European History

Interface in English or French. Most of the content in French (and many other languages).
The National Library of France website can be easily switched to English. While searching the catalog is only possible in French, the site includes an "ask a librarian" service. The site also links to both French and International Digital Libraries.
Open Access.

Interface in English. Content in English or original languages.
Links to European historical documents that have been transcribed, reproduced in facsimile, or translated. Maintained by Brigham Young University.
Open Access.

Interface in English or other, major European languages. Content in multiple languages.
Europe-wide unified search of digitized collections. Images, audio, texts, and more. Funded by the EU. Covers more than 1,000 years of history. Strongest for 1500 to 2000.
Open Access.

Designed to meet the needs of the research community worldwide, our online portal offers quick and easy access to the collections of the 48 National Libraries of Europe and leading European Research Libraries.

Interface in English and French (and other major, European languages). Majority of the content in French.
France's fantastic digital library from the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Digitized periodicals, images, recordings, and more. Covers two millenia with particular strength from 1500 to the present.
Open Access.

A collection of more than a thousand digital facsimiles of photographs, maps, posters, and other sources spanning a millennium.

More than 1.5 million documents from across Europe and farther, including diverse publications, visual materials, serials, posters, photographs, drawings, ephemera, postcards, some audio and visual recordings, a few comics and games as well.
Open Access.

This is the English website of the French National Assembly. Includes access to some of their documentation in French.
Open Access.

Interface in French or English. Content in French.
Legifrance is the French government entity responsible for publishing legal texts online. It provides access, in French, to laws and decrees published in the Journal officiel, important court rulings, collective labour agreements, standards issued by European institutions, and international treaties and agreements to which France is a party.
Open Access.

British Pathe is one of the oldest media companies in the world.Their roots lie in 1890s Paris where their founder, Charles Pathe, pioneered the development of the moving image. They were established in London in 1902, and by 1910 were producing their famous bi-weekly newsreel the Pathe Gazette. After the First World War they started producing various Cinemagazines as well. By 1930 they were producing the Gazette, the Pathetone Weekly, the Pathe Pictorial and Eve's Film Review, covering entertainment, culture and womens' issues.

The EFG Portal gives you quick access to hundreds of thousands of film historical documents as preserved in European film archives and cinémathèques: photos, posters, programmes, periodicals, censorship documents, rare feature and documentary films, newsreels and other materials. Focuses on the early 1900s.

The collection of Occidental manuscripts of the time from the 6th to the 20th century includes around 38,000 codices, among them predominantly 17,000 Latin and 13,000 German manuscripts, but also more than 1,000 French ones, 950 Italian ones, 650 Greek ones, 145 Spanish and Portuguese ones and 124 Slavic ones. [Bayerische StaatsBibliothek]

Thousands of maps from the 12th to the 21st centuries. Heavy emphasis on Europe but includes excellent global coverage (including 3d globes).

With a database of images, texts, charts and historical maps, Mapping Gothic France invites you to explore the parallel stories of Gothic architecture and the formation of France in the 12th and 13th centuries, considered in three dimensions: Space, Time, and Narrative. [Media Center for Art History, Columbia University]

Content and interface in French.
Gallica gives the full text of several important French newspapers including Le Figaro (1826-1942), Le temps (1861-1939), L'humanité (1904-1944) and more.
Open Access.

Interface in English. Content in French.
A selection of papers printed in the 1870s during the Paris Commune.
Open Access.

The collection of French Political Pamphlets in the L. Tom Perry Special Collections at Brigham Young University features more than 2,100 pamphlets published between 1547 and 1626.
Open Access.

Interface in English. Content in French.
Pamphlets and periodicals from the French Revolution of 1848 held by the Center for Research Libraries.
Open Access.

The letters are the window to Van Gogh's universe. [Van Gogh Museum]

On-line materials focused on the French colonial empires from the 17th to the 20th centuries.

