Explore manuscripts, artwork and rare printed books dating from the earliest contact with European settlers right up to photographs and newspapers from the mid-twentieth century. Browse through a wide range of rare and original documents from treaties, speeches and diaries, to historic maps and travel journals.
Colonial America (1606-1822) consists of all 1,450 volumes of the CO 5 series of Colonial Office files held at The National Archives in London, plus all extracted documents associated with them. This unique collection of largely manuscript material from the archives of the British government is invaluable for students and researchers of all aspects of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century American history and the early-modern Atlantic world.
"Settlement, Slavery, and Empire, 1624-1832" module stretches from the turbulent years of early British settlement to the rise of the abolition movement, amongst the fierce rivalries with the Spanish, Danish, French and Dutch in the Caribbean region. It makes available materials from 27 Colonial Office file classes from The National Archives UK, and includes administrative documentation, trade and shipping records, minutes of council meetings, details of plantation life, colonial settlement, imperial rivalries across the region, and the growing concern of absentee landlords.