Research Guides: HIST 208: Decolonizing Colonial Latin American and Caribbean History (HC): Textual Sources

Online Source Collections

Catálogo Colectivo de Impresos Latinoamericanos
This online catalog is gathering records for all books printed in Latin America prior to 1851 as well as books in Spanish published in the United States and the Philippines. Later it plans to provide full-text access for titles.
Colecciones Mexicanas
Provides access to collections and digitized images of documents and books from major libraries in Mexico. Note in particular the Archivo Franciscano.

Early English Books Online (EEBO)
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Contains digital images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473-1700. This collection contains about 100,000 titles including books, pamphlets, manuscripts and newspapers. Among them are translations of titles originally written in Spanish as well as English titles concerning many different aspects of Spanish and Latin American culture.

Ecclesiastical and Secular Sources for Slave Societies
Makes available over 300, 000 documents from Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, and Spanish Florida. The largest number date from the 18th and 19th centuries, but there is material from earlier periods as well. Note, as an example, a transcription of baptismal records from Havana, 1590-1600 which documents family and social networks for individuals who are frequently categorized with a racial term.

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. Includes English translations of titles originally written in Spanish.

Latin American Travelogues (Brown University)
Full text versions of travel accounts written in the 16th through 19th centuries.
Sourcebook on Colonial Latin America (Fordham University)
This project is under development but includes documents and letters concerning the Jesuits in colonial Latin America.

Sources in Printed Form

Those that have been edited, reprinted in facsimiles, or transferred to microfilm can be borrowed through E-ZBorrow or Interlibrary Loan if they are not in Tripod. Many of them will be listed in Tripod or WorldCat under subject terms and the word "sources." For example, the search latin america* history sources produces books including:

Afro-Latino Voices: Narratives from the Early Modern Ibero-Atlantic World, 1550-1812

Colonial Latin American History: A Documentary History

New Iberian World: A Documentary History of the Discovery and Settlement of Latin America to the Early 17th Century
Testaments of Toluca
Women in Colonial Latin America , 1526 to 1806: Texts and Contexts

Books printed in the colonial period are kept in libraries' rare book collections. You can go to Haverford's Special Collections, Bryn Mawr, the University of Pennsylvania, and other local libraries to see examples of these books:

The natvrall and morall historie of the East and West Indies
By Acosta, José de, 1540-1600.
London, Printed by V. Sims for E. Blount and W. Aspley, 1604
H Magill Special Collections E141 A25