IUCAT is also a great place to search for primary sources. Here are some examples of both anthologies, or collections of documents, and individual primary sources relevant to your research on global piracy:
IUCAT, Indiana University's online library catalog, provides comprehensive access to millions of items held by the IU Libraries statewide, including books, recordings, US government publications, periodicals, and other types of material. Users can access IUCAT from any Internet-connected computer or device, whether in the libraries, on campus, or off campus.
Provides access to more than 1,200 books, pamphlets, almanacs, broadsides and ephemera that cover the history of the Caribbean region from the 16th century to the early 20th century.
The geographical focus of these materials is all of the islands of the Caribbean Sea, widely referred to as the West Indies, though many works also deal with nearby islands technically not part of the Caribbean chain. Also included are works that cover both Caribbean islands and neighboring areas such as Florida, Mexico and Brazil. In addition, due to the nature of the Atlantic slave trade, some works also cover Africa, especially the West African coastal nations that played a key role in the transportation of the enslaved to the New World. The places of publication of these 1,200-plus works include primarily England, France, Spain, the Netherlands and the United States, though there are works published in the Caribbean itself as well as other European countries. Most of the works are in English, approximately 329 are in French, and a small number are in the other languages of other Colonial powers that controlled parts of the Caribbean.
This collection provides original source material detailing China's interaction with the West from 1793 to the Nixon visits to China in 1972-74.
This full-text digital collection is based primarily on manuscript materials held at the library of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), the British Library in London, and supplemented by additional sources from seven institutes, such as the Cambridge University Library. Covers multiple perspectives from politicians, diplomats, missionaries, business people, and tourists. In addition, there are over 400 color paintings, maps and drawings by English and Chinese artists, as well as many photographs, sketches and ephemeral items depicting Chinese people, customs, and events.
Collection of India Office Records from the British Library, London. Includes royal charters, correspondence, trading diaries, minutes of council meetings and reports of expeditions, among other document types. Charts the history of British trade and rule in the Indian subcontinent and beyond from 1600 to 1947. Includes access to modules I-VI.
From sixteenth century origins as a trading venture to the East Indies, through to its rise a powerful company and de facto ruler of India, to its demise amid allegations of greed and corruption, the East India Company was an extraordinary force in global history for three centuries.
Contains over 70,000 images of original manuscripts (including biographies and chronologies) and printed materials covering Africa, the Americas, Australasia, Oceana, and South Asia.
Includes interactive maps and original documents linked to essays by leading scholars in the field of Empire Studies. The sections cover Cultural Contacts, 1492-1969; Empire Writing and the Literature of Empire; The Visible Empire; Religion and Empire; and Race, Class and Colonialism, c1783-1969. The images are sources from the British Library, including the Oriental and India Office Collections at the British Library; the University of Birmingham Library; the Bodleian Library, Oxford; and the Public Record Office and the State Records, New South Wales, Australia.
Primary source materials for the study of global commodities in world history. Includes visual, manuscript and printed materials sourced from over twenty key libraries and more than a dozen companies and trade organizations around the world.
Includes business accounts, mercantile papers and correspondence, government reports, rare pamphlets and dock records, and material from specialist collections such as the George Arent’s Tobacco Collection at the New York Public Library, the Braga Brothers Collection from the University of Florida, and the Hudson’s Bay Company Archives. Explores fifteen commodities: chocolate, coffee, cotton, fur, opium, oil, porcelain, silver and gold, spices, sugar, tea,timber, tobacco, wheat, and wine and spirits.
HathiTrust makes the digitized collections of some of the nation’s great research libraries available for all. HathiTrust was initially conceived as a collaboration of the thirteen universities of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, the University of California system, and the University of Virginia to establish a repository for those universities to archive and share their digitized collections. HathiTrust will quickly expand to include additional partners and to provide those partners with an easy means to archive their digital content.
Digital collection documenting the lives of seafarers in the Anglo-American maritime world during the period 1600-1900. Emphasis is on narrative content, with accounts of life onboard a variety of ocean-going vessels, including merchant and naval vessels, whalers, and pirate ships. Also includes journals, memoirs, court records, depositions and witness statements, with examinations of pirates and court martials within the Royal Navy.
Materials on early economics, commerce, trade, transportation, industry, manufacturing, political systems and social history. Includes access to parts 1 through 4.
Digital facsimiles of literature on economics and business published from the last half of the 15th century to the mid-19th century. The collection documents the dynamics of Western trade and wealth. Includes facsimiles of rare books and primary source materials such as political pamphlets and broadsides, government publications, proclamations, and a wide range of ephemera.
Primary source collections covering the long nineteenth century. Includes monographs, newspapers, pamphlets, manuscripts, ephemera, maps, photographs, statistics, and other kinds of documents in both Western and non-Western languages.
