LibGuides: African Studies: Databases

Primary Source Databases

African Newspapers This link opens in a new window
1805 - 1925. Includes Series I and Series II, and provides more than 50 fully searchable newspapers published in the 19th and 20th centuries from in a variety of African countries.
Updated monthly. Includes Series I and Series II, and provides more than 50 fully searchable newspapers published in the 19th and 20th centuries from in a variety of African countries. Covers the people, issues and events that shaped this vital region.
Black Drama This link opens in a new window
Contains approximately 1200 plays written from the mid-1800s to the present, together with detailed, fielded information on related productions, theaters, production companies, and more. The content represents North America, English-speaking Africa, the Caribbean, and other African diaspora countries.
Updated regularly. Contains approximately 1200 plays written from the mid-1800s to the present, together with detailed, fielded information on related productions, theaters, production companies, and more. Also includes selected playbills, production photographs and other ephemera related to the plays. The content represents North America, English-speaking Africa, the Caribbean, and other African diaspora countries. Many of the works are rare, hard-to-find, or out of print.
The database covers key writings of the Harlem Renaissance, works performed for the Federal Theatre Project, and plays by critically acclaimed dramatists of the 1940s. The collection includes musical comedies, domestic dramas, folk dramas, history plays, anti-slavery plays, one-act plays, and other works. Many were published in a wide range of magazines and anthologies, others have never before been published or performed.
Corpus of French-speaking Literature from Black Africa This link opens in a new window
18th century - 1960. This large-scale scholarly enterprise gathers together all the French-speaking literature from sub-Saharan Africa it was possible to collect: oral and written literature from the origins (end of the 18th century) to Independence (1960, as date of authors’ death).
: This large-scale scholarly enterprise gathers together all the French-speaking literature from sub-Saharan Africa it was possible to collect: oral and written literature from the origins (end of the 18th century) to Independence (1960, as date of authors’ death). The written literature gathered comes either from works benefiting from a wide distribution or from publications with a local or temporary distribution and kept on short-lived media (such as press, periodicals, parish bulletins, and pamphlets). Built up from a vast bibliographical research, followed by the collection and edition of the texts, the Corpus is both a scholarly database and a precious collection of Africa's cultural heritage.
Empire Online This link opens in a new window
1492 - 2007. Provides full text access to primary source documents from the British Empire (the Empire encompassed Africa, the Americas, Australia, Oceania, and South Asia). Documents include travel accounts, the literature of Empire, photography and illustration, religious material, and records on issues of race and class in the colonial context.
Provides full text access to primary source documents from the British Empire (the Empire encompassed Africa, the Americas, Australia, Oceania, and South Asia). Documents include travel accounts, the literature of Empire, photography and illustration, religious material, and records on issues of race and class in the colonial context.
The material is divided into 5 sections
1. Cultural Contacts, 1492-1969
2. Empire Writing and Literature of Empire
3. The Visible Empire
4. Religion and Empire
5. Race, Class, Imperialism and Colonialism c1607-2007
Browse by names, places and topics Search by period, date, places, person and subject.
Also includes scholarly interpretive essays on the British Empire.

