Primary Sources

HathiTrust This link opens in a new window
Digitized collections of some of the nation’s great research libraries, established in this repository to archive and share their digital content.
Access Note: VU is a partner institution. Login is required for downloading. Tutorial: https://researchguides.library.vanderbilt.edu/HathiTrustAccess
Gale Primary Sources This link opens in a new window
Newspapers, books, manuscripts, maps, and photographs. Simultaneously search: 17th-18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers, 19th Century U.S. Newspapers, Sunday Times (London), Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO), Making of the Modern World, Times Literary Supplement, and Times Digital Archive, Financial Times (London).
Confidential Print: Africa This link opens in a new window
Important papers generated by the British Government's Foreign and Colonial Offices between 1834-1966, ranging from single-page letters or telegrams to comprehensive dispatches.
History and Culture This link opens in a new window
African materials in books, magazines, newspapers, historical journals, government documents, oral history, photographs, art, music, and videos sourced from African organizations and archives around the world.
Coverage: 1500 to present.
Empire Online This link opens in a new window
Manuscript, printed, and visual primary source materials for the study of 'Empire' and its theories, practices and consequences, predominantly from the British Library. Secondary resources include scholarly essays, maps and an interactive chronology.
Nineteenth Century Collections Online This link opens in a new window
Monographs, newspapers, pamphlets, manuscripts, ephemera, maps, statistics, and more. Collections: British Politics and Society, Asia & The West, British Theatre and Popular Culture, Corvey Collection of European Literature, Europe and Africa, Photography, Science, Technology, and Medicine Parts 1 & 2, Women Transnational Networks, Children Literature and Childhood, Mapping the World, Religion and the Periodical.
Apartheid South Africa This link opens in a new window
British Foreign Office files on the apartheid Governments of South Africa. These formerly restricted documents, sourced from The National Archives, UK, provide unprecedented levels of detail, with in-depth analysis of events, international reaction and policy dilemmas, accompanied by numerous first-hand accounts and reports.
Coverage: 1948-1980.

Struggles for Freedom: Southern Africa
This collection focuses on the complex and varied liberation struggles in the region, with an emphasis on Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.