LibGuides: Iberia 1400-1700: English Language Resources: Primary Sources

Primary Sources

Primary sources provide first-hand evidence about an event, place, historical period, discovery, invention, organization, or person’s life.

They may be found in libraries or archives in printed volumes, in manuscripts, on microform, or online.

Diaries, letters, journals, autobiographies, memoirs, some government documents, early printed books, manuscripts, archival collections, pamphlets, ephemera, facsimiles or reprints of early works, photographs, artifacts, maps, field notes, oral histories, or records of organizations/companies may all be primary sources.

Suggestions:

As you use Books and Media Browse Alphabetically Browse by Subject watch for sub-headings: sources, personal narratives, correspondence, early works to 1800, diaries. Example: Spain--history--sources

Another way is to "and" various words for primary sources, such as diaries, letters, journals, personal narratives, correspondence, etc. to Any Field searches.

Watch for, look for, citations to primary sources in secondary works and in reference sources, in footnotes or bibliography.

Watch for, look for, references to primary sources amidst search results in periodical index searches.

Murray and Hong Special Collections of the MSU Libraries.

Contains all works owned by MSU Libraries published/printed prior to 1866, our manuscript collections, and items that are treated as rare because of their fragility or one of a kind nature. Find what MHSPC has by using the advanced search in Books and Media and choosing Murray and Hong Special Collections as the location along the lower right side of the page.

Works Issued by the Hakluyt Society, 1847- Main G 161 .H2 [Vol. 1]-100; 2nd ser., no. 1-190; 3rd ser., no.1-.

Founded in 1846, the Hakluyt Society is a text publication society based in London, England, which seeks to advance knowledge and education by the publication of scholarly editions of primary records of voyages, travels and other geographical material. The main activity of the Society is the publication of scholarly editions of primary sources on the voyages and travels undertaken by individuals in many parts of the globe. These include early accounts dealing with the geography, ethnology and natural history of the regions visited. The Society has to date published over 200 editions in some 350 volumes. All editions are published in English. Only a few volumes have complete content in Hathitrust. Check Books and Media for specific author/title as we do have online versions of some volumes. Their Journal is open access from 2007 onwards.

Empire Online This link opens in a new window
Empire Online offers about 60,000 images of 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). Maps, manuscripts, pamphlets, paintings, drawings, and rare books are included. Five centuries of history are represented.
Age of Exploration This link opens in a new window
Delve into the earliest voyages of Vasco da Gama, the opening of trade with the Spice Islands, the colonisation of the Americas and Australasia, the search for the Northwest and Northeast Passages, and finally the race for the Poles with this robust primary source collection. Featuring rare manuscript and early printed material, highly illustrated maps and documents, diaries and ships' logs from some of the most well-known voyages in history, this collection provides access to key events in the history of European maritime exploration from c.1420-1920.
Sabin Americana, 1500-1926 This link opens in a new window
Joseph Sabin’s Bibliotheca Americana: A Dictionary of Books Relating to America from Its Discovery to the Present Time has been heralded as a cornerstone in the study of the history of the Western Hemisphere. Gale’s Sabin Americana, 1500-1926 electronic resource takes the works currently captured from that bibliography and makes them available online. This resource offers books about the Americas published all over the world.
Early English Books Online (EEBO) This link opens in a new window
**Now on the ProQuest interface**
EEBO, Early English Books Online, provides digital access to citations and facsimile full texts made from several microfilm sets. The works included were printed in England or other English-speaking places from the 1470s to 1700. The database may be searched by author, title, keywords, L.C. subject headings, imprint, date, type of illustration, film reel ID number, STC number, source library, language, or combination of these. There are browse indexes for authors' names, titles, and subject headings. Use these for best retrieval.

Some of the full text items in EEBO have been marked up so as to be searchable by individual words in their texts by the TCP, Text Creation Partnership Project, at the University of Michigan, which is supported by M.S.U. and other libraries. Use the EEBO TCP entry in MSU Libraries' Electronic Resources to access this version of the database. Here it is possible to enter modern spellings of words and retrieve words from ye olden days.

Not every item for which bibliographical details are present in EEBO has full text available here. In these cases, one must use the microfilm reel referred to in the entry by reel and position number. M.S.U. Libraries has the three microfilm sets mentioned: STC I, STC II, and the Thomason Tracts.
STC I (this is the call number) contains items printed up through 1640.
STC II (this is the call number) contains items printed from 1641-1700.
14458 (this is the call number) contains items in the Thomason Tracts, a set of broadsides from the English Civil War, 1640-1660.
The microforms are now located in the library's Remote Storage.

ESTC is a publicly available online bibliographical database containing library locations for the actual early printed works from the 1470s to 1800.

These are the printed bibliographies from which the film sets were made:
- Pollard and Redgrave, Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, and Ireland and of English Books Printed Abroad, 1475-1640, Consulting Reference Z 2002 .A27 c. 2 and oversize Z 2002 .A27 1976.
- Wing, Short-Title Catalogue of Books Printed in England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and British America, and of English Books Printed in Other Countries, 1641-1700, Consulting Reference Z 2002 .W52 v. 1-3 and Main Z 2002 .W52 1994.
- Thomason Tracts, 1640-1661..., Main Z 2018 .T49 1981.
For help using EEBO contact Agnes Widder, widder@msu.edu.

Inquisition in New Spain, 1536-1820: a Documentary History. Edited by John F. Chuchiak IV. Main BX 1740 .N49 I57 2012

This is a collection of documnets pertaining to the Holy Office of the Inquisition for New Spain. 50 pus sources in 3 sections: I. establishment of the Inquisition and the regulations governing it. II. documents pertaining to its procedures and operations, including rules for using torture and prison life. III. trial proceedings and testimonies of accused persons and their accusers. Questions of blasphemy, sorcery, sexual behavior crypto-Judaism, other heresies are emphasized.

Spanish Inquisition, 1478-1614 : an Anthology of Sources. Edited and translated by Lu Ann Homza. on Main BX 1735 .S63 2006

Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice, 1490-2007 This link opens in a new window
This resource is designed as an important portal for slavery and abolition studies, bringing together documents and collections covering an extensive time period 1490-2007, from libraries and archives across the Atlantic world. Close attention is being given to the varieties of slavery, the legacy of slavery, the social justice perspective and the continued existence of slavery today.
Making of the Modern World, Parts I, II, and III This link opens in a new window
The Making of the Modern World: Part I, The Goldsmiths’-Kress Collection, 1450-1850 offers new ways of understanding the expansion of world trade, the Industrial Revolution, and the development of modern capitalism, supporting research in variety of disciplines.

The Making of the Modern World: Part II, 1851-1914 traces the progress of the 19th century nations' rapidly changing economies.

The Making of the Modern World: Part III, 1890-1945 is comprised exclusively of monographs and periodicals in the Goldsmiths’ Library of Economic Literature, which is held at the Senate House Library of the University of London, offering transnational coverage in an area of vital interest to historians—political economy. The works included are of interest to scholars in European and world history and meet the desire for more twentieth century content taking the collection past the First World War, the Great Depression, and the Second World War.

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Iberia 1400-1700: English Language Resources: Primary Sources

Primary Sources