20th century international history archives in Oxford University
http://tcho.bodley.ox.ac.uk/
This growing new resource provides an online database of archival resources for the study of twentieth century international history which are held at Oxford University. The database is browsable by alphabetical listing, category; region; chronology or timespan; and location in Oxford. Several of these headings are broken down into sub-topics, so that categories, for example, are searchable by individuals; national institutions and organisations; international organisations; major events; international economic policy; wars; empire and colonies; and non-state organisations. Each individual collection entry provides a description of the collection, its location, and a relevant archival Web link. Scholars with an interest in British imperial history in Africa and Asia, Middle Eastern history and European studies will find this site to be particularly helpful as an initial guide to locating Oxford's wealth of twentieth century resources in these fields.
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Africa-Europe group for interdisciplinary studies
http://www.aegis-eu.org/
Africa-Europe Group for Interdisciplinary Studies (AEGIS) is a network whose primary nodes are African Studies research centres within academic institutions located in European Union countries, and whose centre is in the Netherlands. The aim of the organisation is the sharing of information between like-minded research centres across the European Union and also the promotion of research and collaboration. Towards this end the website lists its member institutions and gives details of staff and research being undertaken at each one. The lists also give details of publications offered on the websites of its members, many of which are available in full text. AEGIS also organises a biennial conference, details of which are given on the site and publishes a factual yearbook and a series of its own publications, which can be ordered from the website.
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African Americans and national identities in central America
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/latam/africania.html
The website for African Americans and National Identities in Central America provides detailed information about this major research project carried out between 2001 and 2003, and supported by Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. The project aimed to "reconceptualise and document, both visually and textually, this history of people of African descent in Central America", and to reassess the contributions of these people to the construction of national Central American histories and identities over the past two centuries. A full project outline and methodology is available on this site together with information about the project team. A good collection of full-text papers generated by the project are also available here, together with clips from films on the theme of African identity in Central America. A number of datasets are downloadable as Excel files, comprising two censuses and a list of distribution of lots. All in all, this website is a rich resource which will be of interest to anyone working on the history of Central America.
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African security review
http://www.iss.co.za/Publications/Asrindex.html
African Security Review (ASR) is an electronic publication that covers issues pertaining to security in Sub-Saharan Africa including: national security governance; peacekeeping; and military defence and intelligence. Contributions to the journal have included discussions and analyses of: biological weapons with relation to Africa; threats posed by food shortages and HIV/AIDS to security and human life; and the role of the International Criminal Court in investigating genocide in Africa and abuses by UN peacekeepers. Publications can freely be downloaded (in HTML or PDF) from the website of ASR. Each issue is organised into the categories: general and editorial commentaries; features; African watch; essays; and book reviews. The journal will prove invaluable to graduates, academics and policy makers as it provides a rich and broad perspective to the notion of security. ASR is a continuation of the African Defence Review (1994), which itself is a continuation of the Southern African Defence Review (1992-1993). The journal appears to have gone out of print after the 2005 issue, but this is nevertheless a useful resources for scholars.
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African studies at UCLA
http://www.international.ucla.edu/africa/
The website of the African Studies Center at UCLA is a comprehensive overview of the work of the Center. The site lists courses offered, languages taught, publications and staff details. Some of the publications listed are available by download, others via a link to JSTOR, for those with institutional access, or by subscription. The Center's own newsletter is also available from the website and a free subscription service is offered. The website includes a large number of articles in a number of formats. Reviews of books, texts of discussions and of lectures can all be accessed directly and there is also a podcast section where audio files can be downloaded using iTunes. The podcasts are issued on a free subscription basis, so you only need to sign up once and new files will be collected automatically. The site also has a range of teaching materials available, especially from its 'Languages' page.
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American Museum of Natural History
http://www.amnh.org/
This is the dynamic and colourful website of The American Museum of Natural History, New York. The museum's collections, exhibitions, research centres, education programmes, and some of the 32 million specimens and artifacts in the field of scientific research and education, are available through this resource. Whilst mini-sites cover current exhibitions, more permanent displays and departments of the museum are introduced through dedicated pages.
