Databases

The collection includes more than 100,000 pages of poems, drama, novels, stories, and related material—carefully located and secured from archives and rare book libraries, licensed from local publishing houses, and received from the authors themselves.

More than a million and a half Africans, along with many Indians and South Asians, were brought to the Caribbean between the 15th and 19th centuries. Today, their descendants are active in literature and the arts, producing literature with strong and direct ties to traditional African expressions. This literary connection, combined with the tales of survival, exile, resistance, endurance, and emigration to other parts of the Americas, makes for a body of work that is essential for the study of the Caribbean and the Black Diaspora.

Published by Readex/Newbank and created in cooperation with the American Antiquarian Society, this is the largest online collection of 18th- and 19th-century newspapers published in this region providing a comprehensive primary resource for studying the development of Western society and international relations within this important group of islands. This unique resource will prove essential for researching colonial history, the Atlantic slave trade, international commerce, New World slavery and U.S. relations with the region as far back as the early 18th century. This collection includes more than 150 years of Caribbean and Atlantic history, cultures and daily life. Featuring more than 140 newspapers from 22 islands, this resource chronicles the region’s evolution across two centuries through eyewitness reporting, editorials, legislative information, letters, poetry, advertisements, obituaries and other news items.

Founded in 1974 in Trinidad & Tobago, Banyan Productions was the first television producer of innovative and entertaining programs for, about, and by the Caribbean people and culture. Banyan’s mission was to provide the Caribbean people with the means to tell their stories to one anotherwithout influence from the outside world. Now, for the first time, those stories will be available on the Alexander Street platform.

With a mixture of history, entertainment, and social commentary, Banyan has produced a film library  covering documentary, drama, music, dance, and much more, spanning the past forty years.

Previously inaccessible in streaming format, this collection features more than 1,100 hours of edited programs along with unedited footage that will enhance study across a host of disciplines and subjects, including: Caribbean Studies, Black Studies, History, Anthropology, Sociology, Religion, Visual Arts, Dance, Music, Literature, Theatre and Media Studies.

Search or browse issues (full page and article images in PDF) of The Chicago Defender,  one of the most influential black newspapers in the United States.

This primary source database, of interest to scholars of global history and missology, provides original materials from the CMS, founded in 1799 as an Anglican evangelical organization.  It includes documents related to missions to Africa, the Americas, East Asia, India, and the Middle East, Missions to Women, and records of the CMS.

Highlights include:

• Central records of the CMS and papers of key individuals associated with it
• Records of the the Loochoo Naval Mission (1843-1864), the first recorded Anglican and Protestant mission in Japan
• Archive of the Society for Promoting Female Education in China, India and the East
• Records of the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society

Documenting Anglican missionary work from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, the Church Missionary Society Periodicals offer a unique perspective on global history and cultural encounters. 

Module I features publications from the Church Missionary Society (CMS), the South American Missionary Society and the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society (CEZMS), including the Mid-Africa Ministry, between 1804 and 2009. 

Module II focuses on the CMS medical mission auxiliaries, the work of the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society among women in Asia and the Middle East, newsletters from native churches and student missions in China and Japan, and 'home' material including periodicals aimed specifically at women and children subscribers. 

Includes images, interactive maps and chronologies, and biographies.

Colonial Caribbean covers the history of the various territories under British colonial governance from 1624 to 1870. This extensive resource includes administrative documentation, trade and shipping records, minutes of council meetings, as well as details of plantation life, colonial settlement, imperial rivalries across the region, and the growing concern of absentee landlords.

Content Warning: 
Colonial Caribbean covers topics which are inextricably linked to stories of oppression and abuse. Please be aware that distressing content can be found throughout the documents and contextual essays in this resource, including graphic descriptions and first-hand accounts of physical or sexual abuse.

Stretching from Jamaica and the Bahamas to Trinidad and Tobago, Colonial Caribbean makes available materials from 27 Colonial Office file classes from The National Archives, UK. Covering the history of the various territories under British colonial governance from 1624 to 1870, this extensive resource includes administrative documentation, trade and shipping records, minutes of council meetings, and details of plantation life, colonial settlement, imperial rivalries across the region, and the growing concern of absentee landlords. 

This primary source database provides online access to the United Kingdom's Colonial, Dominion and Foreign Offices' confidential correspondence relating to Africa between 1834 and 1966.  Includes official documents and maps covering almost the entire period of European conquest and colonization of Africa (with the exception of Egypt).

Contents range from single-page letters or telegrams to comprehensive dispatches, investigative reports and texts of treaties.  From coastal trading in the early nineteenth century, through the Conference of Berlin of 1884 and the subsequent Scramble for Africa, to the abuses of the Congo Free State, fights against tropical disease, Italy's defeat by the Abyssinians, apartheid in South Africa and colonial moves towards independence, the documents in Confidential Print: Africa provide insight into the modern period of European colonization of the continent. 

A database of over 60,000 full text contributions on a broad range of women's issues, extracted from over 2,245 sources world wide, including more than 200 periodicals. Content from mainstream periodicals, gray literature, and the alternative press. Includes English-language titles from East and West Africa, Asia, and South and Central America, the Caribbean, North America and Europe. Publication types include: journals, newsletters, pamphlets, reports; bibliographies, directories, fact sheets and guides.