Yale University Library Research Guides: HSHM481/ AFAM213/ AFST481/ HIST383J: Medicine and Race in the Slave Trade: Primary and Secondary Source Databases

Slavery Primary Sources - Online & Selected Archives

The American Slavery Collection, 1820-1922
This digital edition of the American Antiquarian Society’s extraordinary holdings of slavery and abolition materials delivers more than 3,500 works published over the course of more than 100 years.
Anti-slavery Materials: Regional Records and Other Pamphlets, 18th-19th Centuries
Collection at John Rylands University Library, Manchester. London, England: Great Britain, Foreign Office Records; General Correspondence Before 1906, Slave Trade, 1816-1892
Archives Nationales d'Haiti - Digital Library of the Caribbean
The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record
The approximately 1,235 images in this collection have been selected from a wide range of sources, most of them dating from the period of slavery. This collection is envisioned as a tool and a resource that can be used by teachers, researchers, students, and the general public - in brief, anyone interested in the experiences of Africans who were enslaved and transported to the Americas and the lives of their descendants in the slave societies of the New World.
Biblioteca Digital del Patroimonio Iberoamericano
BDPI is a project of the Asociación de Bibliotecas Nacionales de Iberoamérica (ABINIA). Its objective is the creation of a portal which provides access, from a single search point, to the digital resources of all the participating libraries. Highlighted digital collections in geography and travel, periodicals, music, and tales and legends.
Colonial State Papers
The Colonial State Papers provide access to thousands of papers concerning English activities in the American, Canadian, and West Indian colonies between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Included is a digitized version of The Calendar of State Papers, Colonial: North America and the West Indies 1574-1739, which contains bibliographic records and extracts for thousands of additional documents.
Digital Library of the Caribbean
The Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) is a cooperative digital library for resources from and about the Caribbean and circum-Caribbean. dLOC provides access to digitized versions of Caribbean cultural, historical and research materials currently held in archives, libraries, and private collections.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO)
Eighteenth Century Collections Online gives access the digital images of 150,000 books published in the British Isles during the 18th Century.
Eighteenth Century Journals
Portal to newspapers and periodicals c1685-1815 offers integrated access to the Hope Collection at the Bodleian Library, Oxford and the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center University of Texas. It brings together rare journals printed between c1685 and 1815, illuminating all aspects of eighteenth-century social, political and literary life.
Empire Online
Empire Online provides access to images of original documents with introductory essays and combined indexing to all five sections. Bringing together images of original manuscript and printed documents from libraries and archives around the world, Empire Online enables researchers to explore colonial history, politics, culture and society. Published in five thematic sections, Empire Online is fully searchable and offers thematic essays by leading scholars.
Enslaved: Peoples of the Historical Slave Trade
Explore or reconstruct the lives of individuals who were enslaved, owned slaves, or participated in the historical trade.
First Blacks in the Americas/Los primeros negros en las Américas (CUNY)
A bilingual digital educational platform devoted to disseminating historical information about the early presence of people of black African ancestry in the first colonial society of the Americas of modern times, the society of the colony named La Española
House of Commons Parliamentary Papers
Includes over 200,000 House of Commons sessional papers from 1715 to the present, with supplementary material back to 1688. HCPP delivers page images and searchable full text for each paper, along with detailed indexing. Information on the abolition of slavery and the slave trade is scattered throughout.
Liberated Africans
Contains repository for trials of the Havana Slave Commission between 1824 and 1841 as well as free slaves, demographics, legislation and cases. Will soon expand to include Rio de Janeiro.
Making of the Modern World
Offers access to the theories, practices, and consequences of economic and business activity in the West, from the last half of the 15th century to the mid-19th century. It combines the strengths of two pre-eminent collections — the Goldsmiths' Library of Economic Literature at the University of London Library and the Kress Collection of Business and Economics at the Harvard Business School — along with supplementary materials from the Seligman Collection at Columbia.
Memories of Slavery - Trauma and representation in European and African art and visual culture 16th –21th century.
The database puts together images and objects, sites and gestures related to the cultural memories of slavery in Europe and West-Africa. As the transatlantic slavesystem was a traumatizing experience for enslaved Africans as well as for the European slaveholder-societies only few images show the social practices, which both groups were unable to integrate in a positive self-concept.
Race and Slavery Petitions Project
The site provides access to information gathered and analyzed over an eighteen-year period from petitions to southern legislatures and country courts filed between 1775 and 1867 in the fifteen slaveholding states in the United States and the District of Columbia.
Sabin Americana, 1500-1926
This collection contains works about the Americas published throughout the world from 1500 to the early 1900s. Included are books, pamphlets, serials and other documents that provide original accounts of exploration, trade, colonialism, slavery and abolition, etc.
Slave Biographies: The Atlantic Database Network
Repository of information on the identities of enslaved people in the Atlantic World. It includes the names, ethnicities, skills, occupations, and illnesses of individual slaves. Phase one of a multi-phase project is presented here. Users of the website can access data about slaves in colonial Louisiana and Maranhão, Brazil. They can download datasets, search for ancestors, and run statistical analysis
Slave Movement During the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
This site provides access to the raw data and documentation which contains information on the following slave trade topics from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: records of slave ship movement between Africa and the Americas, slave ships of eighteenth century France, slave trade to Havana, Cuba, Nantes slave trade in the eighteenth century, and slave trade to Jamaica.
Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice
This resource is designed as an important portal for slavery and abolition studies, bringing together documents and collections covering an extensive time period 1490-2007, from libraries and archives across the Atlantic world. Close attention is being given to the varieties of slavery, the legacy of slavery, the social justice perspective and the continued existence of slavery today.
Slavery and Anti-Slavery
Includes documents from the United States and Europe, as well as other parts of the world. In addition to newspaper collections and books published in the antebellum era, Slavery and Anti-Slavery contains documents from several archives originally available only on microfilm.
Slave Societies Digital Archive (Vanderbilt U)
Digitally preserves endangered ecclesiastical and secular documents related to Africans and Afro-descended peoples in the Americas. This website provides information about the project and its history and tools that allow researchers to search the ESSSS database containing nearly 300,000 documents from three countries and several archives. While most of the documents contained here belong to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, there are also some Cuban documents from the sixteenth century and Brazilian documents from the seventeenth.
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade.
Contains records of 27,233 trans-Atlantic slave ship voyages made between 1595 and 1866. Format allows users to track information by time period and geographic region, and includes interactive maps that allow viewers to chart the trans-Atlantic connections. The accompanying data contains materials about people on board, owners and captains, ships’ characteristics, and the geographic trajectory of each voyage.
Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database
Massive project to provide a comprehensive view of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Contains over 35,000 records from 1514-1866.
Yale Slavery and Abolition Portal (Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition/Yale)
This site is designed to help researchers and students find primary sources related to slavery, abolition, and resistance within the university’s many libraries and galleries. It is meant as an introduction to the wealth of Yale's collections and is not a comprehensive listing. Select a repository from the list on the right to browse by location or use the search function to sort collections by topic. Consult the research and links pages for information about how to find additional source material.