The description of a hall or collection or subject offers links to some of the artifacts. For example: from the Culture Halls users can view short descriptions of: Indians of the Northwest Coast, Eastern Woodlands, and the Plains; African Peoples; Asian Peoples; Mexico and Central America; South American Peoples; and Pacific Peoples. Teachers' guides (mainly school-level) are available for each, providing PDF articles, evidence and analysis on subjects that range through the fields of anthropology (archaeology briefly features), history of astronomy, biology, earth sciences and paleontology, for example. There are Web pages for most collections such as North American Ethnography, where you can browse more than 50,000 artifacts online. The education resources section was nominated in the competition for Best Museum Web Site Supporting Educational Use in 'Museums and the Web 2004 : Best of the Web'.
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Ancient Egypt magazine
http://www.ancientegyptmagazine.com/
The Ancient Egypt Magazine is a journal concerned with the study of Egyptology. The editorial board is made up, mostly, of Egyptologists from the University of Manchester. The magazine is mostly concerned with the description of artefacts and museums, the articles are geared towards the lighter side of the subject. The articles are written by highly acclaimed scholars in the subject area and cover a wide variety of topics, such as the reconstruction of the life of an Amun priest of the Twentieth dynasty or the non-destructive investigation of mummies. The website contains free online versions of back issues of some of the magazines from volume 1, issue 1, 2000, and forward; the complete text of the older issues and from the newer, contents and text to a varying degree. All back issues have, however, freely available book reviews and lists of links to websites that are deemed to be useful for the readers. This resource is useful for students of Egyptology and anyone interested in the subject area.
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Anglo Boer War Museum
http://www.places.co.za/html/warmuseum.html
The website for the Anglo Boer War Museum in Bloemfontein, South Africa, catalogues the Boer perspective of the South African War of 1899-1902. The site contains information relating to Boer heroes such as General Louis Botha, President Paul Kruger and Emily Hobhouse, the English social worker who travelled to South Africa and became an outspoken critic of the concentration camps used by the British. Given that the Museum is located in Bloemfontein, the heartland of Afrikaner nationalism, the pro-Boer content of the website is to be expected, but there are some other content-related problems. There is no mention of the currently accepted terminology of the South African War to refer to this conflict, to acknowledge the number of black South Africans who also participated, no mention either of Sol Plaatje's writings on the conflict.
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Bibenligne
http://www.bibenligne.org/
The website Bibenligne is a directory of online resources in the Social Sciences and Humanities for the field of Mediterranean Studies. It is a collaborative project of the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), the Université de Provence and the Maison Méditerranéenne des sciences de l'Homme. The site consists of links and brief descriptions of resources related to Mediterranean Studies in a variety of disciplines. Types of resource include: methodology; portals; library catalogues; theses and university research; and online journals. Sites can also be found by browsing by keyword, place, or time period, or through a search engine. There is also a facility to suggest relevant links to the editors of the site. The list of websites range from the Institute of Arabic Literature, to an image bank of Provence, to an index of articles on Jewish Studies. This is an extremely varied site of use to anyone with an interest in the areas around the Mediterranean and their cultures.
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Biography of Nelson Mandela
http://www.anc.org.za/people/mandela.html
This is the African National Congress (ANC) Web page for Nelson Mandela (1918- ), former President of South Africa. The page gives a brief profile, biographical details and also has links to the ANC's Freedom Charter, adopted by the Congress of the People in 1955, and to Mandela's famous address in his defense during the Rivonia Trial of 1964. Imprisoned since 1962 for leaving the country illegally and for inciting protests against the apartheid government, Mandela's sentence was extended to life imprisonment after the Rivonia Trial. He was released from imprisonment on Robben Island in 1990, and became the first democratically elected President of South Africa in 1994. Mandela was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993. The site has a link to the Mandela page, which gives access to further resources, including the text of selected speeches, and extracts from Mandela's autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom (1994).
