Colonialism: Online Documents Collections

General

Empire On-Line offers archival and printed materials relating to Africa, Australasia, the Americas, Oceania, and South Asia. Largely British Empire and British sources on other empires.

Images of Colonialism largely consists of late-19th and early-20th century trade cards and illustrated European newspapers.  About.

Women and Social Movements, Modern Empires Since 1820 focuses on womens' voices of the colonized.

  • Asian Empires, 1842-2001:
    • Anti-Imperialist Activism of Indonesian Women, 1951-1965
    • The Japanese Empire in East Asia, 1842-2001
    • Western Women in China, 1928-1980
    • Women's Activism during the Rise of the Soviet Empire in Uzbekistan, 1920-1929
    • Women's Movements in Postcolonial and Colonial India, 1914-2012
  • French Empire in North Africa, 1935-2005
  • French Feminists and Empire, 1880-1900
  • Habsburg Empire, 1820-1918
  • Italians Consider the International Problem of Trafficking in Women, 1928-1936
  • Native Women in North America, 1915-2010:
    • Women's Leadership in Pow Wow Ritual, 2008-2014,
    • Salish, Blackfeet and Urban Idaho Falls Native Women in North America, 1915-2010: Finding Mourning Dove's Authentic Voice, Colville Federated Tribes, 1915-1935
    • Selma Sully Walker and Native Women's Leadership in Ohio, 1975-2011
    • Women's Leadership in the Choctaw of Oklahoma, 1917-1963
    • Women's Leadership in the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, 1954-1986
    • Women's Leadership in the Lummi Nation, 1880-1942
    • Women's Leadership in the Quapaw Tribe of Oklahoma
    • Women's Leadership through the Women's Basket Cooperative in Pokagon Band of Potawatomi, 1983-2000
    • Women’s Leadership in Wendat/Wyandot/Wyandotte Tribes in Canada, 1985-1992
  • Ottoman and Post-Ottoman Empires in the Balkans, 1820-1990: Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Romania
  • Ottoman and Post-Ottoman Empires in the Eastern Mediterranean, 1860-2015
  • Settler Society in North America:
    • A Missionary among the Cherokee before Removal, 1805-1835
    • Emma Willard's 1828 Maps of North America
    • Women's National Indian Association, 1880-1940
  • South Africa, 1899-1994:
    • African American and Black African Women Build Civil Society in South Africa, 1920-1960
    • Dutch and British Women in Warring Empires in South Africa, 1899-1903
    • Indigenous Women and Anti-Imperialist Activism in South Africa, 1929-1960
    • Women in the Anti-Apartheid Movement in South Africa, 1960-1987
  • United States Empire, 1820-2004:
    • American Women Missionaries in India, 1910-1953
    • Anti-Imperialist Writings of Cuban Feminists, 1896-1985
    • Filipino Women and American Empire, 1904-2004
    • Korean Women in Hawai'i, 1916-1961
    • Medical Missionaries in China Interact with Chinese Women Physicians, 1894-1991
    • Native Women Oppose Colonialism in Guatemala, 1960-2016
    • U.S. Women Aid Workers in Indochina, 1955 to 1970
    • United States Women Shape Political Culture in the Panama Canal Zone, 1907-1975
  • Women Unionists in Northern Ireland, 1892-1960 Women’s Global Networks in Colonial and Post-Colonial Worlds, 1883-2007

British Empire

See also Library Research Guide for British Colonial and Foreign Relations Sources

There are two series of reports on the colonies: the Colonial Reports (1891- ) and the Blue Books (statistical).  The Reports were issued as Annual (on particular colonies) and Miscellaneous (on general colonial topics).  Many Colonial Office reports, blue books and other publications are available in the Internet Archive collection: Colonial Office (Great Britain) publications.  For more on Annual Reports.

The Colonial Office List London : Harrison, 1862-1966.
--Titled: The Dominions Office and Colonial Office list for .. 65th (1926)-79th (1940).  
             The Commonwealth Relations Office list. 1951-1965 [Absorbed India Office and Burma Office list, 1951- ]
LLMC Version (1946-1965)
HOLLIS Record (1889-1940)
HathiTrust Version (1878-1925, incomplete)
Internet Archive Version (1862, 1881-1940)
Internet Archive Version (1951-1968)

A valuable source. Each volume includes brief descriptions of each colony with officials and statistics (largely population and import/export), brief biographical information on Colonial Office personnel, “Imperial and Local Acts of General Interest", colonial regulations, and “Papers Presented to Parliament relating to the Colonies since 1864” arranged by colony.   For the India Office List.

