Latin American History

A collection of documents (maps, lithographs, manuscripts, photographs, etc.) from the 12th to the 20th centuries on topics ranging from invasion and French intervention to revolution and peace as well as collection on indigenous peoples. [In Spanish]

Cooperative digital library for resources from and about the Caribbean and circum-Caribbean. dLOC provides access to digitized versions of Caribbean cultural, historical and research materials currently held in archives, libraries, and private collections.

The Early Americas Digital Archive (EADA) is a collection of electronic texts originally written in or about the Americas from 1492 to approximately 1820. Open to the public for research and teaching purposes, EADA is published and supported by the University of Maryland Libraries’ e-Publishing Initiative.

Interface in Spanish. Content in Spanish and other (including indigenous) languages.
Open Access.

Interface in English; Content predominately in English, Spanish, and other European languages.
Focusing on the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries, this collections includes copies of a broad range of material including Arthuriana; Spanish Historical Writing About the New World; material by/about early modern women; music; science; and more.
BC institutional login required.

Interface in English; Most records in Portuguese.
"This collection contains ecclesiastical registers from 31 parishes within the state of Rio de Janeiro... These records represent the longest and most uniform serial data available for the history of African, indigenous, and European populations in Brazil. They include records of baptisms, confirmations, petitions to wed, wills, and even, on occasion, divorce actions. They also include records for church brotherhoods organised along ethnic lines, through which enslaved and free Africans recorded not only ceremonial and religious aspects of their lives, but also their social, political, and economic networks, 1647-1955."
Open Access.

The Library of Congress purchased this collection now described as Spanish Legal Documents (15th-19th Centuries) in 1941 and it was microfilmed in 1983 and 1984. They were primarily issued individually in sections, which varied from 1 to 6 folios; the majority of the documents were printed using handset type on handmade paper which is in exceptionally good condition.

Since September 5, 2001, the Virtual Legal Library of the Institute of Legal Research of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México has made full text and free access materials available to law scholars, books, magazines and other materials.

Interface in English. Content in Nahuatl and other languages.
"Online guide to the collections of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF), home to several Nahuatl manuscripts, including the works of the prolific annalist Chimalpahin."
Open Access.

The Weston Library’s special collections at the Bodleian Library at Oxford houses the Codex Mendoza, in addition to other Mesoamerican codices.

The John Carter Brown Library Indigenous Language collection contains texts in one or more Amerindian languages for the period before the nineteenth century. Besides the many grammatical studies, dictionaries, and thematic vocabulary lists, genres such as speeches, dramatic dialogues, scriptural excerpts, catechisms, and other religious texts are included.

Interface in English with Spanish, Nahuatl, and other languages.
The idea behind this virtual library is to create an electronic repository of early Nahuatl-language resources (ca.1540-1825), combining those found in Mesoamerica with those the United States and Europe, digitizing them all and making them more accessible and comprehensible to Nahuatl scholars everywhere.
Open Access.

Interface in English. Content in Spanish and other languages.
"The Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies (FAMSI) was created in 1993 to foster increased understanding of ancient Mesoamerican cultures. The website includes links for Mesoamerican codices as well as other material relating to anthropology, archaeology, art history, epigraphy, ethnography, ethnohistory, linguistics, and related fields."
Open Access.

Interface in English. Content in Spanish, English, and other languages.
"The Mapas Project has as its focus the digitization and study of colonial Mesoamerican pictorial manuscripts. The term "mapa" was used loosely in New Spain to refer to pictorials that may or may not have had a cartographic dimension, but often showed the territories or landscapes of indigenous communities."
Open Access.

Interface in English. Content in Spanish and other languages.
"The Archives section of Mesolore presents transcriptions from alphabetic primary-source documents housed in libraries and archives in Europe, Latin America, and the United States. Most of these transcriptions are taken from unpublished bureaucratic documents: reports to the king of Spain, legal disputes, land surveys, inquisitorial investigations."
Open Access.

Includes more than 1,000 digital facsimiles of maps of South America and the Caribbean between the 16th and 19th centuries.

Digital collection of 25 Latin American travel accounts written in the 16th-19th centuries, a free-access visual and research tool for students and scholars alike.

Luis de Carvajal the Younger (1567?-December 8, 1596) was the nephew of Luis de Carvajal y de la Cueva, the governor of León, Mexico. The Carvajals are the best known conversos (‘New Christians’) in colonial Mexico, largely owing to Luis the Younger’s testimony at his trial before the Inquisition in 1595.

Documents including letters, certificates, and inventories relating to the institution of slavery, slaves, and indentured servants in Cuba dating from 1820-1892. Many of the documents refer to Chinese people brought to Cuba as indentured servants or contract laborers (colonos).

Focused on Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, and Spanish Florida. The Slave Societies Digital Archive (SSDA) is dedicated to identifying, cataloging, and digitally preserving endangered archival materials documenting the history of Africans and their descendants in the Atlantic World. Draws heavily on records from the Catholic church (e.g., baptismal records) and builds with images, maps, and other material.

This digital memorial raises questions about the largest slave trades in history and offers access to the documentation available to answer them. European colonizers turned to Africa for enslaved laborers to build the cities and extract the resources of the Americas. They forced millions of mostly unnamed Africans across the Atlantic to the Americas, and from one part of the Americas to another. Analyze these slave trades and view interactive maps, timelines, and animations to see the dispersal in action. [Emory Libraries]

Interface in English; Content in Portuguese.
"Consists of burial records of enslaved and free individuals dating from 1779-1889. Owner(s) of original material: Arquivo da Cúria Metropolitana de Niterói."
Open Access.

The Spanish Land Grants were land claims filed by settlers in Florida after the transfer of the territory from Spain to the United States in 1821 in order to prove land ownership. Starting in 1790, Spain offered land grants to encourage settlement to the sparsely populated and vulnerable Florida colony.

Interface in Spanish and English. Content predominately in Spanish.
"This online Portal de Archivos Españoles provides information and access to digitized documents for a wide variety of Spanish archives, including the Archivo de Indias and the Archivo Histórico Nacional, both major repositories for colonial documentation relating to the governance of indigenous peoples."
Open Access

This digital collection of more than 1,400 facsimiles is a selection of colonial documents and maps from Spanish and Mexican archives that have been documented by the SCRC. It is intended to be an essential source of information for those interested in Spanish Colonial history in North America.
Open Access.