Includes access to the following modules: Asia and the West: Diplomacy and Cultural Exchange ; British Politics and Society ; British Theatre, Music, and Literature: High and Popular Culture ; European Literature, 1790-1840: The Corvey Collection ; Children's Literature and Childhood ; Mapping the World ; Europe And Africa ; Photography: the World Through the Lens ; Science, Technology, and Medicine; Women: Transnational Networks.
Full-text database based on Joseph Sabin's famed bibliography, Bibliotheca Americana: A Dictionary of Books Relating to America from Its Discovery to the Present Time. Covers more than 400 years and more than 65,000 volumes in North, Central, and South America and the West Indies. The collection includes sermons, political tracts, newspapers, books, pamphlets, maps, legislation, literature, highlighting the society, politics, religious beliefs, culture, contemporary opinions, and momentous events of occurring 1500-1926.
Includes electronic editions of hundreds of large and small U.S. newspapers and titles worldwide.
Source types include print and online-only newspapers, blogs, newswires, journals, broadcast transcripts and videos. Offers coverage at local, regional, national and international levels. Covers a range of disciplines, including political science, journalism, English, history, environmental studies, sociology, economics, education, business, health, and social sciences. Enables researchers to track subjects geographically and over time, analyze trends and statistics.
Comprehensive digital access to historic newspapers, newsbooks, ephemera and national & regional papers from British Isles.
Includes access to:
British Library Newspapers, Part I: 1800-1900:
Ranging from early tabloids like the Illustrated Police News to radical papers like the Chartist Northern Star, the 47 publications in Part I span national, regional, and local interests. Other notable papers of Part I include the Morning Chronicle, with famous contributors such as Henry Mayhew and John Stuart Mill; the Graphic, publishing both illustrations and news as well as illustrated fiction; and the Examiner, the radical reformist and leading intellectual journal.
British Library Newspapers, Part II: 1800-1900
Part II includes additional English regional newspapers with 22 additional publications. Researchers can find the newspapers of a number of towns and regions included in this collection: Nottingham, Bradford, Leicester, Sheffield, and York, as well as North Wales. The addition of two major London newspapers, The Standard and the Morning Post, captures conservative opinion in the nineteenth century, balancing the progressive, more liberal views of the newspapers that appear in Part I.
British Library Newspapers, Part III: 1741-1950
Part III includes 35 newspapers, encompassing provincial news journals like the Leeds Intelligencer and Hull Daily Mail, local interest publications such as the Northampton Mercury, and specialist titles such as the Poor Law Unions’ Gazette. Other noteworthy titles in Part III include the Westmoreland Gazette, whose early editor, Thomas De Quincy (of Confessions of an English Opium Eater) was forced to resign due to his unreliability.
British Library Newspapers, Part IV: 1732-1950
From early newspaper titles like the Stamford Mercury to what may be the oldest magazine in the world still in publication, the Scots Magazine, the 23 newspapers in Part IV offer local and regional perspectives from Aberdeen, Bath, Chester, Derby, Stamford, Liverpool, and York. In addition, Part IV includes the 1901-1950 runs of papers such as the Aberdeen Journal and Dundee Courier whose earlier newspapers are available in Part I and Part II.
British Library Newspapers, Part V: 1746-1950
With a concentration of titles from the northern part of the United Kingdom, the 36 newspapers in Part V includes titles from the Scottish localities of Fife, Elgin, Inverness, Paisley, and John O'Groats, as well as towns just below the border, such as Morpeth, Alnwick, and more. Includes access to the Coventry Herald, which features some of the earliest published writing of Mary Ann Evans (better known as George Eliot).
Collection of 18th and 19th century newspapers published in the Caribbean. Includes research on colonial history, the Atlantic slave trade, international commerce, New World slavery, and related topics.
Most of the newspapers included were published in the English language, but a number of Spanish, French, and Danish language titles are also provided. Countries represented include Antigua, Bahamas, Barbados, Cuba, Curaçao, Dominica, Grenada, Guadaloupe, Haiti, Jamaica, Martinique, Montserrat, Nevis, Puerto Rico, St. Bartholomew, St. Christopher, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Tobago, Trinidad, and the Virgin Islands. Also found within this resource are newspapers from Bermuda, an island not technically part of the Caribbean, but situated on shipping routes between Europe and this region and integrally related to this region.
Access to information about historic newspapers and select digitized newspaper pages. Search historic newspaper pages from 1789-1963 or use the U.S. Newspaper Directory to find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present.
Produced by the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP). NDNP, a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress (LC), a long-term effort to develop an Internet-based, searchable database of U.S. newspapers with descriptive information and select digitization of historic pages.
Digital archive of historical newspapers. Each issue of each title includes the complete paper, cover-to-cover, with full-page and article images.
A collection of historical newspapers from around the globe.
World Newspaper Archive is a fully-searchable collection of historical newspapers from around the globe. It was created in partnership with the Center for Research Libraries- one of the world's largest and most important newspaper repositories.