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British Institute in Eastern Africa
http://www.biea.ac.uk/
This is the website of the Nairobi-based British Institute in Eastern Africa, which promotes research into the archaeology, history, linguistics and anthropology of Eastern Africa. Founded in 1959 to challenge the Euro-centric view of the region, the Institute supports researchers and recent graduates, holds conferences and seminars, maintains a library, undertakes research projects, and publishes books and the peer-reviewed journal ‘Azania’ (some limited content available online). The website contains short descriptions of current research projects, including the AHRC-funded project ‘Belief and belonging: religion and identity in northern Kenya’ which explores the dramatic shifts which have taken place in the last fifty years in relationships between religion, ethnic identity and landscape in northern Kenya.
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Centre for Popular Memory
http://www.popularmemory.org/
The website of the Centre for Popular memory details and explains the work of the Centre in collecting oral history and sound archives. The Centre for Popular Memory is based at the University of Cape Town and is part of the University's Historical Studies Department. The site gives information about the collection of oral history - there are sections on methodology, on courses offered by the Department of Historical Studies at the University and on the scope of the archive collected thus far. The site gives details about projects on World War Two veterans, migrants in Congo and Nigeria, South African hip-hop, Xhosa cooking and shebeens, pubs and beer halls during the apartheid era. There is access to limited information on the catalogue of the archive and to a list of the Centre's publications. The website has a page to allow digital access, but only one interview extract is available at the moment (January 2008). The site has a page of links to other oral history organisations, museums and libraries in South Africa and around the world.
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Communist nations since 1917
http://web.ku.edu/~eceurope/communistnationssince1917/
The website The Communist Nations Since 1917 is an online version of a work by the much-respected Professor Anna Cienciala of the University of Kansas. This is a useful site for students of History, Politics, or regional studies. It explains the nature of the Communist regimes in East and Central Europe in comparison with those of China, North Korea, the Caribbean, Central America, Africa and the Middle East. The aim of the text, as the author points out, is to provide "a historical background" to the communist states before 1917, and then to trace their development throughout the twentieth century. The work was born out of lecture outlines and has been updated as events have merited it. The website is, in reality a book placed online, and therefore employs a similar format. Chapters address subjects such as: Marxism; the Russian Revolutions; Soviet Russia; Polish-Soviet War; Cold War; China since 1949; and Nationalism and Communism in Africa, the Middle East and Afghanistan. The themes pertinent to the examination of Communism are woven into individual national narratives.
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Comparative studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East
http://www.cssaame.com/
This is the website of the journal Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, which is also available in hard copy. The journal aims to present comparative analysis of the history, culture, politics and economics of the three regions. The journal is published by Duke University. The website offers full-text versions of the papers, reviews and articles in the journal (a little bit later than the print version) in the form of .pdf downloads. An archive of previous issues, also in full-text .pdfs, is also available. There are also a page of links to useful lists of websites for the regions covered and contact details for the editorial board. Overall this is a good, easy-to-use website offering an important, peer-reviewed, international journal.
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Coptic fonts
http://www.ccer.nl/article50.html
The Centre for Computer-aided Egyptological Research (CCER) website provides four Coptic fonts, which may be downloaded free of charge. These fonts include that used by Glyph for Windows. The fonts are TrueType, and available in bold, italic, and plain text. Accented characters are available through the keyboard. Once loaded on one's machine, the fonts can be also be used in other Windows programs.
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Description de l'Egypte digital collection
http://descegy.bibalex.org/
The Description de l'Egypte digital collection is a fully digitised version of the 11 plate volumes and nine text volumes that make up the Description de l'Egypte, originally published between 1809 and 1822. This work was produced by the scholars and scientists accompanying Napoleon on his invasion of Egypt in 1798. Their task was to study the Egyptian civilisation in all its aspects. Over 150 scholars, together with 2000 professional artists and technicians, eventually collaborated to produce the Description de l'Egypte, a massive work of both text and illustrations that attempted to inventory Egyptian topography, flora and fauna, ancient and modern monuments, and peoples and customs.
