Economics Resources: Primary Sources

Digitized primary source material to key events in the history of European maritime exploration, particularly British, Dutch, French, Portuguese, and Spanish. Key topics covered include expedition financing, planning, and sponsorship, ports, forts & entrepôts, new commodities & trade, and competition where European expansion involved the foundation of settlements, plantations, trading posts, factories, forts and slaving stations.

Social, political, and economic aspects of the American West. Includes accounts of the Gold Rush and of the landscape of Canada and the Pacific Northwest, the evolution of Western towns through materials such as prospectuses and city directories, the growth of railway and road networks through maps and records of key railroad companies, and the agricultural transformation of the West through accounts of ranches and of the prairie lands.

Core printed primary and secondary sources for the medieval and modern history of the British Isles. Focuses primarily on the period between 1300 and 1800 CE.

Trade and Cultural Exchange
Manuscripts, rare printed sources, images, objects, and maps document the cultural and trading relationships that emerged between America, China, and the Pacific region between the 18th and early 20th centuries.

Largely manuscript material from the Colonial Office files held at The National Archives in London documenting colonial America. Topics include beginning and expansion of English settlement, economic and industrial development, financial & currency matters, tobacco, sugar & other commodities, taxation, and trade and protectionism.

Legislative & Executive
• U.S. Congressional materials (including hearings, bills, Congressional Record and compiled legislative histories)
• Executive Branch documents
• Users can also search for Congressional Research Service (CRS) Reports, member profiles (committees, sponsored bills, remarks, and floor votes), Bills by Number, and more.

Resource of information for every aspect of life in 17th- and 18th-century America.

Materials chart the history of British trade and rule in the Indian subcontinent and beyond from 1599 to 1947 CE. that includes executive papers (charters, treaties, minutes, and correspondence) of the East India Company and later the India Office, minutes of council meetings (Court of Directors, Court of Proprietors and Council of India), memoranda and papers laid before councils, council resolutions, proceedings of revenue boards, charters, text of legislation, printed books, correspondence, and lists of administrative, military and ecclesiastical personnel.

Material in the collection spans five centuries, charting the rise and fall of empires, from Columbus, Captain Cook and others, to de-colonisation in the second half of the twentieth century, and debates over American Imperialism.

Visual, manuscript, and printed materials explore the history of fifteen key commodities that have been transported and consumed around the world for hundreds of years, transforming societies, global trading operations, habits of consumption, and cultural practices. Includes data and maps.

Collection of genealogical and historical sources, with coverage dating back to the 1700s. HeritageQuest searches City Directories (1821 - 1989), U.S. Federal Censuses, genealogy and local history books, Periodical Source Index (PERSI), Revolutionary War records, Freedman's Bank Records, slave records (from either the 1850 or 1860 U.S. census) including counts of enslaved people by state, and the Memorials, Petitions and Private Relief Actions from the U.S. Serial Set.

America's Corporate Foundation, over 800 leading companies, over 150 years of coverage. Provides historical annual reports from North American companies (company information, financial performance, key officers, competitors, and market trends).. Enhanced searching features for Fortune 500 rank, earnings, cash, auditor, revenue, and assets.

Digital facsimile images of unique collections of primary sources, including the Goldsmiths’-Kress Library of Economic Literature, that trace the social and economic development of the modern Western world from 1450 to 1930 CE. Sources cover trade, banking, colonization, exploration, imperialism and colonialism, the Industrial Revolution, the coal, iron, and steel industries, the railroad industries, modern capitalism, labor, the modern corporation, and more. Titles are in English and many other languages.

Historical and current working documents from the House of Commons and the House of Lords including papers, debates, journals, bills, and acts. Also contains command papers, Hansard (Official Report of debates), and public petitions to Parliament. Covers from 1688 to present.

Primary source documents about Latin America and the Caribbean. Covers business & economics (foreign debt, foreign investment, railroads, iron & steel industry, petroleum industry, trade, and more), politics, religion, culture, international affairs, the environment, science & technology. Useful visual downloadable tables on comparative country data including agriculture and livestock, commodities and production, demography, education, and infrastructure.