British documents on the end of empire.
Location : Widener WID-LC DA10 .B75  Online Access

Series A: HOLLIS Record
•Vol. 1: Imperial policy and colonial practice, 1925-1945
•Vol. 2: Labour government and the end of empire, 1945-1951
•Vol 3: Conservative government and the end of empire 1951-1957
•Vol. 4: Conservative government and the end of empire 1957-1964

Series B: HOLLIS Record
•Vol. 1: Ghana  --  Vol. 2: Sri Lanka  --  Vol. 3: Malaya  --  Vol. 4: Egypt and the defence of the Middle East  --  Vol. 5: Sudan  --  Vol. 6: West Indies  --  Vol. 7: Nigeria  --  Vol. 8: Malaysia  --  Vol. 9: Central Africa  --  Vol. 10: Fiji  --  Vol. 11: Malta

Series C: HOLLIS Record
•Sources for colonial studies in the Public Record Office.
--v. 1. Records of the Colonial Office, Dominions Office, Commonwealth Relations Office and Commonwealth Office. Online version 
--v. 2. Records of the Cabinet, Foreign Office, Treasury and other records.

Images of Empire (British Empire and Commonwealth Museum)

Africa

African blue books of statistics, 1821-1953: Reports by colonial governors on the condition of their colonies.

Confidential print: Africa, 1834-1966 contains printed material, from single letters to large volumes, circulated to officials in the Foreign or Colonial Office, to the Cabinet, and to heads of British missions abroad. Nature and Scope

African Posters from the Melville J. Herskovits Library at Northwestern University

North America

Colonial North America at Harvard Library
HOLLIS Record

South Asia

The HOLLIS Subject term for the British era in India is:  British Occupation 1765-1947

East India Company (1599 to 1947) offers India Office Records from the British Library. Contains royal charters, correspondence, trading diaries, minutes of council meetings, expedition reports, etc.

Area studies: India

  • Colonial discourses: series 3: colonial fiction, 1712-1933
  • Curzon, India and empire: the papers of Lord Curzon (1859-1925) from the British Library, London
  • The empire writes back: part one: 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
  • Indian newspaper reports, c. 1868-1942.

Digital Colonial Documents (India) offers census (1871-1901), East India Company documents, and personal reports.

Gazettes of India 1808, 1838- (incomplete)

India, Raj & Empire (1710-1947) includes diaries and journals, official and private papers, letters, sketches, paintings and original Indian documents containing histories and literary works. Scots played a central role as traders, generals, missionaries, viceroys, governor-generals and East India Company officials and the material is drown from manuscript collections of the National Library of Scotland.

French Empire

See also Library Research Guide for History 82d: French Colonial Encounters: 1870's to Present

European colonialism in the early 20th century. French colonialism in Africa : from Algeria to Madagascar, 1910-1930
HOLLIS Record

Gallica includes the full-text for more than 100,000 volumes and 300,000 images covering the Middle Ages to the beginning of the twentieth century, with an emphasis on nineteenth-century material. Included are dictionaries and encyclopedias, journals, manuscripts, recordings and images. See Par aires géographiques at top.

Images

l' Indochine Coloniale.

Base Ulysse (Archives nationales d’outre-mer) offers online images from their collection

German Empire

European colonialism in the early 20th century : German colonies to League of Nations mandates in Africa 1910-1929
HOLLIS Record

Bildbestand der Deutschen Kolonialgesellschaft

Digitale Sammlung Deutscher Kolonialismus

Italian Empire

European colonialism in the early 20th century : Italian colonies in North Africa and aggression in East Africa, 1930-1939
HOLLIS Record

Portuguese Empire

European colonialism in the early 20th century. Political and economic consolidation of Portuguese colonies in Africa, 1910-1929
HOLLIS Record

Spanish Empire

The online catalog of the Archive of the Indies (Archivo General de Indias) can be searched through PARES (Portal de Archivos Españoles) while limiting the results to digitized material.

United States Empire

Library Research Guide for U S Foreign Relations

Internet History Sourcebooks Project: American Imperialism

The World of 1898: The Spanish-American War

United States and its Territories, 1870-1925: The Age of Imperialism

Nineteenth Century Collection Online Asia and the West: Diplomacy and Cultural Exchange includes History of the Philippine Insurrection Against the United States, 1899-1903, and Documents Relating to the War Department Project for Publishing of History, 1899-1903

Philippine Diary Project offers “diaries written by both famous and unknown Filipinos, and foreigners writing about the Philippines”