18th-Century US History Resources
- American History, 1493-1945 This link opens in a new windowThe Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History’s archive of letters, diaries, maps pamphlets, printed books, newspapers, and ephemera sheds light on the political, economic, and social history of the United States up until the 20th century. The majority of the collection is unique manuscripts, with special emphasis on the revolutionary, early national, antebellum, and civil war eras.
- American Indians and the American West (via History Vault) This link opens in a new window
Several collections focusing on the interaction between American Indians and the U.S. government in the 19th and 20th Centuries, focusing on the 19th Century Indian Removal from 1832-1840, the U.S. Army and American Indians in the years from the 1850s-1890s, including detailed coverage of Indian Wars. The featured collections on the 20th Century are Records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and records from the Major Council Meetings of American Indian Tribes.
- Indigenous Histories and Cultures in North America This link opens in a new windowManuscripts, newspapers, diaries, maps, artwork, photographs, and rare printed books dating from the earliest contact with European settlers up to the mid-20th century. Cross-searchable with The American West database. This database was previously titled American Indian Histories and Cultures.
- American Memory Historical Collections for the National Digital LibraryIncludes manuscripts, ephemera, images, maps, and more.
- American Presidency ProjectA searchable database of papers, speeches, and other materials related to U.S. Presidents.
- Archive of Americana This link opens in a new windowProvides access to thousands of newspapers, books, ephemera, broadsides, pamphlets, government publications, and more from 17th-, 18th- and 19th-century America.
- Calisphere This link opens in a new windowManuscripts, images, oral histories, and more relating to California history.
- Digital Public Library of AmericaLaunched in 2013, this site provides access to millions of digitized primary sources from archives, museums, and libraries across United States.
- Early Canadiana OnlineA good resource for primary texts from early Canadian history.
- Early Encounters in North America: Peoples, Cultures and the Environment This link opens in a new windowContains full text letters, diaries, memoirs and accounts of early encounters, centered on present-day Canada and the United States with some limited coverage of Mexico.
- Eighteenth Century Collections Online (Gale Primary Sources) This link opens in a new windowComprehensive digital collection of significant English-language and foreign-language titles printed in the United Kingdom, along with thousands of important works from the Americas, between 1701 and 1800.
- Electronic Enlightenment This link opens in a new windowSearchable and browseable database offering extensive access to the web of correspondence between the greatest thinkers and writers of the 18th century and their families and friends, bankers and booksellers, patrons and publishers. Coverage includes letters and documents, document sources such as manuscripts and early printed editions, scholarly annotations, and links to biographies, dictionaries, encyclopedias, newspapers, and other online resources.
- Empire Online This link opens in a new windowPrimary source manuscripts and secondary essays relevant to Empire Studies. The sections cover Cultural Contacts, 1492-1969; Empire Writing and the Literature of Empire; The Visible Empire; Religion & Empire; and Race, Class & Colonialism, 1783-1969.
- Gerritsen Collection of Aletta H. Jacobs (Women's History) This link opens in a new windowFacsimile scans of monographs, periodicals, and pamphlets in 15 languages, started in the late 1800s by Dutch physician Aletta Jacobs and her husband C.V. Gerritsen. Focus is on 19th and 20th century feminist consciousness and the movement for women's rights but includes books published from 1543 to 1945.
- Jewish Life in America, c1654-1954 This link opens in a new windowContains digitized manuscript materials covering the history of Jewish communities in America through the mid-20th century. Includes letters, scrapbooks, autobiographies, notebooks and more.
- The Making of the Modern World: Goldsmiths'-Kress Library of Economic Literature (Gale Primary Sources) This link opens in a new windowDigital collection of books, periodicals, and primary source materials from the period 1460-1945. Focuses on economics, political science, history, and sociology, with special collections on banking, finance, transportation, and manufacturing.
- North American Women's Letters and Diaries: Colonial to 1950 This link opens in a new windowCollection of letters and diaries of women of varied age groups, ethnicities, and geographical regions, spanning more than 300 years. Includes both published and previously unpublished materials.
- Readex AllSearch This link opens in a new windowCombined search of all Readex (NewsBank) databases to which UCLA subscribes, including America's Historical Imprints, America's Historical Newspapers, American State Papers, FBIS Daily Reports, U.S. Congressional Serial Set, Caribbean newspapers, 1718-1876 and World Newspaper Archive.
- Revolutionary War and Early America (via History Vault) This link opens in a new window
Collections from the holdings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, the first North American historical society and the first library to devote its primary attention to collecting Americana. The collections digitized focus on the Colonial Era, the Revolutionary War, and the Early National Period, with some collections extending into the Civil War era.
- Slavery Collections at the New-York Historical SocietyThis site provides access to 14 collections containing diaries, account books, letter books, ships’ logs, indentures, bills of sale, personal papers, and records of institutions, all relating to American slavery and the Atlantic slave trade.
- Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice, 1490-2007 This link opens in a new windowCollection of digitized documents, maps, and essays concerning the Atlantic slave trade, primarily from British and North American libraries. Includes 18th and 19th-century court records from Georgia, Louisiana, Missouri, and North Carolina.
- SlaveVoyagesThis site offers three databases on voyages, transactions, and African individuals involved in the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
- Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000 This link opens in a new windowA collection of books, images, documents, scholarly essays, commentaries, and bibliographies, documenting the multiplicity of women's reform activities.