A primary source is a document, photo, sketch, video, sound recording, etc. that was made at the time something happened by someone who was there. Colonial government officials' and religious missionaries' reports may also be useful primary sources. Additional archival materials are listed in the guide: Rare Books, Archives, & Manuscripts under the subheading "Archives."
- Africa through a lens (UK National Archives). "Africa through a lens is a set of thousands of images taken from a broader photographic collection of Foreign and Commonwealth Office images, held at The National Archives. Starting with some incredible early photographs from the 1860s, the images span over 100 years of African history. These images are now available, for the first time, to view online."
- ArchiveGrid is "a collection of over four million archival material descriptions, including MARC records from WorldCat and finding aids harvested from the web. It is supported by OCLC Research as the basis for our experimentation and testing in text mining, data analysis, and discovery system applications and interfaces, and it provides a foundation for our collaboration and interactions with the archival community."
- British Parliamentary Debates. "The debates, now known as the Hansard Debates, is the official, edited verbatim report of proceedings in both Houses of Parliament. Hansard’s British Parliamentary Debates is roughly equivalent to the United States of America's Congressional Record. For the period of 1803-1909, the Debates represent the best record of political events and discourse in the United Kingdom and its global Empire."
- Colonial Film: Moving Images of the British Empire "This website holds detailed information on over 6000 films showing images of life in the British colonies. Over 150 films are available for viewing online. You can search or browse for films by country, date, topic, or keyword. Over 350 of the most important films in the catalogue are presented with extensive critical notes written by our academic research team. The Colonial Film project united universities (Birkbeck and University College London) and archives (British Film Institute, Imperial War Museum and the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum) to create a new catalogue of films relating to the British Empire. The ambition of this website is to allow both colonizers and colonized to understand better the truths of Empire."
- "The David Livingstone Spectral Imaging Project is a collaborative, international effort to use spectral imaging technology and digital publishing to make available a series of faded, illegible texts produced by the famous Victorian explorer when stranded without ink or writing paper in Central Africa."
- Digital National Security Archive "The Digital National Security Archive contains the most comprehensive set of declassified government documents available. The resource now includes 36 collections consisting of over 80,000 meticulously indexed documents, with more than 500,000 total pages. Each of these collections, compiled by top scholars and experts, exhaustively covers the most critical world events, countries, and U.S. policy decisions from post World War II through the 21st century. Together, these collections offer unparalleled access to the defining international strategies of our time. Glossaries, chronologies, bibliographies, overviews, and photographs are included."
- Early English Books Online (EEBO)
- eHRAF (includes full text of many ethnography books). "This ethnographic database is unique because each culture or ethnic group contains a variety of source documents (books, articles, and dissertations) that have been indexed and organized according to HRAF's comprehensive culture and subject classification systems:the Outline of World Cultures and the Outline of Cultural Materials (OCM). These retrieval systems extend search capability well beyond keyword searching thus allowing for precise culture and subject retrieval, even in a foreign language."
- "Empire Online is an exciting collection of original documents relating to Empire Studies, sourced from libraries and archives around the world."
- IMC/CBMS archives Call Number: LIBRARY WEST Microfiche (3rd Floor) -- BV3500.I231 1977. Joint archives for the Conference of British Missionary Societies and the International Missionary Council, Africa and India, 1910-1945. Original manuscripts in the Library of the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. Holdings: boxes 200-447, 1202-1240. Our holdings relate mostly to British Africa, but contain material on other areas as well. Link is to more information from the Center for Research Libraries and includes a pdf guide.
- International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda [archived: Legacy website of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda].
- World Newspaper Archive African Newspapers, Series 1: Historical Newspapers from Africa. "A fully searchable collection of historical newspapers from around the globe. This uniquely comprehensive online resource was created in partnership with the Center for Research Libraries - one of the world's largest and most important newspaper repositories."
