Empires in World History

Identifies books, book chapters, and articles on all aspects of British and Irish history, including the British Empire and Commonwealth. Indexes publications from 1700-present.

Journal articles, book reviews, and dissertations on all aspects of world history, excluding North America, from 1450. Includes links to the full text of some articles. Complements America: History and Life. Indexes publications from 1954-present.

A federated collection of records from standard indexes and catalogues for researching nineteenth-century Anglo-American history and culture: Poole's Index to Periodical Literature, 1802-1906; The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals, 1824-1900; Stead's Index to Periodical Literature of the World, 1891-1903; Cotgreave's Contents-Subject Index to General and Periodical Literature, Periodicals Index Online, 1770-1919; Cumulative Index to Niles' Register, 1811–1849; An Index to Legal Periodical Literature, 1791-1908; the Nineteenth-Century Short Title Catalogue; and Palmer's index to the [London] Times Newspaper, 1790-1905

TRIAL. Documents from the Records of the Military Department held by the British Library. Part of Archives Unbound.

Covers the years 1948-1980. Documents from the British National Archives. Records have been selected from the following record series FO 371; FCO 45; FCO 105; CO 1048; DO 35; DO 119; DO 157; DO 161; DO 165; DO 180; DO 193; DO 212; DO 216; FCO 13; FCO 29; FCO 38; FCO 58; FCO 61; FCO 65; FO 924; FO 953; FO 973; FO 1110; and FO 1117.
Keyword searchable, and browsable by National Archives record series numbers.
Includes a subject index that can be searched but not browsed.
Part of AM Archives Direct.

Maps, photographs, books, expedition reports, and other manuscript materials from the collections of the Royal Geographic Society (Britain), 1830-

1850s-1920s. Photographs of naval sites in Britain and across the Empire as well. Part of Nineteenth Century Collections Online.

A serial publication (1812-1968) produced for use by British diplomats, and is a compendium of treaties, diplomatic correspondence, and other information deemed useful to diplomats in conducting their work.

TRIAL. Documents from the Records of the Military Department held by the British Library. Part of Archives Unbound.

1850s-1920s. From National Archives record series CO 1069: Colonial Office and successors: Photographic Collection. National Archives description: "The Colonial Office Photographic Collection is formed from a core of the old Colonial Office collection, which began in 1869 when the Colonial Secretary asked governors to arrange for the taking of photographs of 'noteworthy buildings and scenery...together with individuals of various races peculiar to the colony'. The photographs were to be sent to the Colonial Office." Part of Nineteenth Century Collections Online.

1830-1934. Part of Nineteenth Century Collections Online.

Documents from British National Archives record series FO 65 (188 volumes), FO 106 (complete 11 volumes), FO 371 (30 volumes of correspondence), FO 539 (118 files of "Confidential Print"). Focus of the collection is on the the geopolitical rivalry between the British and Russian empires in Central Asia, especially in Afghanistan. Document types include correspondence, intelligence reports (including open source intelligence such as translations of Russian newspaper articles), telegrams, agents’ diaries, newspaper clippings, maps, government reports, treaties, photographs, and sketches.
Part of AM Archives Direct.

China-related records from the archive series India Office Records (IOR) held by the British Library. The collection reflects British security interests, particularly with regard to India. Document types include reports, memoranda, correspondence, pamphlets and official publications, intelligence diaries, accounts of political and scientific expeditions, travel diaries, handbooks and maps.

Correspondence from British National Archives record series CO 129 (War and Colonial Department and Colonial Office: Hong Kong, Original Correspondence).

When complete, this digital collection will comprise all 1,450 volumes/bundles of the British National Archives Record Series CO 5 (Records of the Colonial Office: Board of Trade and Secretaries of State: America and West Indies, Original Correspondence). The collection will be released in modules, with the first three modules currently available: Module 1: Early Settlement, Expansion and Rivalries; Module 2: Towards Revolution; and Module 3: The American Revolution.

1624-1849 (will be extended to 1870 with future modules). Includes documents from the following National Archives record group CO (Colonial Office), with emphasis on the following record series: CO 7: Antigua and Montserrat; CO 8: Antigua; CO 23: Bahamas (includes Turks and Caicos Islands up to 1848); CO 28: Barbados; CO 37: Bermuda; CO 71: Dominica; CO 101: Grenada; CO 110: Guadeloupe; CO 111: British Guiana, formerly Berbice, Demerara and Essequibo; CO 116: British Guiana, formerly Berbice, Demerara and Essequibo; CO 123: British Honduras; CO 137: Jamaica; CO 152: Leeward Islands; CO 154: Leeward Islands; CO 166: Martinique; CO 175: Montserrat; CO 184: Nevis; CO 239: St Christopher (St. Kitts), Nevis and Anguilla; CO 245: Santo Domingo; CO 253: St. Lucia; CO 260: St. Vincent; CO 285: Tobago; CO 295: Trinidad; CO 301: Turks and Caicos; CO 314: Virgin Islands; and CO 318: West Indies. Collection also includes selections from the War Office (WO) record series 1: West Indies. Users can browse the collection by record series, by colony, and by governor. To further support document discovery, the collection has been organized around the following nine themes: Slavery and Emancipation; Crime and Punishment; Finance and Economy; Trade and Shipping; Law and Governance; War and Military; Religion; Plantations and Agriculture; and Piracy and Privateering.

