Eighteenth-Century Resources -- History
This page, edited by Jack Lynch, is
part of the larger collection of Eighteenth-Century Resources on the Net.
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):
- Newspapers and Journals:
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:
- 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:
- Maryland:
- Mississippi:
- Philadelphia and Pennsylvania:
- Virginia:
- American Historical Figures:
- Samuel Adams:
- Benjamin Franklin:
- Thomas Jefferson:
- James Madison:
- Thomas Paine:
- William Penn:
- 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:
Canadian History
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:
- 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
I've found little 18th-c. information relating to the world
outside Western Europe and North America. Please let me know if
you come across anything I haven't listed.
Several historic buildings are discussed on the Art, Architecture, and Landscape Gardening
page; the history of economics appears on the Other Fields page.