Brazilian Studies: Primary Sources
Resources on Slavery
- Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade DatabaseContains information on more than 36,000 slave voyages that forcibly embarked over 12 million Africans for transport to the Americas between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. It offers researchers, students and the general public a chance to rediscover the reality of one of the largest forced movements of peoples in world history.
- 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 (Adam Matthew)."
- Slavery, Abolition, and Social Justice This link opens in a new window"Bringing together primary source documents from archives and libraries across the Atlantic world, this resource allows students and researchers to explore and compare unique material relating to the complex subjects of slavery, abolition and social justice. In addition to the primary source documents there is a wealth of useful secondary sources for research and teaching; including an interactive map, scholarly essays, tutorials, a visual sources gallery, chronology and bibliography (Adam Matthew)."
Electronic Texts
- Oliveira Lima Library This link opens in a new window"The Oliveira Lima Library has been lauded as the finest collection of Luso-Brazillian material available to U.S. scholars. With the core of its content derived from the "long" nineteenth century, this collection turns the spotlight on South America's largest and most influential power, covering topics such as: colonialism, missionaries, slave trade and abolition, economic development and agricultural trade, Indigenous Peoples, international relations, and the fight for Brazilian independence (Gale, includes parts 1 and 2)."
- Sabin Americana (1500-1926) This link opens in a new windowBased on Joseph Sabin's landmark bibliography, this collection contains works about the Americas published throughout the world from 1500 to the early 1900's. Included are books, pamphlets, serials and other documents that provide original accounts of exploration, trade, colonialism, slavery and abolition, the western movement, Native Americans, military actions and much more.
- Confidential Print: Latin America, 1833-1969 This link opens in a new windowA vital resource for any scholar of Latin American history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The contents include the FO 467/1-5 (Brazil, 1947-1951) file class from the UK National Archives, Kew.
- Biblioteca Virtual Nacional of the National Library of Portugal
An extraordinary array of historic texts on Brazil may be accessed through this site. It includes a digitized edition of the first history of Brazil (1576). - National Library of Brazil, the Fundação Biblioteca Nacional
The full-text retrieval of books from the classics of Brazilian literature may be read at this site. One accesses the catalog of over 1,000 entries by clicking on Digital Library. The site is partially navigable in English. - Biblioteca Virtual Cervantes
The full-text library of Spanish-language materials here includes some works on Brazil in Spanish, Portuguese, and English. - The United States and Brazil: Expanding Frontiers, Comparing Cultures
This project explores the history of Brazil, interactions between Brazil and the United States from the eighteenth century to the present, and the parallels and contrasts between Brazilian and American culture and history. The project is a collaboration between the Library of Congress and the National Library of Brazil. - Google Books
Many Portuguese-language books that are out of copyright.
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