British government documents, mostly from the Foreign Office, but also from the Colonial Office, the Dominions Office, and the War Office. "Confidential Prints" were diplomatic dispatches and related documents deemed sufficiently important to be printed and then circulated among government officials. The prints were grouped into series by geographical region, and then numbered consecutively, but after being transferred to the Public Records Office, the prints were organized according to the National Archives' system of provenance. Part of AM Archives Direct.

British government documents, mostly from the Foreign Office, but also from the Colonial Office, the Dominions Office, and the War Office. "Confidential Prints" were diplomatic dispatches and related documents deemed sufficiently important to be printed and then circulated among government officials. The prints were grouped into series by geographical region, and then numbered consecutively, but after being transferred to the Public Records Office, the prints were organized according to the National Archives' system of provenance.
Part of AM Archives Direct.

British government documents, mostly from the Foreign Office, but also from the Colonial Office, the Dominions Office, and the War Office. "Confidential Prints" were diplomatic dispatches and related documents deemed sufficiently important to be printed and then circulated among government officials. The prints were grouped into series by geographical region, and then numbered consecutively, but after being transferred to the Public Records Office, the prints were organized according to the National Archives' system of provenance.
Part of AM Archives Direct.

British government documents, mostly from the Foreign Office, but also from the Colonial Office, the Dominions Office, and the War Office. "Confidential Prints" were diplomatic dispatches and related documents deemed sufficiently important to be printed and then circulated among government officials. The prints were grouped into series by geographical region, and then numbered consecutively, but after being transferred to the Public Records Office, the prints were organized according to the National Archives' system of provenance.
Part of AM Archives Direct.

Documents from the collection of India Office records, held by the British Library. In addition to the records of the East India Company, this collection includes records of other agencies charged with administering India, especially after the British Crown took over direct administration of India in 1858 (the Company's charter officially expired in 1874). The collection at the British Library is organized into record series based on the agencies from which the records originated, and the digital collection is based on this classification scheme. Because most of the India Office Records primarily comprise manuscript material, the documents are not keyword searchable, so the interface provides many different ways of interacting with the collection, including by record series, by date, by theme, by index terms (where available), and a hierarchical index of government. Some documents are keyword searchable.

Digitized from the following microfilm collections: Empire and Commonwealth: Archives of the Royal Commonwealth Society from Cambridge University Library (Part 1: Colour Question in Imperial Policy, c1830-1939; and Part 2: Imperial and Commonwealth Conferences, 1887-1955); Convict Transportation and the Metropolis: The Letterbooks and Papers of Duncan Campbell, 1726-1803, from the State Library of New South Wales; The Empire Writes Back: Part Two: Black and Asian Visitors to Britain, 1734-1942; African and Colonial Journals (The Colonial Gazette, 1838-1847; and The African Colonizer, 1840-1841; Colonial Enterprise, Review of the Mines, Manufactures and Industries of Greater Britain, 1894-1899; and The African Times and Orient Review, 1912-1914, 1917-1918); Sex and Gender: Manuscript Sources from the National Archives (Parts 1 and 2: Empire and Suffrage); Australia: Colonial Life and Settlement: The Colonial Secretary’s Papers, 1788-1825, from the State Archives and Records Authority of New South Wales (Part 1: Letters Sent, 1808-1825; Part 2: Special Bundles [Topic Collections], Proclamations, Orders and Related Records, 1789-1825; Part 3: Letters Received, 1788-1825); Empire and Colonial Administration: The Papers of Lachlan Macquaire and Family from the State Library of New South Wales; and Plantation Life in the Caribbean (Part 1: Jamaica, c.1765-1848 : the Taylor and Vanneck-Arcedeckne Papers from Cambridge University Library and the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London).

Complete British Foreign Office Files dealing with China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, from 1919-1980.
Part of AM Archives Direct.

Record series DO (Dominions Office) 133, DO 134, FO (Foreign Office) 371, and FCO (Foreign and Commonwealth Office) 37 from the British National Archives.
Part of AM Archives Direct.

