Eighteenth-Century Resources -- History

History

General Resources

• Internet Modern History Sourcebook (Paul Halsall, Fordham) -- A huge and impressive archive of mostly primary material on modern European and American history, including much on the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries.
• Documents in Military History (Dave Stewart, Hillsdale College) -- Primary documents, many abridged, on Dettingen, Culloden, the American and French Revolutions, and miscellaneous military matters.
• The Eighteenth Century: A Current Bibliography, History Subsection -- Information on the print publication.
• Enlightenment:
  • The European Enlightenment (Richard Hooker, Washington State) -- Extensive and attractive overview of 17th- and 18th-c. Europe. Makes considerable use of frames and JavaScript, which will give many browsers trouble.
  • Age of Reason and Enlightenment, 1650-1800 (Robert L. Jefferson, Sonoma State Univ.) -- A useful set of timelines and pointers to maps on the long eighteenth century. Includes timelines and life spans of rules, artists, philosophers, scientists, and others.
• Exploration:
  • Sir John Franklin -- Information and links on the explorer.
  • Discoverers Web (Netherlands) -- Maps and discussions of world explorers from antiquity to the present.
  • The Maritime History (Sweden) -- Includes some eighteenth-century information.

British History

• James Paterson's British History Site -- A useful introduction to British history, 1640-1760. "This website represents a small attempt to make the tangled story of Britain's precocious modernisation readily accessible via the Web to the many people in the English-speaking world who find themselves interested in the period but who either lack access to important recent scholarship or remain intimidated by its voluminousness."
• Chronologies:
  • Eighteenth-Century Chronology (Jack Lynch, Rutgers) -- An in-progress chronology on eighteenth-century world history, including literature, theatre, politics, science, religion, music, and art, from 1660 to 1800. Coverage is still spotty, and British culture is disproportionately represented.
  • The The Romantic Chronology (UCSB) -- A fine place to start on later eighteenth-century history. An extensive chronology with elaborate search capabilities: O si sic omnes!
  • Early Modern Chronology (Columbia) -- Extensive timeline of European history, 1453 to 1715.
• The Hanover History department -- A good collection of Web resources, including a page on the eighteenth century.
• History -- The 18th Century (The Mining Company)
• Greenwood's Map of London, 1827 -- High-resolution scan of the early 19th-c. map, allowing the reader to zoom in.
• The John Hampden Society -- Information on the Society and its events, with a brief adulatory profile of Hampden.
• The Glorious Revolution of 1688 (Donald E. Wilkes, Jr., and Matthew Kramer, Univ. of Georgia) -- Discussions, chronologies, quotations, and bibliographies on the Glorious Revolution. Graphics-heavy.
• The Bubble Project (D. McNeil, Dalhousie) -- An excellent, extensive, and scholarly archive on the South Sea Bubble by a team of scholars.
• The Jacobite Heritage (Noel McFerran) -- Biographies, primary documents, genealogies, essays, and popular songs on the Stuart claimants to the throne and the Jacobite rebellions.
• The Hannah Snell Home Page (Matthew Stephens) -- Information on the woman from mid-century who dressed as a man and served as a marine. Includes biography, chronology, genealogy, and promotes the editor's new book.