An open access collection of pre-twentieth-century Caribbean texts, maps, and images. Texts include travel narratives, novels, poetry, natural histories, and diaries that have not been brought together before as a single collection focused on the Caribbean. [Northeastern University]

Includes digitized records for multiple series and documents published in and about the French colonies, including:
Budget général de l'Afrique occidentale française (1906-1958)
Le Transafricain. Revue mensuelle. Organe officiel du Comité interdépartemental Algéro-Constantinois du "Transafricain" (1929-1934)
As well as thousands of other documents and images.

French National Library's digitization of the "Colonial Annuals" from Marcel Ruedel published between 1900-1949.

Interface in English; Collections in French and/or English.
Includes court minutes, tribunal records, correspondence, and more. "The original material is located at the Archives Nationales du Bénin [National Archives of Benin], Porto-Novo, Republic of Benin."
Open Access.

Interface in English; Content in French and/or English.
"The aim of this project is to digitise all the court records relating to slavery in the Beninese national archives...resulting in 71,224 images that cover a time span of 1900 - 1960. The collection contains 58 series, within these series, 487 files were digitised."
Open Access.

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. The archive is based around two main resources, the Archives parlementaires and a vast corpus of images first brought together in 1989 and known as the Images de la Revolution française.

A selection of documents in English relating to the French Revolution in the 18th century.

Interface in English, content in French.
"The publication dates of the pamphlets range from 1776-1817, although the bulk dates from 1789-1795. The collection consists of some 3000 official reports, speeches, letters, documents, laws, and literary publications, cataloged in three main series as detailed below."
Open Access.

Interface in English. Content in French and English.
Browse and search more than 35,000 pamphlets totaling approximately 850,000 pages from the Newberry's renowned collection of French Revolutionary materials.
Open Access.

More than 1,000 sources (predominately in French) about the July Monarchy through Gallica.

Interface in English. Content in French.
"Jean-Paul Marat’s newspapers are a notable example of French Revolutionary populism. Marat frequently ran into trouble with the authorities in the earlier days of the newspapers’ publication for his criticism of those in power. Printing of the journals was suspended on numerous occasions, often due to the fact that Marat had gone into hiding. He called the newspaper Le publiciste parisien for its first five issues, but changed the name to L’Ami du peuple in the sixth issue. This name remained with the newspaper until Marat was elected to the National Convention. He went on to publish the newspaper under other titles, most notably the Journal de la République française and Le Publiciste de la République française, until his death at the hands of Charlotte Corday on July 13, 1793."
Open Access.

Provides an accessible and lively introduction to the French Revolution as well as an extraordinary archive of some of the most important documentary evidence from the Revolution, including 338 texts, 245 images, and a number of maps and songs. [George Mason University]

English translations of different French documents relating to ideas of revolution (including Auguste Blanqui and the Popular Front) from the 1750s to the 1960s.

More than 500 sources (mostly in French) on the French Second Republic through Gallica.

Interface in English. Content in French.
Pamphlets and periodicals from the French Revolution of 1848 held by the Center for Research Libraries.
Open Access.

Interface in English, content in French.
Collection includes 340 manuscripts such as political cartoons.

There are records for 2178 loose prints in the database. 2117 date from the nineteenth century, 55 from the eighteenth century, and 6 from the twentieth century. 1002 prints are “octavos”, 895 are “quartos”, and 281 are large-format. There are just over 100 Epinal prints and 250 caricatures.
There are 8885 prints in monographs in the database.

"This collection showcases 83 satirical prints, or caricatures, from the Napoleonic Period, all giving political commentary on events of the period. Fifty of the prints were created by French artists, and thirty-three by English artists. Nearly all of the French prints date from the last two years of Napoleon's reign, but the English prints represent a broader time period ranging from 1793 to 1815."

Collection of previously unpublished manuscripts on Napoleon, including contributions from members of Napoleon's family.
Published in 1907.
(1786-1791; French facsimile)

Curated collection.
"Although Cambridge University Library has never set out to assemble a specific, single collection relating to Waterloo, the strength and breadth of our accessioning activity mean that over the course of two hundred years we have amassed a rich and fascinating variety of written records, maps and book arts relating to the battle and the era in which it played so significant a part."
Open Access.