1710-1937. Diaries, journals, official papers, letters, sketches, paintings, histories and literary works documenting the British presence in India. Emphasis on the role of the Scottish in India as traders, generals, missionaries, viceroys, governor-generals. Documents drawn from the manuscript collections of the National Library of Scotland

Digitized from the following microfilm sets: Colonial Discourses, Series 3: Colonial fiction, 1650-1914, Parts 1-3; Curzon, India and Empire: The Papers of Lord Curzon from the British Library, London; The Empire Writes Back: Parts 1-3: Indian Views on Britain and Empire, 1810-1915, from the British Library, London; India During the Raj: Eyewitness Accounts: Diaries and Related Records Describing Life in India, 1712-1925; India in the Age of Empire
The Journals of Michael Pakenham Edgeworth (1812-1881) from the Bodleian Library, Oxford; and Indian Newspaper Reports, c. 1868-1942 (Part 1: Bengal, 1874-1903; Part 2: Bengal, 1904-1916; Part 3: Punjab, Agra, Oudh, Rajputana and Central Provinces, c. 1868-1896; Part 4: United Provinces, 1897-1937; Part 5: Madras, 1876-1921; Part 6: Bombay, 1874-1898; Part 7: Bombay, 1901-1921; and Part 8: Punjab 1896-1924, Sind 1936-1939, Burma 1938-1942, Bihar and Orissa 1920). Part of Adam Matthew Research Source.

Official Army war diaries for the North-West Indian Frontier. Diaries selected from British Library record series IOR/L/MIL/17/5/4066-4121. War diaries are an official category of British government document, and provide information on the activities of the Army for which each diary reports. These are not personal diaries of soldiers, officers, or other military personnel. Part of Archives Unbound.

Emphasis of the collection is on journals written by sailors on both merchant, naval, and pirate ships. Includes other records that document the daily lives of sailors, including correspondence, court martial records, logbooks, ship's musters, medical journals, memoirs, ship's papers, records of impressment, newspapers, artwork, orderbooks, regulations, and legal records.

Complete minutes and memoranda of the cabinet of British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan, 1957-1963.
Part of AM Archives Direct.

See especially Series 2: Empire (emphasizing travel, anthropology, economics, evangelism, colonialism). Part of Gale Primary Sources: Newspaper and Periodical Databases (formerly Gale NewsVault).

Digitized from the following microfilm collections: Aristocratic Women: The Social, Political and Cultural History of Rich and Powerful Women (Part 1: The Correspondence of Jemima, Marchioness Grey, 1722-1797, and Her Circle: From the Bedfordshire County Record Office; and Part 2: The Correspondence and Diaries of Charlotte Georgiana, Lady Bedingfeld, formerly Jerningham, c1779-1833, together with the Letters of Anna Seward, c1791-1804, and Lady Stafford, c1774-1837: from Birmingham University Library); Colonial Discourses: Series One: Women, Travel and Empire, 1660-1914 (Part 1: Early Travel Accounts by Women and Women’s Experiences in India, Africa, Australasia, and Canada; and Parts 2-3: Women and “The Orient”); International Women’s Suffrage: Part 1: Suffrage Correspondence of Rose Scott, 1847-1925, from the State Library of New South Wales; Women, Education and Literature: The Papers of Maria Edgeworth (Part 1: The Edgeworth Papers from the Bodleian Library, Oxford; Part 2: The Edgeworth Papers from the National Library of Ireland; and Part 3: Edgeworth Papers from Other Libraries); Women, Emancipation and Literature: The Papers of Harriet Martineau, from Birmingham University Library; Women, Morality and Advice Literature: Manuscripts and Rare Printed Works of Hannah More and her Circle (Part 1: Manuscripts, First Editions and Rare Printed Works of Hannah More, and Works Inspired by Her; Part 2: Gift Books, Memoirs, Pamphlets and the Cheap Repository Tracts; and Part 3: Writings by Eminent Blue Stockings); Women, Suffrage and Politics: The Papers of Sylvia Pankhurst, from the Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis, Amsterdam; Women, Writing and Travel: Part 1: The Diaries of Stella Benson, from Cambridge University Library; Women’s Autobiographies: Rare Printed Autobiographies of Fifty-Five Women’s Lives (Part 1: 1713-1859; and Part 2: 1780-1889); Women’s Journals of the Nineteenth Century: Part 1: The Women’s Penny Paper and Woman’s Herald, 1888-1893; Women’s Suffrage and Government control, 1906-1922: Papers from the Cabinet, Home Office and Metropolitan Police Files in the National Archives, UK (CAB 41, HO 45, HO 144, MEPO 2 & MEPO 3); and Women’s Suffrage Collection from Manchester Central Library (Part 1: Papers of Lydia Becker; and Part 2: Papers of Millicent Garrett Fawcett: Sections on Women’s Suffrage, Education, Employment, welfare, the First World War, and Other Women’s Issues). Part of Adam Matthew Research Source.