• Mutiny on the HMS Bounty (1789) -- Resources (more popular than scholarly) on the Bounty.
• H.M.S. Bounty (Philippe Coupard) -- An unscholarly but fairly extensive collection of information on the _Bounty_, compiled by a hobbyist and model builder. Inlcudes a brief history and a bibliography. In French.
• The Age of Democracy -- Not very comprehensive collection of links on 18th-c. England and America.
• The First English Coffee-Houses, c. 1670-1675 (Modern History Sourcebook, Fordham) -- Short primary texts on coffee houses.
• The Hypertext John Evelyn Diary -- Selections from the diaries.
• History House: Stories: Cambridge University -- Chatty discussion of Cambridge in the age of Newton.
• 1798 Rebellion Home Page (Ireland) -- A few selections on the Rebellion, focusing especially on Carlow.
• Jeremy Bentham on the Net: A Conceptual Artwork -- Video image of Bentham's preserved body, updated every five minutes.
• The Reid Project (Aberdeen) -- A collection of materials on Thomas Reid, 1710-1796, founder of the Scottish Common Sense school. Centered on the Project's publication plans.
• Will's Virtual Restoration and Eighteenth-Century Coffeehouse (Russ Hunt, St. Thomas) -- A Web-based discussion area associated with a course, now apparently defunct.
• The Altered State: England, Literature, and the Pub (Steven Earnshaw) -- Selections from a book which "looks at how inns, taverns, alehouses and pubs have appeared in literature from Chaucer to the present day." Includes bibliographies and extracts. Requires frames.
• Invitation to a Funeral Tour (Molly Brown) -- "A free-style jaunt around Restoration London." Promotional site for book by the author.
• Ignatius Sancho: African Man of Letters (Brycchan Carey, Univ. of London) -- Jekyll's life, an annotated bibliography, selections from Sancho's letters, and links, with more to come. Very impressive.
• Monarchs and Prime Minsters:
  • Royal Genealogies (PSU) -- Extensive genealogies of British monarchs.
  • Monarchs of Britain (Encyclopedia of Britannica) -- Includes brief biographies and extensive genealogies.
  • The Prime Ministers (Encyclopedia Britannica) -- Begins with Walpole, and includes brief biographies and bibliographies for all of Britain's Prime Ministers.
• Crime, Piracy, and Low Life (not to be confused with the monarchs and prime ministers above):
  • Tyburn Tree -- A well-prepared collection of materials on execution in early modern England.
  • Index of Piracy (Geocities) -- A fine meta-page of piracy resources. Like all Geocities sites, irritatingly commercial.
  • Homepage Wastrel: Piracy -- Includes historical and biographical information on pirates.
  • Dry Drunk: The Culture of Tobacco in 17th- and 18th-century Europe (Elizabeth Wyckoff, New York Public Library) -- Illustrated exhibition on tobacco and snuff.
• Newspapers and Journals:
  • Concise History of the British Newspaper: The British Library Newspaper Library (British Library) -- Timeline on newspaper history, with several illustrations.
  • Selected London Gazette issues (1674-1692) (Rochester)
  • Internet Library of Early Journals (Bodleian)
  • The London Gazette -- Munday Septemb 3, to Munday Septemb 10, 1666 -- Selections on the Great Fire.
  • The Belfast Newsletter Index, 1737-1800 (John C. Greene) -- A very extensive database index to several decades of one of the oldest continuously published English-language newspapers. O si sic omnes!