Search across Adam Matthew primary source databases using AM Explorer
European Colonialism in the Early 20th Century: French Colonialism in Africa: From Algeria to Madagascar, 1910-1930 This link opens in a new window
Collection comprises correspondence, studies and reports, cables, maps, and other kinds of documents related to U.S. consular activities. Highlights include the beginning of an anti-colonial movement and problems along the Moroccan-Algerian border.
Collection comprises correspondence, studies and reports, cables, maps, and other kinds of documents related to U.S. consular activities. U.S. Consulates were listening posts reporting on the activities of the French colonial government and the activities of the native peoples. Highlights include the beginning of an anti-colonial movement and problems along the Moroccan-Algerian border.
European Colonialism in the Early 20th Century: Political and Economic Consolidation of Portuguese Colonies in Africa, 1910-1929 This link opens in a new window
Collection comprises correspondence, studies and reports, cables, maps, and other kinds of documents related to U.S. consular activities. Highlights include the beginning of an anti-colonial movement and the industrialization and economic exploitation of Portugal’s African colonies.
Collection comprises correspondence, studies and reports, cables, maps, and other kinds of documents related to U.S. consular activities. U.S. Consulates were listening posts reporting on the activities of the Portuguese colonial government and the activities of the native peoples. Highlights include the beginning of an anti-colonial movement and the industrialization and economic exploitation of Portugal’s African colonies.
Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) Reports: 1974-1996 This link opens in a new window
News reports from the now defunct Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), which gathered open source intelligence for the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). FBIS gathered news reports from radio broadcasts, news services, and clandestine broadcasts.
Provides access to full-text searchable news reports from Latin America, Middle East and Africa, Near East and South Asia translated into English between 1974-1996 by the now defunct Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), which gathered open source intelligence for the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). FBIS gathered news reports from radio broadcasts, news services, and clandestine broadcasts.
Human Rights Documentation Initiative (HRDI) This link opens in a new window
The UT Libraries’ Human Rights Documentation Initiative (HRDI) is committed to the long-term preservation of fragile and vulnerable records of human rights struggles worldwide, the promotion and secure usage of human rights archival materials, and the advancement of human rights research and advocacy around the world. Notable collections include documents related to Burundi, DRC and Rwanda
Site features include an annotated list of all the human rights related archival collections held at University of Texas at Austin (browseable by region, subject, language, or repository), archived human rights websites (keyword searchable and browseable by language or subject), and links to the HRDI’s online audiovisual collections.
Slavery, abolition and social justice This link opens in a new window
1490 - 2007. Provides a portal for slavery studies, bringing together documents and collections covering an extensive time period spanning six centuries, from libraries and archives across the Atlantic world.
Provides a portal for slavery studies, bringing together documents and collections covering an extensive time period spanning six centuries, from libraries and archives across the Atlantic world. Offers images of many thousands of original manuscripts, pamphlets, books, paintings, maps and images not available elsewhere, links to other online sources approved by scholars and a series of contextual essays by leading authorities from around the world.
Includes extensive coverage of topics such as the African Coast; the Middle Passage; the varieties of slave experience (urban, domestic, industrial, farm, ranch and plantation); Spiritualism and Religion; Resistance and Revolts; the Underground Railroad; the Abolition Movement; Legislation; Education; the Legacy of Slavery and Slavery Today.
Search across Adam Matthew primary source databases using AM Explorer
Social Conflict in Africa This link opens in a new window
1990 - 2009. Statistics and Numeric Data. Provides a resource for conducting research and analysis on various forms of social and political unrest in Africa.
Provides a resource for conducting research and analysis on various forms of social and political unrest in Africa. Includes over 6,000 social conflict events across Africa from 1990 to 2009, including riots, strikes, protests, coups, and communal violence. By tracking forms of conflict not covered in traditional datasets on civil and interstate war, SCAD gives policymakers and researchers new tools to analyze conflict patterns.
Struggles for Freedom: Southern Africa This link opens in a new window
Focuses on the complex and varied liberation struggles in the region, with an emphasis on Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. It includes more than 190,000 pages of primary source documents and images, including periodicals, nationalist publications, records of colonial government commissions, local newspaper reports, personal papers, correspondence, UN documents, out-of-print and other particularly relevant books, oral histories, and speeches.
Struggles for Freedom - Southern Africa focuses on the complex and varied liberation struggles in the region, with an emphasis on Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. It includes more than 190,000 pages of primary source documents and images, including periodicals, nationalist publications, records of colonial government commissions, local newspaper reports, personal papers, correspondence, UN documents, out-of-print and other particularly relevant books, oral histories, and speeches.
World News Connection This link opens in a new window
1995 - 2013. Unlimited users.
Contains materials provided to the National Technical Information Service (NTIS) by the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS). The reports are full text, English translations of foreign news sources and information. Many of the materials are copyrighted. Particularly effective in its coverage of local media sources. Compiled from thousands of worldwide media sources.