The website provides access to scanned images of the first edition ("Imperial edition"), which is divided into three main themes: antiquities; the modern state; and natural history. Users can browse through the volumes as thumbnails or in page-turning format, and zoom features allow for a closer look at the text or any of the over 3000 impressively detailed illustrations. In addition, search tools allow users to search by keyword or by browsing an index of terms. The website is accessible in both English and French, though the text of the volumes is entirely in French. This is an excellent resource for those interested in Egyptian history and civilisation, as well as for students and researchers concerned with European colonial history.
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Domestic and external issues of public debt for Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, 1880-2000
http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/findingData/snDescription.asp?sn=4960
This is a Web page detailing the context, range, and availability of the dataset 'Domestic and External Issues of Public Debt for Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, 1880-2000', hosted by the History Data Service (HDS), based at the UK Data Archive University of Essex (formerly part of the Arts and Humanities Data Service - AHDS). From this Web page you may download PDF and HTML files giving introductory information about the study. The data itself is available to order from the HDS as a set of tab delimited text files, though to make use of this dataset you must first register with the HDS: further information is supplied giving instructions. The dataset presents government debt outstanding for Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and South Africa over much of the 20th century and for Canada the late 19th century. The data is taken directly from government publications including statistical yearbooks.
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Egyptian economy and non-royal women: their status in public life
http://www.stoa.org/diotima/essays/wardlect.shtml
The online version of a lecture given 21 June, 1995, at Brown University, by William A. Ward deals with the status of women in ancient Egypt society. Although pharaonic Egypt was in most respects a male society, with men holding positions in public life while women dominated the private life, Ward points to the fact that there is plenty of evidence that women, throughout ancient Egyptian civilisation could own, bequeath and inherit land. Furthermore women seem to have been able to hold positions of some importance in administration and there are examples of female scribes. Ancient Egypt was not an egalitarian society in any modern meaning of the word but it seems as if women were not barred from public life or prevented from getting education or owning land. This site is of interest to anyone interested in ancient Egyptian civilisation and the status of women in particular.
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Emergence of Hausa identity : history and religion
http://www.liv.ac.uk/history/research/Hausa_identity/
This website briefly describes an AHRC and ESRC funded interdisciplinary research network concerned with enhancing understanding of the identity, history and beliefs of the Hausa people of West Africa. The website lists the members of the network who will be brought together via a workshop and a ‘round table’.
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Expeditions and discoveries : sponsored exploration and scientific discovery in the modern age
http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/expeditions/
Expeditions and discoveries is a series of online collections of materials from expeditions between 1626 and 1953 that have been housed at Harvard University. Encompassing digital reproductions of: maps; photographs; published materials; field notes; letters, and manuscript materials the collections cover expeditions from the Arctic; Antarctic; Americas; Africa; Asia; the Middle East; and more. Nine major expeditions are particularly featured. Each expedition provides access to the full text documents that Harvard holds, as well as links to other, related collections, such as photograph collections, and a bibliography. Researchers may also search or browse material by discipline, region or notable people. This is a clear and very complete website with a wide range of historical documents and primary sources. Materials would be of interest to researchers from a wide range of fields, including anthropology; archaeology; astronomy; botany; geography; geology; medicine; oceanography; and zoology.
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Frantz Fanon
http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/Fanon.html
This Web page contains biographical and bibliographical information relating to the anti-colonial writer and activist Frantz Fanon (1925-1961). Published for postcolonial studies at Emory University, the page lists Fanon's seminal anti-colonial writings, and has a selected bibliography of critical works on Fanon. Born in Martinique, Fanon fought with the Free French in the Second World War and remained in Lyon after the War, where he studied medicine and then psychiatry. His famous analysis of the effects of racism and colonialism, titled Peau noire, masques blancs (Black skins, white masks), was published in Paris in 1952. In 1953 Fanon became Head of Psychiatry at the Blida-Joinville Hospital in Algeria, at a time when the Algerian people were rising up against their colonial oppressors, the French. He joined the Algerian FLN, which opposed French occupation of Algeria, and was exiled to Tunisia, where he continued the liberation struggle. His anti-colonial writings have been pubished as L'an cinq de la revolution algerienne (Studies in a Dying Colonialism), published in 1959; Les damnes de la terre (The Wretched of the Earth), published in Paris, 1961; and Pour la revolution africaine (Toward the African Revolution), published in Paris, 1964. The website has a number of links to other sites, however, only one of these operates successfully - a link to a website created by California Newsreel, which gives an overview of Isaac Julien's film biography of Fanon, titled Black Skin, White Mask.