Secondary Source Databases

History of Science, Medicine, and Technology
History of Science, Medicine, and Technology indexes journal articles, conference proceedings, books, book chapters, book reviews and dissertations in the history of science, medicine, and technology and allied historical fields, including disability studies.
America: History & Life
America: History & Life, among other sources of American history, contains historical perspectives on disability and/or disabled persons. This database provides information on articles, books, book reviews, and dissertations on U.S. and Canadian history from prehistory to the present. For information on similar publications on non-U.S. and non-Canadian history from 1450 to present, use Historical Abstracts.
Historical Abstracts
The primary resource to find resources on history. Covers scholarly literature published between 1955 and the present. Materials in many languages are indexed.
Project Muse
Project Muse has a variety of scholarly articles in the humanities and social sciences, such as cultural studies, history, political science, and more. Includes many e-books.
Race Relations Abstracts
Race Relations Abstracts provides bibliographic records covering essential areas related to race relations, such as ethnic studies, discrimination, immigration studies, ideology, community relations, radicalism, cultural identity, and advocacy groups. It abstracts content from academic journals, books, periodicals and newspapers relevant to this field of study.
JSTOR
A major database of articles, books, book reviews, primary sources, and more. Humanities and social science material is heavily represented.

Newspaper and Magazine databases

You can also find primary sources related to the slave trade in early magazines or newspapers. It depends on your topic!

African American Newspapers (from Accessible Archives)
African American Periodicals, 1825-1995
America's Historical Newspapers
This archive of American historical newspapers provides access to full-text, digitized versions of primary source material, Early American Newspapers, Series I, II, III, IV, and V. It includes titles from all 50 present states.
American Periodicals
Contains articles from journals published between 1740 and 1940, including special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines and many other historically-significant periodicals.
British Periodicals
British periodicals provides access to the searchable full text of British journals from the late seventeenth to the early twentieth century. Subject areas covered include literature, philosophy, history, science, the fine arts and the social sciences.
Newspapers.com
Historical newspaper archive providing online access to thousands of historical newspapers, dating from the early 1700s into the early 2000s. Contains full runs and portions of runs of well-known regional and state titles to small local newspapers in the United States and other countries, including Australia, Canada, China, England, Guam, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Panama, Puerto Rico, Scotland, and Wales. Provides access to news, notices of birth, marriages and deaths.

Free Big databases with all kinds of Primary Sources

Turn to these free online primary source databases for more medical history and slavery materials:
Medical Heritage Library
A consortium of medical libraries, including Yale, have put parts of their collections available online. Over 300,000 freely downloadable primary source books, many from 1780-1923.

National Library of Medicine (NLM) Historical Collections
Great primary history of medicine material, including digitized books, images, archives, and moving images (aka movies).

Internet Archive
Home to a huge variety of resources, including Moving Pictures, for free use. Not limited to history of medicine or the slave trade, but lots of possible primary sources here. Make sure, if you pick a source from here, that it's uploaded by a library or other institution!

Hathi Trust
A huge online repository of freely downloadable books and journals, from a collaboration of libraries including Yale. Not limited to history of medicine or the slave trade, but lots of possible primary sources here.

Digital Public Library of America
This site pulls in sources and archives (like letters and diaries) from many libraries, museums, and other institutions, as well as big databases like Hathi Trust and Internet Archive. Look at the primary sources sets and exhibitions on broad themes, including race.

HSHM481/ AFAM213/ AFST481/ HIST383J: Medicine and Race in the Slave Trade: Primary and Secondary Source Databases

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Slavery Primary Sources - Online & Selected Archives

Secondary Source Databases

Newspaper and Magazine databases

Free Big databases with all kinds of Primary Sources

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