at least 60 major interviews with leading figures in the recent history of the organisation.

The digital library of the Bibliothèque nationale de France

Photographic collections originating from public sources have been built up by organisations devoted to highlighting the action of France in its colonies.

Between April 2017 and March 2019 more than 550 titles on German colonialism are digitized in the Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Bremen. Project partners are the Johann Christian Senckenberg University Library in Frankfurt/Main and the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. All title and structure data as well as the full text are searchable. The individual titles are also available for free download as PDF documents.

During the second half of the 19th century numerous societies arose that concerned themselves with caring for German emigrants, and spreading of colonial ideas. The colonial library consists of the libraries of several colonial societies. The most important was the "German Colonial Society" (Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft, DKG) founded in 1887. For their propaganda activities its members collected not only books (ca. 15 000) and journals, but also more than 50 000 photographs, which were used to illustrate their publicity lectures in Germany.

Resources dedicated to the history of Saint-Barthelemy: slave trade, slavery, their abolition, and impact on this island of the Lesser Antilles.

This source speaks for itself, I think. It has digital images and good subject captions.

A collection of sources curated by the History Department of Fordham University.

A collection of sources from the American Museum of National History

Collection of materials from University of South Africa.

A collection of sources curated by the University of Cape Town.

An important medical journal that has been published since the 19th century in South Africa.

Livingstone Online is a digital museum and library that allows users to encounter the written, visual, and material legacies of the famous Victorian explorer, missionary, and abolitionist David Livingstone (1813-73). The site draws on recent scholarship and international collaboration to restore one of the British Empire's most iconic figures to the many historical and cultural contexts in which he worked, traveled, and is remembered, and to rethink and reevaluate his place in those contexts.

Site is not originally in English, but is a great resource for looking at Portuguese involvement in Africa.

Written in French, from the French National Library.

AODL is an open access digital library of African cultural heritage materials created by Michigan State University in collaboration with museums, archives, scholars, and communities around the world.

From the University of Northwestern, "Early European caricatures and depictions of Africa and Africans in French periodicals. Such materials should be viewed in the context of the time and place in which they were created. The images are presented as specific, original artifacts recording the attitudes, perspectives and beliefs of a different era. Related URL connects to the whole publication."

These posters represent a sampling (approximately 600) of our growing collection of over 4000 Africana posters housed at the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies. The subjects covered here include politics, health, religion, liberation struggles, art exhibitions, and social issues.

A Collection of Sources curated by the National History Center.

Culturally and historically important work on the Natal region of South Africa. Made available by the HathiTrust.

Going back to the 19th century, the Kenya Gazette is an official publication of the government of the Republic of Kenya. It contains notices of new legislation, notices required to be published by law or policy as well as other announcements that are published for general public information. It is published every week, usually on Friday, with occasional releases of special or supplementary editions within the week.

A Collection of Sources curated by the National History Center.

Africana Historic Postcard Collection
The “Africana Historic Postcard Collection” provides a visual record of Africa and Its people during the historically intensive years of European colonialism, from 1895 to 1960, and chronicles the transformation of the cultural, political and social landscape of the African continent.
Cover ArtAncient Manuscripts from the Desert Libraries of Timbuktu (Library of Congress Online Exhibition)
The manuscripts on view are from the Mamma Haidara Commemorative Library and the Library of Cheick Zayni Baye of Boujbeha, two of the most noteworthy institutions in the Timbuktu area. As part of its continuing effort to create a universal collection of recorded knowledge from all geographic areas and all historical eras, the Library of Congress is particularly proud to have the opportunity to exhibit these important cultural artifacts from Mali. The Library is also pleased that copies of these manuscripts will be deposited in its collections and will be available for use by researchers and scholars.
Cover ArtOmar Ibn Said Collection
The Omar Ibn Said Collection consists of 42 digitized documents in both English and Arabic, including an 1831 manuscript in Arabic on "The Life of Omar Ibn Said," a West African slave in America, which is the centerpiece of this unique collection of texts. Some of the manuscripts in this collection include texts in Arabic by another West African slave in Panama, and others from individuals located in West Africa.

The African Activist Archive is preserving and making available online the records of activism in the United States to support the struggles of African peoples against colonialism, apartheid, and social injustice from the 1950s through the 1990s.

The liberation of Southern Africa and the dismantling of the Apartheid regime was one of the major political developments of the 20th century, with far-reaching consequences for people throughout Africa and around the globe. This collection focuses on the complex and varied liberation struggles in the region, with an emphasis on Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. I