History: Africa

The Duke Papyrus Archive provides electronic access to texts about and images of nearly 1400 papyri from ancient Egypt. The target audience includes: papyrologists, ancient historians, archaeologists, biblical scholars, classicists, Coptologists, Egyptologists, students of literature and religion and all others interested in ancient Egypt.

The archives of the Suez Canal are of paramount importance from a technical and engineering point. This site focuses on two important axes: the first relates to the excavation, maintenance and improvements that have been carried out in the canal. The second concerns maritime navigation and ship traffic in the canal course between 1869 and 1956.

This website is a comprehensive resource for research on Giza. It contains photographs and other documentation from the original Harvard University - Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition (1904 to 1947), from recent MFA fieldwork, and from other expeditions, museums, and universities around the world.

TIMEA provides online access to texts, maps, and images documenting travel to the Middle East (primarily Egypt) between the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These materials range from travel guides, travel narratives, and museum catalogs to stereocards, advertisements and postcards. To facilitate access and analysis, the texts are fully searchable, and the images are richly described.

South African History Online - SAHO is the largest and most comprehensive online website on South African and African history and culture. SAHO mission is to break the silence on our past and to address the biased way in which the historical and cultural heritage of South Africa and the continent has been represented in our educational and cultural institutions. SAHO has committed itself to compiling a new history for a new country in partnerships with academic, heritage and community groups and provides ordinary people a platform to tell their own stories.

Cuban documents about Havana's policy toward Southern Africa in the final fifteen years of the Cold War.

DISA is a freely accessible online scholarly resource focusing on the socio-political history of South Africa, particularly the struggle for freedom during the period from 1950 to the first democratic elections in 1994, providing a wealth of material on this fascinating period of the country’s history. Much time, creative thought and debate goes into the selection of the content, and participation and input from interested persons, scholars and institutions in South Africa and overseas is encouraged.

The Nelson Mandela Foundation has in its custody an archive of the life and time, works and writings of its Founder, the late Mr. Nelson Mandela. The physical collections include the handwritten papers, official records and unique artefacts from the personal archive of Nelson Mandela in addition to records from the Office of Nelson Mandela after his retirement as President of South Africa in 1999, and the records of related significant organisations and individuals. It is the NMF’s imperative to document this vast resource, facilitate access to it, and promote its preservation and use. This site contains the archival descriptions, finding aids and many of our digitised items. More material will be added over time.

South Africa's successful struggle for freedom and democracy is one of the most dramatic stories of our time. The racial tyranny of apartheid ended with a negotiated transition to a non-racial democracy, but not without considerable personal cost to thousands of men, women, and young people who were involved. South Africa: Overcoming Apartheid, Building Democracy presents first-hand accounts of this important political movement. Interviews with South African activists, raw video footage documenting mass resistance and police repression, historical documents, rare photographs, and original narratives tell this remarkable story.

Timbuktu, Mali, is the legendary city founded as a commercial center in West Africa nine hundred years ago. Dating from the 16th to the 18th centuries, the ancient manuscripts presented in this exhibition cover every aspect of human endeavor and are indicative of the high level of civilization attained by West Africans during the Middle Ages.

Yale University Digital Libraries Collection

American Museum Congo Expedition Digital Collection

Livingstone Online is a digital museum and library that allows users to encounter the written, visual, and material legacies of the famous Victorian explorer, missionary, and abolitionist David Livingstone (1813-73).

The David Livingstone Spectral Imaging Project is a collaborative, international effort to use spectral imaging technology and digital publishing to make available a series of faded, illegible texts produced by the famous Victorian explorer when stranded without ink or writing paper in Central Africa.

The Kenya Gazette is an official publication of the government of the Republic of Kenya. It contains notices of new legislation, notices required to be published by law or policy as well as other announcements that are published for general public information.

The official records of the proceedings of the Legislative Council of the Colony and Protectorate of Kenya, the House of Representatives of the Government of Kenya and the National Assembly of the Republic of Kenya.

The Voices from the Rwanda Tribunal collection contains 49 video interviews conducted with personnel from the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). Collected in 2008, these interviews reveal the challenges of striving for justice and reconciliation after genocide. In their own voices, tribunal personnel speak to Rwandans, the international justice community, and the global public, now, 50 and 100 years from now.

The Trans-Atlantic and Intra-American slave trade databases are the culmination of several decades of independent and collaborative research by scholars drawing upon data in libraries and archives around the Atlantic world. The new SlaveVoyages website itself is the product of three years of development by a multi-disciplinary team of historians, librarians, curriculum specialists, cartographers, computer programmers, and web designers, in consultation with scholars of the slave trade from universities in Europe, Africa, South America, and North America.

The Humphrey Winterton Collection of East African Photographs: 1860-1960 documents the African colonial era to the dawn of independence. The collection portrays both African life and European life in Africa in all its manifestations. It chronicles the daily experience of colonial residents: how they traveled, the lives they created for themselves, their social activities, and their early interaction with the rest of Africa.