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AM Explorer -- Selected Collections
American History, 1493-1945
This unique collection documents American History from the earliest settlers to the mid-twentieth century. It is sourced from the Gilder Lehrman Collection, one of the finest archives available for the study of American History.
Module I Settlement, Commerce, Revolution and Reform: 1493-1859
Module II Civil War, Reconstruction and the Modern Era: 1860-1945
Colonial America
Colonial America makes available all 1,450 volumes of the CO 5 series from The National Archives, UK, covering the period 1606 to 1822. CO 5 consists of the original correspondence between the British government and the governments of the American colonies, making it a uniquely rich resource for all historians of the period.
Defining Gender
Defining Gender provides access to a vast body of original British source material that will enrich the teaching and research experience of those studying history, literature, sociology and education from a gendered perspective
Empire Online
This resource brings together manuscript, printed and visual primary source materials for the study of 'Empire' and its theories, practices and consequences. The materials span across the last five centuries and are accompanied by a host of secondary learning resources including scholarly essays, maps and an interactive chronology.
Slavery, Abolition & Social Justice
Bringing together primary source documents from archives and libraries across the Atlantic world, this resource allows students and researchers to explore and compare unique material relating to the complex subjects of slavery, abolition and social justice.
In addition to the primary source documents there is a wealth of useful secondary sources for research and teaching; including an interactive map, scholarly essays, tutorials, a visual sources gallery, chronology and bibliography.
BU Databases
America's Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Fully searchable digital images of newspapers from 23 states and the District of Columbia. Focusing largely on the 18th and early 19th centuries. Date coverage: 1690 -1876.
AM Explorer This link opens in a new window
AM Explorer is a cross-collection search of the entire corpus of Adam Matthew's digitized arts and cultural heritage material in subjects including Area Studies, Cultural Studies, Empire and Globalism, Ethnic Studies, Gender and Sexuality, History, Politics, Literature, Theatre, and War and Conflict.
Archives of Sexuality & Gender This link opens in a new window
The Archives of Sexuality & Gender program provides a collection of primary sources for the historical study of sex, sexuality, and gender. With material dating back to the sixteenth century, researchers and scholars can examine how sexual norms have changed over time, health and hygiene, the development of sex education, the rise of sexology, changing gender roles, social movements and activism, erotica, and many other topical areas.
Literature Online (LION) This link opens in a new window
LION includes texts, criticism, and reference material, including thousands of literary articles, essays, biographies and encyclopedia entries on over 350,000 works of poetry, prose, and drama from the 8th to the 21st century.
Revolutionary War and Early America (ProQuest History Vault) This link opens in a new window
These collections from the Massachusetts Historical Society contain records of John Hancock, Paul Revere, Artemas Ward, and other collections from the Colonial Era, Revolutionary War, and Early National period.
Struggle for Women's Rights, Organizational Records, 1880-1990 (ProQuest History Vault) This link opens in a new window
This database includes records of the National Woman's Party, the League of Women Voters, and the Women's Action Alliance. The NWP was founded in 1913 when Alice Paul and colleagues broke away from the National American Woman Suffrage Association in dissent over strategy and tactics. The WAA, established in 1971, concerned itself with issues such as employment, childcare, health care, and education. The LWV collection covers women's involvement in U.S. politics from 1920 to 1974.
Women’s Studies Manuscript Collections (ProQuest History Vault) This link opens in a new window
Contains documents from the Schlesinger Library's holdings on voting rights, national politics, and reproductive rights.
Women Writers Online This link opens in a new window
Women Writers Online contains full-text editions of more than 300 texts by English and American women published between 1526 and 1850. It also includes introductory essays written by contemporary scholars about Renaissance women writers, their texts, and related topics. The site also includes links to other textual databases, and a collection of syllabi.
Archives and Digital Collections
Digital Public Library of America
The DPLA pulls together American cultural content from museums, archives, and libraries (check for terms of use and re-use). Use it for images of productions, texts, programs, and some sound and video.
New York Public Library Digital Collections
Provides thousands of digital images from the NYPL collections including historical maps, illuminated manuscripts, and prints and photographs. It contains texts and images from the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.
Smithsonian Institution Collections
Includes millions of records, including images, of resources in the Smithsonian collections.
