British History

Digital versions of key 15th through 17th century printed texts.

Full text of significant English and foreign-language titles printed in Great Britain, along with thousands of important works from the Americas.

Full text of prominent 18th century ( c.1685 and 1835) newspapers and periodicals focused on England and Ireland with additional content from India, Canada and the West Indies. Many are ephemeral, lasting only for a handful of issues, others run for several years. Topics covered are wide-ranging and include colonial life, provincial and rural affairs, the French and American revolutions, reviews of literature and fashion throughout Europe, political debates, and London coffee house gossip and discussion.

Online version of the primary source British history documents multi-volume series. Over 5,500 documents from 500-1914 including American Colonial Documents.

A digital repository for the nation's research libraries, HathiTrust brings together the digitized book and serial collections of major universities and other partner institutions, a significant portion of which is in the public domain and available full text. Boston College's status as a partner makes it possible for members of the Boston College community to download any of the out-of-copyright items as PDFs.

Digitized Goldsmiths'-Kress Collection, drawn from the University of London and Harvard's Baker Library. Offers primary sources focused on "the dynamics of Western trade and wealth that shaped the world from the last half of the 15th century to the mid-19th century." Part II includes a supplement that extends coverage to 1914.

Digital versions of key 15th through 17th century printed texts.

Full text of significant English and foreign-language titles printed in Great Britain, along with thousands of important works from the Americas.

Digitized Goldsmiths'-Kress Collection, drawn from the University of London and Harvard's Baker Library. Offers primary sources focused on "the dynamics of Western trade and wealth that shaped the world from the last half of the 15th century to the mid-19th century." Part II includes a supplement that extends coverage to 1914.

Full text of the sessional papers presented to Parliament. Papers include reports of committees, royal commissions, public bills, and accounts and papers. Coverage: 1688-2005. Formerly called House of Commons British Parliamentary Papers, Eighteenth, Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.

Part III of a 4-part series, offering original historical materials across a wide range of government activity and concern. Includes correspondence, reports, memoranda, and parliamentary drafts from ambassadors, civil servants and provincial administrators to present a full picture of this period of British history.

Papers concerning English activities in the American, Canadian, and West Indian colonies, 16th-18th centuries.

The newspapers and news pamphlets gathered by the Reverend Charles Burney (1757 - 1817) represent the largest single collection of 17th and 18th century English news media. The 700 or so bound volumes of newspapers and news pamphlets were published mostly in London, however there are also some English provincial, Irish and Scottish papers, and a few examples from the American colonies, Europe and India.

The 17th and 18th Century Nichols Newspapers Collection features the newspapers, periodicals, pamphlets and broadsheets that form the Nichols newspaper collection held at the Bodleian library in Oxford, UK. All 296 volumes of bound material, covering the period 1672-1737 are presented in digitized format here. This collection charts the history of the development of the press in England and provides invaluable insight into 17th-18th century England. The collection includes approximately 300 primary titles of newspapers and periodicals and 300 pamphlets and broadsheets.

Modules 1-5, covering "Early Settlement, Expansion and Rivalries," "Towards Revolution," "The American Revolution, " "Legislation and Politics in the Colonies," and "Growth, Trade and Development." Collection will eventually include the full 1,450 volumes of documents from The National Archives, UK, covering the period 1606 to 1822. Full-text searching across all manuscript documents using Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR).

East India Company offers access to a unique collection of India Office Records from the British Library, London. Containing royal charters, correspondence, trading diaries, minutes of council meetings and reports of expeditions, among other document types, this resource charts the history of British trade and rule in the Indian subcontinent and beyond from 1599 to 1947.

Focused on 15 significant commodities: Chocolate, Coffee, Cotton, Fur, Oil, Opium, Porcelain, Silver & Gold, Spices, Sugar, Tea, Timber, Tobacco, Wheat, and Wine & Spirits. Each commodity is documented through manuscript materials, maps, posters, paintings, photographs, and rare books, allowing students to explore the origins of the commodity, their first uses, the trade that developed and the ways in which these items were marketed and consumed.

Digitized book and serial collections of major universities and other partner institutions. Consider searching for (emancipat* OR slave*) in the title or subject fields and limiting by date as relevant.