Digital Primary Sources from Library Catalog

Africa's Gold Coast Through Portuguese Sources, 1469-1680 The Portuguese produced the earliest records for regions in West Africa, none more important than the Gold Coast. This edited volume provides a unique collection of sources written in Portuguese, Latin, Italian, French, and Spanish for Africa's Gold Coast, from the late 15th to 17th century. Students, scholars, and professionals with an avid interest in early modern African, Atlantic, and world history will benefit from the English translations, many appearing for the first time. These sources add to the handful of existing translations, but especially illuminate the late 15th to 17th century relations between the Portuguese empire and the Gold Coast and offer comparative materials for other European interlocutors--Spanish, French, English, and Dutch--garrisoned on the coast or offshore in their vessels. Over that concentrated period, and especially where no other European-supplied records exist, these uncomprehending Portuguese outsiders archived important local ideas, personalities, polities, and cultural forms animating Gold Coast-Portuguese relations.
Publication Date: 2022
African Voices from the Inquisition, Vol. 1: The Trial of Crispina Peres of Cacheu, Guinea-Bissau (1646-1668) This book contains some of the richest written material in existence for precolonial West Africa with unique insights into daily life in an Afro-Atlantic coastal trade settlement. Presenting the complete translated and annotated text of the Inquisition trial of Crispina Peres, an African woman born in the Guinea-Bissau region, of a Portuguese father and an African mother, it documents the Portuguese Inquisition's religious persecution of Africans on African soil. Set in a slave port in 17th century West Africa, the trial focuses on the worldview of an African woman accused of engaging in African rites and witchcraft, who is imprisoned and brought before Inquisitioners in Lisbon. It highlights her resourcefulness, resilience and spirited defence of her innocence, providing precious details on her life, household, work, health and social and commercial networks in this understudied African region.

Britain and Africa Series Colonial correspondence and documents related to British government administration in Africa.

Europeans in West Africa, 1540-1560 Texts dealing with Portuguese and Castilian enterprise, translated into English and edited.
Publication Date: 2010
The Portuguese in West Africa, 1415-1670 The Portuguese in West Africa, 1415-1670 brings together a collection of documents - all in new English translation - that illustrate aspects of the encounters between the Portuguese and the peoples of North and West Africa in the period from 1400 to 1650. This period witnessed the diaspora of the Sephardic Jews, the emigration of Portuguese to West Africa and the islands, and the beginnings of the black diaspora associated with the slave trade. The documents show how the Portuguese tried to understand the societies with which they came into contact and to reconcile their experience with the myths and legends inherited from classical and medieval learning. They also show how Africans reacted to the coming of Europeans, adapting Christian ideas to local beliefs and making use of exotic imports and European technologies. The documents also describe the evolution of the black Portuguese communities in Guinea and the islands, as well as the slave trade and the way that it was organized, understood, and justified.
Public Documents from Sinnar This selection of Arabic and English translations illuminates the changes of eighteenth-century government in the northern Nile Valley of Sudan, and provides reliable chronological points of reference for the history of the region.
Publication Date: 2012

Print Primary Sources from Library Catalog

Crisis and Conflict in Nigeria: A Documentary Sourcebook by Kirk-Greene, AHM
Publication Date: 1971
Dahomey and the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade The British Vice-Consulate for the kingdom of Dahomey was established to suppress the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The documents collected here comprise principally of the journals of the Vice-Consul, Louis Fraser, which provide valuable insights into British policy on the slave trade.
ISBN: 9780197265215
Publication Date: 2012
The East African Coast: Select Documents from the First to the Earlier Nineteenth Century. by Freeman-Grenville, GSP This book is a compilation of documents throughout history which discuss the East African Coast. Authors of these documents include figures such as Claudius Ptolemy, Marco Polo, and Vasco da Gama.
Publication Date: 1962
The History of the Mazru`i Dynasty of Mombasa This history of the Mazru'i family, who ruled Mombasa for more than 100 years up to 1837, is published here in an English translation, together with the original Arabic text.It was written by the late Shaykh Al-Amin bin 'Ali Al Mazru'i, formerly Chief Qadhi of Kenya Colony, and embodies the oral Mazru'i family tradition, which stretches back beyond the evidence of English documents to the late seventeenth century.
Publication Date: 1996
Towards a Reconstructed Past: Historical Texts from Busoga, Uganda
Publication Date: 1986