History

Historical collections that contain books, pamphlets, broadsides, newspapers, government documents and ephemera printed in America over centuries.

Gain access to rare primary source documents with these topically focused digital collections. Supports academic research. 
 Note: Several additional modules added in 2025 within Asian Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, and Latin American & Caribbean Studies.

Contains materials from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions across the United States.

A collection of primary sources on Southern history, culture, and literature from the colonial period through the early twentieth century. Includes diaries, first-person narratives, literary works, photographs, and other materials.

A collection of digitized maps, manuscripts, books, pamphlets and paintings related to exploration, imperialism, and decolonization from archives around the world.
Note: This collection is owned in perpetuity by Davidson College.

The HathiTrust Digital Library collection is a digital repository of books, selected periodicals, and other materials digitized by a partnership of research libraries.
As a member of HathiTrust, Davidson College has digital full-text access to public domain titles and full-text searching of additional titles in copyright.

Genealogy research database. Includes historical census, PERSI, Revolutionary War records, and more.

History Vault provides access to digitized letters, papers, photographs, scrapbooks, financial records, diaries, and many more primary source materials.

Gain insight into the cultural, political, and social history of Native Peoples from the seventeenth to the twentieth century.

A rich collection of primary sources related to U.S. history and culture; materials are drawn from the Library of Congress and other research libraries.

Digital library of 19th century primary sources in American social history from the antebellum period through reconstruction.

(1800-1926) The Making of Modern Law features a fully searchable database of approximately 10 million pages and more than 21,000 works of U.S. and U.K. historical legal treatises; includes casebooks, local practice manuals, form books, works written for lay readers, pamphlets, letters, speeches, and more.
Part of Gale Primary Sources.

Covers the history of Western trade, the rise of the modern labor movement, the evolving status of slavery, the condition and making of the working class, and colonization, and the economic theories that championed and challenged capitalism.
Part of Gale Primary Sources.

Discover primary source collections of the long nineteenth century. Sourced from almost one hundred major world libraries.

A digital collection of books, pamphlets, political tracts, maps, and other works about North, South, and Central America and the West Indies, from the time of their discovery to the early 1900s.
Part of Gale Primary Sources

Research, study, and discover endless teaching possibilities on understanding slavery from a multinational perspective.

Gain access to rare primary source documents with these topically focused digital collections. Supports academic research. 
 Note: Several additional modules added in 2025 within Asian Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, and Latin American & Caribbean Studies.

Discover content from the Royal Institute of International Affairs, the world-leading independent international affairs policy institute.

Features page images of almost every work printed in the British Isles and North America, as well as works in English printed elsewhere from 1470-1700.

Search and explore full-text digital versions of eighteenth-century book titles and other materials published in Great Britain and British North America during the eighteenth century.

(1800-1926) The Making of Modern Law features a fully searchable database of approximately 10 million pages and more than 21,000 works of U.S. and U.K. historical legal treatises; includes casebooks, local practice manuals, form books, works written for lay readers, pamphlets, letters, speeches, and more.
Part of Gale Primary Sources.

Covers the history of Western trade, the rise of the modern labor movement, the evolving status of slavery, the condition and making of the working class, and colonization, and the economic theories that championed and challenged capitalism.
Part of Gale Primary Sources.

Discover primary source collections of the long nineteenth century. Sourced from almost one hundred major world libraries.

Research, study, and discover endless teaching possibilities on understanding slavery from a multinational perspective.

Most of the pamphlets in the collection are on Brazilian subjects or their authors are Brazilian; the majority were published in Brazil or Portugal.

Early Arabic Printed Books from the British Library (1475-1900) is a full-text searchable digital library of early printed books in Arabic script. Davidson College has purchased all 3 modules.

Includes Documents encompassing events from the earliest English embassy to the birth and early years of the People’s Republic of China.

Note: This collection is owned in perpetuity by Davidson College.

Discover primary source collections of the long nineteenth century. Sourced from almost one hundred major world libraries.

Explore the history of South Asia between the foundation of the East India Company in 1615 and the end of British rule in 1947, through the manuscript collections of the National Library of Scotland.

Note: This collection is owned in perpetuity by Davidson College.