Website: HIS 384 History of the British Empire: Online Resources

Wall painting from the head offices of the British East India Company, 1778 (The British Library: Foster 245, Roma Spiridione, 'The East offering its riches to Britannia')

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/empire/g1/cs3/g1cs3s7.htm

Primary Source Databases

New York Times (Historical) This link opens in a new window
Includes all the articles published since the first issue of the paper in 1851 up to 2018. In addition to news stories, includes editorials, letters to the editor, obituaries, birth and marriage announcements, photos, and advertisements. Recent issues are available on the NexisUni database.
The Times (London) Digital Archive, 1785-2014 This link opens in a new window
Full-image archive of every page published by The Times (London) from 1785-2012. The text within the images is fully searchable at the article level. Does not include the Sunday Times, the Times Literary Supplement, the Times Educational Supplement, the Times Higher Education Supplement. For current articles, see Lexis-Nexis Academic.
19th Century British Pamphlets (JSTOR) This link opens in a new window
More than 20,000 pamphlets on the sociopolitical and economic landscape of 19th century Britain held in British research libraries. Note: To limit JSTOR searches to 19th Century Pamphlets only, check the "Pamphlets" box on the Advanced Search screen.

Selected Websites

British History (BBC) This link opens in a new window
The main page of the BBC History website that relates to British history.
British History Online This link opens in a new window
Digital versions of primary & secondary sources for the history of the British Isles: parliamentary journals, tax records, church documents, calendars and indexes, directories, Ordnance Survey maps, & volumes in the Victoria County History.
British Library This link opens in a new window
The British Library features a "help for researchers" page, which lets you narrow down your search by topic, time period and resource type.
EuroDocs: Primary Historical Documents from Western Europe This link opens in a new window
These links connect to Western European (mainly primary) historical documents that are transcribed, reproduced in facsimile, or translated. They shed light on key historical happenings within the respective countries (and within the broadest sense of political, economic, social and cultural history). The order of documents is chronological wherever possible.
Internet History Sourcebook Project (Fordham University) This link opens in a new window
Provides access to online primary source material for a number of branches of history. The project offers a combination of locally hosted material and links (often annotated) to documents on other sites. The three main sourcebooks cover ancient, medieval, and modern history; in addition to these, there are subsidiary sourcebooks, which take a thematic approach.
Kindred Britain This link opens in a new window
Find links between well-known figures in English history. A fun site to use
The Kraus Collection of Sir Francis Drake This link opens in a new window
cis Drake, English explorer and naval strategist, circumnavigated the earth from 1577-1580. During these travels, Drake visited the Caribbean and the Pacific claiming a portion of California for Queen Elizabeth and waging battles on the Spanish. This collection comprises important primary and secondary materials accumulated about Drake’s voyages throughout the then Spanish territory of the Americas. Texts are in English, Latin, German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish and French.
National Archives (Great Britain) This link opens in a new window
This website gives public access to the National Archives catalogue, which contains "9.5 million descriptions of documents from central government, courts of law and other UK national bodies, including records on family history, medieval tax, criminal trials, UFO sightings, the history of many countries and many other subjects."
Proceedings of the Old Bailey This link opens in a new window
Access to the full-text and digitized images of the accounts of over 197,000 criminal trials that took place at London's notorious criminal court, the Old Bailey, from the seventeenth to the early twentieth century.
Recovered Histories This link opens in a new window
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 Victorian Web (Brown University) This link opens in a new window
Provides a comprehensive general overview of nineteenth century British history and literature. The site is divided into sections on political, social, and economic history. There are also sections on gender matters, philosophy, religion, science, technology, genre and technique, authors, visual arts and Victorian design.
World Digital Library Home This link opens in a new window
The World Digital Library, supported by UNESCO, is a project to provide primary sources from other countries and cultures free of charge, and is offered in seven different languages, including Arabic,...

Rochambeau Map Collection
The Rochambeau Map Collection contains cartographic items used by Jean Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau (1725-1807), when he was commander in chief of the French expeditionary army (1780-82) during the American Revolution. The maps were from Rochambeau's personal collection, cover much of eastern North America, and date from 1717 to 1795. The maps show Revolutionary-era military actions, some of which were published in England and France, and early state maps from the 1790s. Many of the items in this extraordinary group of maps show the importance of cartographic materials in the campaigns of the American Revolution (1776 to 1783) as well as Rochambeau's continuing interest in the new United States.
Colonial North American at Harvard
Colonial North America at Harvard Library provides access to remarkable and wide-ranging materials digitized as part of an ongoing, multi-year project. When complete, the project will make available to the world approximately 470,000 digitized pages of all known archival and manuscript materials in the Harvard Library that relate to 17th- and 18th-century North America.