American History

• From Revolution to Reconstruction (George M. Welling) -- A large hypertextual archive of information, especially primary documents, on American history, with strong coverage of the colonial and revolutionary periods.
• The Avalon Project: 18th Century Documents (Yale Law) -- Extensive archive of American historical documents.
• Early American Documents (Emory) -- High-resolution (and therefore large) facsimiles of the Constitution, Declaration of Independence (including Jefferson's draft), and Bill of Rights.
• Archiving Early America -- Includes the Keigwin and Matthews collection of historic newspapers.
• Society of Early Americanists (Irvine) -- Information on the Society, with links to E-texts, information on teaching, dissertations, recent and forthcoming publications, and other Web resources.
• Omohundro Institute of Early American History & Culture -- Information on the Institute and its events and publications, including William and Mary Quarterly.
• Performing Arts in Colonial American Newspapers, 1690-1783 -- Description of CD-ROM.
• The Plymouth Colony Archive Project (Christopher Fennell, Virginia) -- Extensive information on late 17th-c. Plymouth Colony.
• Witchcraft in Salem Village (Richard Trask, Virginia) -- Extensive archive on the 1692 trials.
• History Buff's Reference Library: 16th to 18th Century History -- Brief essays (more journalistic than scholarly) on newspaper coverage of early American history.
• The Leslie Brock Center for the Study of Colonial Currency (Virginia) -- Useful primary and secondary documents on early American currency.
• The Early America Review -- Contents and texts of the print journal.
• The collection of eighteenth-century exhibitions at the Library of Congress -- Nearly two dozen exhibitions on early America.
• White Oak Society -- A "living-history" guide to the 18th-c. fur trade.
• Fire Island National Seashore (SUNY Stony Brook) -- Guide to the William Floyd Estate, an 18th-c. house of one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.
• American Plantations and Colonies -- Ship Index (Thomas Langford) -- An in-progress database of ships and passenger lists for crossings to American planations and colonies, 1538-1825.
• A Century of Lawmaking for a New Nation (Law Library of Congress) -- Records of American legislative bodies from the Continental Congress in 1774 to 1873. Full text and page images of the House Journal, the Senate Journal, the Senate Executive Journal, the Annals of Congress, the Journals of the Continental Congress, Elliot's Debates, Farrand's Records, Maclay's Journal, and Statutes at Large. Invaluable. O si sic omnes!
• Yorktown: Then and Now (Mike Rogers) -- Unscholarly but informative discussion of Yorktown, with many historical photographs and discussions of various buildings.
• Benjamin Rush and Yellow Fever (Bob Arnebeck) -- Book-length study of Rush and the 1793 epidemic in Philadelphia.
• Maps:
  • Exploring the West from Monticello: An Exhibition of Maps and Navigational Instruments (Virginia) -- Includes a number of 18th-c. maps.
  • Georgia's Rare Map Collection includes sections for Colonial and Revolutionary America -- Dozens of images of early maps.
• Military History:
  • United States Naval History: A Bibliography (U.S. Navy) -- "This edition [1993] of United States Naval History: A Bibliography incorporates more than 450 titles chosen from the large body of naval historical literature published since the bibliography's sixth edition appeared in 1972." Very thorough; some items annotated.
  • Northwest Territory Alliance -- "A non-profit educational organization that studies and recreates the culture, lifestyle, and arts of the time of the American Revolution, 1775-1783. We strive to duplicate the uniforms, weapons, battlefield tactics and camp life of the era as accurately as possible."
  • The French and Indian War (Digital History LTD) -- Extensive archive, although the audience is re-enactors and amateurs rather than scholars.
  • The French and Indian War (Syracuse) -- Another thorough but unscholarly site.
• Slavery:
  • DPLS Archive: Slave Movement During the 18th and 19th Centuries (Wisconsin) -- "This site provides access to the raw data and documentation which contains information on the following slave trade topics from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries: records of slave ship movement between Africa and the Americas, slave ships of eighteenth century France, slave trade to Rio de Janeiro, Virginia slave trade in the eighteenth century, English slave trade (House of Lords Survey), Angola slave trade in the eighteenth century, internal slave trade to Rio de Janeiro, slave trade to Havana, Cuba, Nantes slave trade in the eighteenth century, and slave trade to Jamaica."
  • Slave Narratives (Steven Mintz, Univ. of Houston) -- Seventeenth- through nineteenth-century accounts of slavery.
• Regional History:
  • Louisiana:
    • Center for Regional Studies (Southeastern Louisiana Univ.) -- Information on the Center and links to other resources.
  • Maryland:
    • Maryland Loyalists and the American Revolution (M. Christopher New) -- A flashy and sensational look at Maryland's loyalists, promoting the author's book.
  • Mississippi:
    • Mississippi State's history archives on the colonial period and the Early Republic
  • Philadelphia and Pennsylvania:
    • Biographical Dictionary of Pennsylvania Legislators (Temple Univ.) -- Companion to the in-progress biographical dictionary on Pennsylvania lawmakers from the 17th through 20th centuries.
    • Philadelphia's Historic District (Independence Hall Association) -- Guide to colonial Philadelphia. Aimed at tourists rather than scholars, but some information is useful.
    • Valley Forge Historical Society -- Maps, essays, and games on Washington's stay at Valley Forge. Aimed at tourists rather than scholars.
    • Betsy Ross Homepage -- Adulatory site on Ross, with a tour of her house. Flag trivia and quotations for tourists rather than scholars.
    • Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (Commonwealth of Pennsylvania) -- Some useful information on Pennsylvania history.
  • Virginia:
    • LVA Colonial Records Project -- Index of digital facsimiles of documents on early Virginia.
    • Colonial Williamsburg Home Page -- Aimed at tourists rather than scholars.
• American Historical Figures:
  • Samuel Adams:
    • Samuel Adams -- Extensive E-texts and a few links on Adams.
  • Benjamin Franklin:
    • The World of Benjamin Franklin (Franklin Institute) -- Hagiographic and unscholarly.
    • Benjamin Franklin: A Documentary History (J. A. Leo Lemay, Delaware) -- Extensive chronology of Franklin's life. Graphics-heavy; requires frames.
    • The World of Benjamin Franklin (Franklin Institute, Philadelphia) -- Accessible introduction to Franklin, aimed at beginners. Little of scholarly value, but handy for students.
  • Thomas Jefferson:
    • The Jefferson Bibliography Database (Frank Shuffelton, Virginia) -- Comprehensive bibliographies of works on Jefferson from 1826 to 1990. Invaluable.
    • Thomas Jefferson Online Resources at the University of Virginia -- Electronic text center.
    • Thomas Jefferson on Politics & Government (Eyler Robert Coates, Virginia) -- Quotations from Jefferson with a strong Libertarian bent.
  • James Madison:
    • Papers of James Madison (Virginia) -- Short biography, bibliography, and discussion of the publication project.
  • Thomas Paine:
    • The Frethought collection of the works of Thomas Paine -- Links to several dozen E-texts.
    • Thomas Paine National Historical Association -- Large archive of Paine's works, with information on the Association.
    • Friends of Thomas Paine (J. Ward Regan and Philip A. Aromando) -- Miscellaneous links on Paine.
  • William Penn:
    • William Penn, Visionary Proprietor (Tuomi J. Forrest, Virginia) -- Brief introduction to Penn's life.
  • Paul Revere:
    • The Paul Revere House -- Information for visitors to the house, with brief biographical and historical essays and illustrations.
  • George Washington:
    • George Washington Papers (Virginia) -- Information on the publishing project, with selected documents, essays, and an index of the published volumes.
  • Daniel Webster:
    • Daniel Webster: Dartmouth's Favorite Son (Dartmouth)