Digital Library of the Caribbean
The Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) is a cooperative digital library for resources from and about the Caribbean and circum-Caribbean. The dLOC partner institutions are the core of dLOC. dLOC partners retain all rights to their materials and provide access to digitized versions of Caribbean cultural, historical and research materials currently held in archives, libraries, and private collections.
Gallica
Explore the digital collections of the French National Library by theme, chronological period or geographic region
French Revolution Digital Archive
The French Revolution Digital Archive (FRDA) is a multi-year collaboration of the Stanford University Libraries and the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF) to produce a digital version of the key research sources of the French Revolution and make them available to the international scholarly community.
History of France - Primary Documents
A major source of primary documents dating from antiquity and covering all major historical events from the French Revolution, World War I and II and continuing to the present.
Online Books
The Black Jacobins Reader by Charles Forsdick (Editor); Christian Høgsbjerg (Editor)
Containing a wealth of new scholarship and rare primary documents, The Black Jacobins Reader provides a comprehensive analysis of C. L. R. James's classic history of the Haitian Revolution. In addition to considering the book's literary qualities and its role in James's emergence as a writer and thinker, the contributors discuss its production, context, and enduring importance in relation to debates about decolonization, globalization, postcolonialism, and the emergence of neocolonial modernity.
Location: Online
Publication Date: 2017
The Colonial System Unveiled by Baron de Vastey; Chris Bongie (Translated with commentary by)
Long neglected in mainstream history books, the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) is now being claimed across a range of academic disciplines as an event of world-historical importance. The former slaves' victory over their French masters and the creation of the independent nation of Haiti in 1804 is being newly heralded not only as a seminal moment in the transnational formation of the 'black Atlantic' but as the most far-reaching manifestation of 'Radical Enlightenment'. The best known Haitian writer to emerge in the years after the revolution is Baron de Vastey (1781-1820), who authored over ten books and pamphlets between 1814 and his murder in 1820. His first and most incendiary work, Le système colonial dévoilé (1814), provides a moving invocation of the horrors of slavery in pre-revolutionary Saint-Domingue. Its trailblazing critique of colonialism anticipates by over a hundred years the anticolonial politics (and poetics) of Césaire, Fanon, and Sartre. Translated here for the first time, Vastey's forceful unveiling of the colonial system will be compulsory reading for scholars across the humanities.
Location: Online
Publication Date: 2014
Transatlantic Feminisms in the Age of Revolutions by Lisa L. Moore (Editor); Joanna Brooks (Editor); Caroline Wigginton (Editor)
This volume brings together an unprecedented gathering of women and men from the Atlantic World during the Age of Revolutions. Featuring hard-to-find writings from colonists and colonized, citizens and slaves, religious visionaries and scandal-dogged actresses, these wide-ranging selections present a panorama of the diverse, vibrant world facing women during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. An expansive introduction, along with rich contextual headnotes, makes this an indispensable text for students and scholars of literature, history, and women's and gender studies. With writings from figures like Aphra Behn, Phillis Wheatley, Thomas Jefferson, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Toussaint L'Ouverture, to name just a few, Transatlantic Feminisms in the Age of Revolutions recovers the revolutionary moment in which women stepped into a globalizing world and imagined themselves free.
Location: Online
Publication Date: 2012
The Revolutionary Era: The Primary Documents on Events from 1776 to 1800 by Carol Sue Humphrey
From 1776 to 1800, the United States ceased to be a fantastic dream and became a stable reality. Newspapers were increasingly the public's major source of information about people and events outside of their community. The press reflected the issues of the day. Its foremost concern was naturally the armed struggle with Britain. The press covered the conflict, providing both patriot and loyalist interpretations of the battles and personalities. Yet after the British withdrew, a host of new challenges confronted the United States, including the Articles of Confederation, Shay's Rebellion, the Bill of the Rights, the Whiskey Rebellion, slavery, women's roles, the French Revolution, the XYZ Affair, the Sedition Act, and more. Again, the press not only purveyed the facts. It became a political tool trumpeting the viewpoint of Republicans and Federalists, ushering in a new era of American journalism. Beginning with an extensive overview essay of the period, this book focuses on 26 pressing issues of the war and the early republic. Each issue is presented with an introductory essay and multiple primary documents from the newspapers of the day, which illustrate both sides of the debate. This is a perfect resource for students interested in the Revolutionary War, the birth of the new nation, and the actual opinions and words of those involved.
Location: Online
Publication Date: 2003