Databases

Contains nearly 100,000 pages of letters, diaries, memoirs and accounts of early encounters among peoples in North America from 1534 to 1850. Collection focuses on personal accounts and provides unique perspectives from all of the protagonists, including traders, slaves, missionaries, explorers, soldiers, native peoples, and officials, both men and women. 

EEBO contains page images of almost every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1470-1700.  From the first book printed in English through to the ages of Spenser, Shakespeare and of the English Civil War, EEBO's content draws on authoritative and respected short-title catalogues of the period and features a substantial number of text transcriptions. 

The Text Creation Partnership, which provides highly searchable versions of the texts, made the first 25,000 works freely available in 2015.  This interface, at the University of Michigan, allows proximity and boolean searching within the available works, but does not search the full EEBO database.  

Over 200 complete works in fictional prose from the period 1500-1700.

Provides access to works printed in Europe before 1701, bringing together a diverse array of printed sources, regardless of language, as well as works published further afield. Full-color, high-resolution facsimile images of some of the world's most significant collections of early printed books in Europe are included. McMaster has access to Collection 3, 5, 6, 10 and 12 of Early European Books.

Includes primary source documents that trace the history of the East India Company which, at its peak, controlled over a quarter of the world's trade. Containing royal charters, correspondence, trading diaries, minutes of council meetings and reports of expeditions, among other document types, this collection charts the history of British trade and rule in the Indian subcontinent and beyond from 1599 to 1947.

Topics covered include:

• Administrative and ecclesiastical appointments
• Agriculture
• Charters and the Company’s relationship to the English/British Crown
• Courts and legal affairs, including legislation
• Diplomacy, treaties and ambassadorial expeditions
• Finance and debt
• The machinery of government
• Pay and pensions for Company servants and their families
• Railways
• Trade
• Early voyages to Japan and the Spice Islands (Indonesia)
• Warfare and military matters

This collection is a key resource for scholarship of British imperial history, maritime trade, global commerce, and the history of the first great multinational corporation.

Cross-search over 30 indexing, abstracting, and fulltext databases in a range of subjects.

For over 170 years, The Economist has published timely reporting, concise commentary and comprehensive analysis of global news every week. It covers the world's political, business, scientific, technological and cultural developments and the connections between them. Included in the archive are full-colour images, covers, advertisements, multiple search indexes, and the facility to browse each and every issue from 1843 to 2020.

The most current issues of The Economist are available in print and online via several databases. 

Provides original German documents from the London School of Economics and Political Science collection, including:

• Statistics of the Third Reich analysed, 1933-1944
• Monatliche Nachweise über den auswärtigen Handel Deutschlands (January 1933-June 1939)
• Der Aussenhandel Deutschlands Monatliche Nachweise (July 1939); and
• Sondernachweis der Aussenhandel Deutschlands (August 1939-1944).

These publications illustrate a number of major topics, including: the importance of German trade with Eastern Europe; effect of new trade treaties with Southeastern European states concluded in 1934 and 1935; Germany's economic offensive beginning in1934; growth of a "command economy" and the requirements of the Rearmament Program; balance of payments problem; and the defeat of "the traditionalists" with the dismissal of Schacht and Neurath and the appointment of Ribbentrop. Sondernachweis der Aussenhandel Deutschlands is particularly important as it provides a thorough breakdown of German foreign trade by commodity, volume and value on a monthly basis. The December issue of each year gives a final listing of annual figures.

ECCO provides online access to every significant English-language and foreign-language title printed in the United Kingdom between 1701 and 1800, along with thousands of important works from the Americas. Content consists of books, pamphlets, broadsides, ephemera, and more.

McMaster has purchased both ECCO and the update, ECCO II, giving us access to over 180,000 titles (200,000 volumes).  Subject coverage includes history, literature, religion, law, fine arts, and science.

Brings together rare journals printed between c1680 and 1816, illuminating all aspects of eighteenth-century social, political and literary life. Many are ephemeral, lasting only for a handful of issues, others run for several years. Topics covered are extremely wide-ranging and include: the writings of Sir Isaac Newton; the French Revolution; reviews of literature and fashion throughout Europe; political debates; and coffee house gossip and discussion.

This primary sources database provides images of original documents related to the British Empire. The content is structured around five thematic sections: Cultural Contacts; Literature; The Visual Empire; Religion; and Race, Class, Colonialism and Imperialism.

Lists over 480,000 items published between 1473 and 1800 mainly in Britain and North America mainly, but not exclusively, in English from the collections of the British Library and over 2,000 other libraries.  Also see Early English Books Online (EEBO) and Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) for full-text.

Brings together multimedia materials (text, archival primary sources, video and audio) around key environmental challenges, including climate change, water/air pollution, biodiversity, conservation, agriculture, deforestation and more. The database is curated around specific environmental issues and events from the 20th and 21st centuries. Provides an understanding of the relationship between people and the environment through social, cultural, economic, political, historical and ecological perspectives. 

This collection from Wiley Digital Archives focuses on critical aspects of anthropogenic change, with unique and rare archival collections from the Environmental Society of America (ESA), Royal Botanic Gardens (Kew Gardens), the National Archives (UK), the Commonwealth Forestry Institute, CABI (Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International) and more. The collection will build to approximately one million pages or images of primary sources featuring data-heavy collections on Deforestation, Agriculture, Livestock, and Fisheries (Food Production); Ecology, Botany, Biodiversity, and Extinction; Water Sources, Irrigation, Wetlands, and Hydrology, with an expected competion date of December 2023.

Contains the data of two former EBSEES databases, one for 1991-2000, the other for 2001-2006. The new unified database with about 85,500 titles has been developed by the Berlin State Library in cooperation with the Maison des Sciences de l´Homme, Paris. For the years 1975-1990 EBSEES is available in printed form only. Work on adding records to EBSEES ended in 2007, and no further editing will take place after December 2007. The end date for each country’s contribution varies.