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Guide to the E. W. Blatchford collection of photographs
http://almashriq.hiof.no/ddc/projects/jafet/blatchford/index.html
The E.W. Blatchford Collection is a photographic archive of the Middle East and parts of Europe in the late nineteenth century. It is published by the Digital Documentation Centre at the American University of Beirut. The E. W. Blatchford Collection contains 800 photographs of Europe, Turkey, Cyprus, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, Egypt and Tangiers, taken between 1880 and 1900, many taken by important photographers such as Bonfils, Dumas, Sarrafian, Dupré and Amodio. The photographs cover many things, including landscapes, historical monuments, people, architecture, archaeological sites, and daily life. The images cannot be searched, but they can be browsed using the thumbnail gallery, by list, or by using the index.
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H-Africa
http://www.h-net.org/~africa/
The website "H-Africa" an essential online resource for scholars of African studies in all disciplines including history, social studies, literature and film. As part of H-Net Humanities and Social Sciences Online, the H-Africa site aims to encourage discussion of topics relating to the study of Africa. The site provides H-Africa subscription information and access to discussion forums on a wide range of topics - notable discussion threads are listed and easily accessible. The announcements section lists international conference announcements, calls for papers, calls for publications, programs and workshops, as well as information regarding funding and fellowships. There are links to the "A-Z of African Studies" gateway and the "Africa Research Central" gateway (a gateway to archives, libraries and museums with important collections of African primary sources). A more recent feature is the H-Africa Reviews which hosts an impressive list of book reviews. The site also features links to other related H-Net sites.
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Historical papers, University of Witwatersrand
http://web.wits.ac.za/Library/HistoricalPapers.htm
This is the website for the Department of Historical Papers based at the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa. The department holds over 2,400 collections relating to four hundred years of South African history. Amongst the subjects represented in the holdings are exploration in Africa, slavery, colonialism, missionaries, gold and diamond mining, Frontier wars, the Zulu War, the Anglo-Boer War, and both the First and Second World War. On the website there is information about a selection of the personal papers held at the department, including individuals like A.N.G. Champion, Dr. Xuma, J. H. Hofmeyr and Robert Sobukwe. There is also a list of some of the organisations and institutions whose archival collections are deposited at the Department of Historical Papers. Also available on the site are contact details for this archive, so researchers can find out more about the materials held there.
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Hoover institution : library and archives
http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/hila/
This is the home page of the library and archives of the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. This institute was founded in 1919 by Herbert Hoover (18741964) at his alma mater, Stanford University, with the goal of attaining peace through the scholarly study of international conflict in the modern world. The archives began as a repository for World War I documents collected by representatives of the institute in Europe directly after the war. The collection grew to include interwar sources on fascist, communist, and nationalist movements and important sources related to World War II. Subsequent projects include the institute's microfilming of the Archives of the Soviet Communist Party and the Soviet State in Moscow. Further collecting focussed on election campaign materials which demonstrate the workings of democracy in places such as postapartheid Africa and postcommunist Eastern Europe and Russia. There are detailed descriptions and excellent search engines with complete online listings of holdings for the following regions: Africa; the Americas; East Asia; Western Europe; Eastern and Central Europe -- including impressive Czech, Slovak and Romanian holdings; the Middle East; and Russia/Commonwealth of Independent States. With more than five thousand separate collections, the breadth of material here cannot be adequately described in a brief summary. There are millions of individual documents covering twentieth century history from around the world. The library is also significant, with important ephemera and rare books augmenting its primary and secondary source holdings. Lists of archival holdings are bolstered by online poster and pamphlets collections; online exhibitions; updates on new acquisitions; information on recent lectures; and newly translated bilingual section profiles of the Czech and Slovak collections. Contact information for the archivists is clearly available, with details on access to and hours for the reading rooms. Photocopies of documents can be ordered by post for those who cannot visit the archive itself.
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