Research Guides: HIST 060: The East India Company (SC): Primary Sources Available Online

Primary Sources Available Online

Many primary source documents are available to view online. Some examples include diaries and journals, letters (correspondence), transcribed speeches and sermons, manuscripts, newspaper articles, photographs, posters, and advertisements. (Click the computer icon to visit the site.)

Eighteenth Century Collections Online
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Offers full-text access to English-language titles and editions published between 1701 and 1800 including books, pamphlets, almanacs, Bibles and treatises. Subjects covered include history, geography, fine arts, medicine, science, literature, language, religion, philosophy and law. Significant collections of women writers, collections on the French Revolution, and numerous eighteenth-century editions of the works of Shakespeare are also included.
Nineteenth Century Collections Online
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Full text versions of books, magazines, and other materials published in the 19th century. This is a collection in development. Materials now in the database cover Asia and the West, British politics and society, high and popular culture in Britain, and European literature.
Empire Online
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Offers images of original documents taken from libraries and archives around the world including correspondence, diaries, literature and illustrations. Includes essays by leading scholars in the field of Empire Studies. Covers a range of topics and includes Africa, the Americans, Australasia, Oceania and South Asia. Includes documents published between 1492-1969.

To find documents related to the EIC, click on "Popular Searches" and select "East India Company."

British History Online
Open access digital library of core printed primary and secondary sources.
Early Modern Resources
A portal categorizing open access databases and web sites by subject, geographic region, and material type.

18thConnect This link opens in a new window
A web portal and research environment devoted to digital projects concerning the 18th century. Many primary texts and images are accessible by subject, author, and other categories. Use the Advanced Search to refine by format, discipline, genre, and so on.
- Only some content will be available full text.. Please contact a subject librarian to find full-text copies of sources not available in 18thConnect.
Europeana This link opens in a new window
Use Europeana to search through millions of digitized books, art, newspapers, and other sources from European museums, galleries and national libraries.
Internet Archive This link opens in a new window
The Internet Archive is a non-profit organization that is building an Internet library, with the purpose of offering permanent access for researchers, historians, and scholars to historical collections that exist in digital format. The Internet Archive includes more than 300,000 texts, as well as audio, moving images, software and archived web pages. A good source for books printed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including many travel accounts.

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Historical Newspapers & Periodicals

Burney Collection Newspapers Archive, 17th & 18th Century
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Provides full text to the largest collection of 17th and 18th century English news media.
Nineteenth Century British Library Newspapers
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Browseable and searchable online collection of historical British newspapers, scanned in their original format. Covers 1800-1900.
The Times Digital Archive
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Provides full-text and full-image articles from The Times of London for the years 1785-2019.