Early Western Accounts of Africa: Available Online
- John Thornton's African Texts (1500-1700 Kingdom of Kongo) This site is an attempt to create a paradigm for historical editing, annotating and translating written texts relating to African History. It arose out of my observations about editing, but particularly about my own experience editing Giovanni Antonio Cavazzi’s “Missione evangelica” an important text concerning the Kingdoms of Kongo and Ndongo which he finished writing in 1668.
- African Peoples' Encounters With Others - Library of Congress Guide Overview guide to early interactions between Africans and Europeans. Includes images and maps. **Use this as a tool to find keywords to aid you in your research.
- European Exploration of Africa (New World Encyclopedia) General overview of early European exploration and subsequent colonization of Africa. **Use this resource as a tool for finding keywords and names to search in greater depth using other resources on this guide.
- European Travel Accounts of Africa - Guide, Bryn Mawr College List of 65 early explorers and their published works. **Use this bibliography as a tool to find the books themselves (many are in the public domain and freely available online).
- Europeana Europeana Collections provides access to over 50 million digitised items – books, music, artworks and more – with sophisticated search and filter tools
- Internet Archive "The Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, the print disabled, and the general public. Our mission is to provide Universal Access to All Knowledge."
Colonial Era Collections Online: Africa
- Africa Focus: Sights & Sounds of a Continent (U. of Wisconsin) Africa Focus brings together, in digital form, 2 categories of primary and secondary resources: research and teaching materials collected by University of Wisconsin faculty and staff; and unique or valuable items related to these fields held by the University of Wisconsin Libraries. This collection contains more than 3000 slides, 500 photographs...
- Africa Through a Lens (The National Archives, UK) From the site: " ...photographs spanning over 100 years of African history, from the 1860s onwards, taken from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office."
- African Leaders of Independence, Listing & Bibliography (Univ. of Leiden) Handy list of African leaders at independence, with information concerning each country's independence. This source links to books in the Univ. of Leiden's library, but it is a helpful biblography. Check our library collecitons for these titles, or request them through ILL.
- AGSL Digital Photo Archive -Africa (Univ. of Wisconsin - Milwaukee) From the site: "...images from the holdings of the American Geographical Society (AGS) Library. The selection focuses on the countries of southern and eastern Africa. The images come from the extensive collections of the AGS Library. The digital collection is under continuing development.
- Archivo Historico Ultramarino (Overseas History Archive) (Collections in Portuguese) Links to their digitized content. "The Overseas Historical Archive is responsible for the treatment and communication to the public of more than 16 km of textual and image documentation, related to the Portuguese and the peoples with whom they related between the century and. XVII and 1974-1975. Created in 1931 under the Ministry of Colonies after the Ministry of Overseas is, by the global and chronological geographical scope of its collection, one of the most international archives and of greatest interest to the Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries"
- Asia, Pacific & Africa Collections, British Library Online Galleries [image collections] From the site: "...15,000 images from Asia, Pacific & Africa collections."
- "Colonial Africa" in Europeana Digital Library A keyword search for "Colonial Africa" in Europeana. [Europeana is a digital cultural heritage site providing access to millions of items from providing institutions across Europe.
- The Humphrey Winterton Collection of East African Photographs: 1860-1960 "The Winterton Collection includes about 7,610 photographs organized in 76 separate albums, scrapbooks or loose collections. The photographs depict life, primarily in East Africa, between about 1860 and 1960."
- Memórias de África e do Oriente A project by the Fundação Portugal-África, developed and maintained by the Universidade de Aveiro and the Centro de Estudos sobre África e do Desenvolvimento. Includes the following countries: Cabo Verde, India / Goa, Guiné-Bissau, Moçambique, São Tomé e Príncipe
Map Collections Online: Africa
- 16th- Early 20th Century Maps of Africa (Northwestern Univ.) From the site: " This site features digital copies of 113 antique maps of Africa and accompanying text dating from the mid 16th Century to the early 20th Century. All scanned maps are authentic and originally collected by the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies (or the Africana Library) at Northwestern University."
- Afriterra: the Cartographic Free Library "...a non-profit Cartographic Library and Archive assembling and preserving the original rare maps of Africa in a definitive place for education and interpretation. We view cartography as a medium that uniquely links art, technology, and history." More than 2000 maps have been digitized and work continues.
- ESRI Story Maps: Africa (various) Various story maps focused on Africa
- Maps of Africa (British Library Online Gallery) From the site: "...these maps represent areas of special European interest in Africa during the 19th and 20th century. ... The maps are almost entirely topographical, prepared by the (British) War Office, colonial surveys, and other official mapping authorities."
- Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection: Africa (Univ. of Texas) Includes many maps produced by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, unless otherwise indicated.
- Voyages en Afrique (Gallica) From the site: "Découvrez l'Afrique à travers les récits des voyageurs. 900 volumes de textes, 30 titres de revues, 80 cartes venant des collections imprimées de la BnF, 20 heures d'enregistrements sonores des fonds du Musée de la parole et du geste et 6500 photographies issues des fonds de la Société de géographie."
AM Explorer: Africa Collections
- AM Explorer: Confidential Print: Africa, 1834-1966 [Login required]The Confidential Print series, issued by the British Government between c. 1820 and 1970, is a fundamental building block for political, social and economic research.
The series originated out of a need to preserve the most important papers generated by the Foreign and Colonial Offices. These range from single-page letters or telegrams to comprehensive dispatches, investigative reports and texts of treaties. All items marked ‘Confidential Print’ were printed and circulated immediately to leading officials in the Foreign Office, to the Cabinet and to heads of British missions abroad. - AM Explorer: Confidential Print: Middle East, 1839-1969 {Login required]The Confidential Print series, issued by the British Government between c. 1820 and 1970. This collection consists of the Confidential Print for the countries of the Levant and the Arabian peninsula, Iran, Turkey, Egypt and Sudan.
- AM Explorer: Empire Online [Login required]This resource brings together a wide range of primary source materials sourced from more than twenty archives for the study of "Empire", its theories, practices and consequences, dating from the late fifteenth century onwards.
- AM Explorer: Church Missionary Society Periodicals [Login required]From its roots as an Anglican evangelical movement driven by lay persons, this resource encompasses publications from the CMS, the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society and the latterly integrated South American Missionary Society. Documenting missionary work from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, the periodicals include news, journals and reports offering a unique perspective on global history and cultural encounters
