Primary Sources - World History Digital Collections

Global portal to manuscripts, maps, images, and rare books related to Africa.

Hundreds of full-text documents and web-based resources covering African history from the origins of humanity through colonisation and independence movements.

Audio, video, photographs, and documents from partner projects across the continent.

Digitized books, periodicals, photographs, and ephemera from multiple African regions.

Primary texts (speeches, letters, declarations) and curated links covering Africa and the African diaspora.

Reconstructions of Livingstone’s field diary with transcriptions.

Testimonies, government documents, photographs, and memorial records related to the 1994 genocide.

Digitized ANC publications and related materials such as pamphlets, posters, press releases, correspondence, and items from the Youth League and Umkhonto we Sizwe that document the party’s organization and anti-apartheid activism.

Primary sources (prints, letters, maps) and contextual essays on the transatlantic trade and its abolition.

Historical images that document the African slave trade and the lives of enslaved people and their descendants across the Atlantic world.

Provides access to more than 700,000 digitized records from the sixteenth through twentieth centuries documenting Africans and their descendants across the Atlantic world.

Digitized political, cultural, and social movement posters across regions and decades.

Photographic archives from British government collections showing daily life, labor, and administration.

High-resolution historical maps documenting boundaries, trade routes, exploration, and colonial era cartography.