Canadian History

• Newfoundland and Labrador Heritage/Patrimoine de Terre-Neuve et du Labrador -- Large collection of information on Newfoundland and Labrador history. In French and English.

European History

• The French Revolution section of The Voice of the Shuttle (Alan Liu, UCSB) -- The best place to start.
• Electronic Sources for Western European History (Berkeley) -- A long text document (in Gopher format) on discussion groups and other resources for historians.
• France from Louis XIV to the French Revolution:
  • Accounts of Louis XIV (Hanover)
  • L'Age d'Or -- French and English Baroque -- Popular rather than scholarly introduction to Baroque art and culture ("Lord and Lady, Officers and Gentlemen, would you grant me the pleasure to invite you to a hopefully enjoyable journey through time into the splendour of the Baroque Age and the military might of Kirke's Lambs").
  • Salon Life (Modern History Sourcebook, Fordham) -- Several short extracts of contemporary accounts of the salons of Julie de Lespinasse and Madame Geoffrin.
  • Salons (André Bonchard) -- An introduction to salons around the world, including those of Scudery, Sévigné, Graffigny, Deffand, Baron d'Holbach, Staël, Elizabeth Robinson Montagu, and many others. In French.
  • The Homepage for Eighteenth-Century France (Desmond Hosford, Geocities) -- General introduction to French art and culture from the second half of the eighteenth century. Like all Geocities sites, irritatingly commercial.
  • Les libertés au XVIIIe siècle -- French E-texts from the late 18th century on political liberty.
  • French Revolution Documents Collection (Indiana Univ. Libraries) -- Searchable index to an extensive collection of documents on Revolutionary Europe. (Index only; no full text.)
  • Tableau des avocats au Parlement de Paris pour l'année 1770 (Hopkins; in French) -- The 540 names on the Tableau, which survives in only three copies.
  • French Revolutionary Pamphlets (ARTFL) -- Facsimiles of three pamplets, 1789-1791.
  • The Napoleon Series -- Popular Web site on Napoleon ("a place where people interested in Napoleonic history can meet to exchange ideas and knowledge or just to talk about their favourite subject").
  • Napoleonic Literature -- Electronic texts of full books (out of copyright) on Napoleon.
  • Napoleon Bonaparte Internet Guide (Paul Hilferink, Netherlands) -- A good set of links to Napoleonic resources on the Net.
  • Words and Deeds of Madness in 18th-C. Paris (Laurent Cartayrade) -- An accessible collection of interdictions in legal cases over the sanity of 18th-c. Parisians. Still sparse, but intriguing.
• War and Society in Eighteenth-Century Germany: Documents (Peter Wilson) -- "The Documents in German History Project is intended to make available material to students without the requisite language skills to study it in the original." A number of treaties, codes, and declarations in English and German.
• The Medici Archive Project (Johns Hopkins) -- A collection of "documentary sources for the arts and humanities: 1537-1743."
• Cromohs: Cyber Review of Modern Historiography (Italy) -- General site on modern historiography, with E-texts, guide to Internet resources, and annual volumes of the review itself.
• The Ryhiner Project -- Catalogue of the extensive early modern map collection.
• Netherlands Historical Data Archive
• Luceat, non doleat, Verlichting in Nederland (1700-1800) (Niel Stout) -- Guide to the Enlightenment in the Netherlands. In Dutch.
• Home Page Bibiena: I Bibiena: Una famiglia europea (Bologna) -- A history of the Bibiena family, 17th- and 18th-c. architects, including extensive bibliographies. In Italian.
• Belle van Zuylen/Madame de Charriè (Netherlands) -- Extensive site on Belle van Zuylen, with biography, chronologies, bibliographies, photographs of places, &c. In Dutch and French.
• Miramax Films' page on late seventeenth-century culture to promote the movie Restoration.
• History of Catalonia, including:
  • The Demise of the Catalan Dynasty and the Growing Estrangement of the Crown (15th-17th Centuries)
  • Catalonia in the Context of 18th-century European Politics: the War of Succession (1702-1714)
  • The Fall of Barcelona and the Abolition of the Generalitat (1714-1716)
• Peter the Great and the Rise of Russia, 1682-1725 (Modern History Sourcebook, Fordham) -- Short extracts from Burnet, Von Korb, Gordon, and Missy.
• Catherine the Great (Modern History Sourcebook, Fordham) -- Short extracts from the Baron de Breteuil and Catherine's own laws.

Other History

• EH.R: Forum: Re-thinking 18th Century China -- Archive of a discussion group on 18th-c. Chinese economic history. Technical and specialized.
• Sikh History -- A large and impressive page on Sikh culture and history, including a section on 18th-c. Sikh warriors.
• The Sword of Tippu Sultan (K. L. Kamat) -- Brief illustrated biography of the Indian ruler, 1753-1799. Unscholarly but useful.
• Mumbai/Bombay: 18th Century History (India) -- Brief sketch of Bombay history.
• History of the Philippines -- Eighteenth Century (Austria) -- Brief chronology of major events in Philippine history.