Databases

Colonial Legacies: Empire and Commonwealth Periodicals is a digital archive comprising over 30 periodicals concerning the 20th-century history of the British Empire, decolonization, and the history and culture of former colonies. The archive offers a mixture of British publications about the empire and titles published in Commonwealth countries (including Australia, New Zealand, India, Canada, South Africa, and Papua New Guinea).

Coverage spans over 150 years, ranging from the late-19th century to the 21st – these publications encompass the empire’s later phase and its post-independence legacies. It will support research in key events in colonial history, including the latter stages of the Scramble for Africa, the world wars, independence movements, the creation of the Commonwealth and more. While official publications contain valuable information about colonial administration and ideology, more popular titles, covering the arts, society, and general interests, provide insights into many facets of Commonwealth countries’ history and society before and after independence.

This primary sources collection consists of historical documents from the British National Archives that offer perspectives on politics, diplomacy and everyday life in the German-occupied countries. Includes detailed information indexed by year and section, from the occupied states of Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and the Vatican, and the neutral countries--Portugal, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland--along with a day-by-day chronology of the war, photographs and posters from The National Archives, film footage of Special Operations Executive (SOE) agents in France from the Imperial War Museum, links to related resources and three newly commissioned essays by leading experts in addition to a comprehensive introduction by Dr. Michael Stenton.

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. 

Digitized from originals held by the Library's Research Collections.  The collection contains items originating from prisoners held in German concentration camps, internment and transit camps, Gestapo prisons, and POW camps, during and just prior to World War II. Most of the collection consists of letters written or received by prisoners, but also includes receipts for parcels, money orders and personal effects; paper currency; and realia, including Star of David badges that Jews were forced to wear.

Curio.ca provides streaming access to selected educational content from CBC and Radio-Canada, with documentaries from television and radio, news reports, and archival material.  Both English and French language content is included.  Programs are pulled from the Doc Zone, The Nature of Things, The Fifth Estate, Marketplace, The Passionate Eye, and more.

Note:  McMaster's subscription does not include the BBC or National Geographic channel.

This collection brings together material from within former British colonies and Commonwealth nations, alongside some from former French and Portuguese territories, to provide valuable primary source material created for local audiences by local actors during a period of enormous global change. After the Second World War decolonization movements around the world gathered pace, and the development of party politics, trade unions and other local and national movements in former colonies and Commonwealth nations across Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Australasia and the Americas took many different forms.

This archive allows insight into the variety of systems and modes of national and international political thought that became prominent in the twentieth century, including socialism and communism, anti-imperialism, regional independence movements, trade unionism, student activism, Pan-Africanism and many modes of constitutional democracy. The three sub-collections included are: Marjorie Nicholson Papers from the Trades Union Congress Library, Papers of African Trade Unions, and Political Pamphlets from the Institute of Commonwealth Studies. 

Brings together approximately 50,000 images of original manuscript and printed material, including a strong core of documents from the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Ephemeral material such as ballads, cartoons and pamphlets is featured alongside diaries, advice literature, medical journals, conduct books and periodicals. The database is structured into five thematic sections:

• Conduct and Politeness
• Domesticity and the Family
• Consumption and Leisure
• Education and Sensibility
• The Body

A dictionary of biographical entries for individuals who have contributed to the history of Canada. 

The Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) is a cooperative online library for resources from and about the Caribbean, providing access to cultural, historical and research materials from archives, libraries, and private collections.  Collections include photographs, archives of Caribbean leaders and governments, official historical documents, scientific scholarship, and travel accounts, with particularly strong representation of Caribbean Maps and Caribbean Newspapers.

From the nongovernmental National Security Archive, this database consists of curated and indexed, declassified government documents covering U.S. policy toward critical world events – including their military, intelligence, diplomatic and human rights dimensions – from 1945 to the present. Each collection is assembled by foreign policy experts and features chronologies, glossaries, bibliographies, and scholarly overviews that provide insight into significant international issues.

Streaming video collection of independent, social-issue and environmental films from renowned leaders in documentary film distribution, including titles from Bullfrog Films, Collective Eye, GOOD DOCS, Women Make Movies, and many others.

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.

Cross-search over 30 indexing, abstracting, and full-text 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.

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.

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.

Search or browse issues (full page and article images in PDF) of the Financial Times. The archive covers the complete run of the London edition of this internationally known daily business newspaper, from its first issue in 1888 through 2021. Every article, advertisement, and market listing is included—shown both individually and in the context of the full page and issue of the day.

The most current issues of the Financial Times are available in print and online via several databases (with most current month embargoed).

Showcases a wealth of primary source material for the study of the First World War, from personal narratives and printed books to military files, propaganda pamphlets and strong visual documents. Also provides secondary contextual material, including scholarly essays, case studies and interactive maps.

Material is sourced from archives around the world, including McMaster's Archives and Research Collections which contributed hundreds of personal collections, albums, photographs, trench journals, sheet music, visual sources and trench maps, as well as material from the Vera Brittain Archive and Michael Brisebois collections.

The FRANTEXT database (formerly the Trésor de la langue française) consists more than 3500 texts, ranging from classic works of French literature to various kinds of non-fiction prose and technical writing. The eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries are about equally represented, with a smaller selection of seventeenth century texts as well as some medieval and Renaissance texts. Genres include novels, verse, theatre, journalism, essays, correspondence, and treatises. Subjects include literary criticism, biology, history, economics, and philosophy.

This collection of primary source documents captures the lives, experiences and colonial encounters of settlers and indigenous people living in colonial frontiers of North America, Southern Africa, Australia and New Zealand from 1650-1920. More than 20% of the content is Canadian, with over 1,000 documents drawn from the Hudson's Bay Archive and the Glenbow Museum.

Search across Gale's primary source databases, including Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO), with links to additional content from ProQuest's Early English Books (EEBO).  Individual databases can also be explored separately or in combination.

A database of almost 80 encyclopedias and specialized reference sources for multidisciplinary research.

Explore primary sources documenting the changing representations and lived experiences of gender roles and relations, and the struggle for women’s rights, from the nineteenth century to the present.

Sourced from the U.S., U.K., Canada, and Australia, the database provides materials for the study of gender history, women’s suffrage, the feminist movement and the men’s movement. Other key areas represented in the material include: employment and labour, education, government and legislation, the body, domesticity and the family. Explore records from men’s and women’s organisations and pressure groups, detailing twentieth-century lobbying and activism on a wide array of issues to reveal developing gender relations and prevalent challenges.