Religion, science, philosophy
General resources
Renaissance Humanism (Italian Renaissance/Early Modern) a useful overview
Reformation Europe (Internet Modern History Sourcebook)
Society for Reformation Studies aimed at 'anyone with a scholarly interest in Reformation and Renaissance theology, spirituality and related disciplines'; information on its activities as well as a list of internet resources
The Reformation Guide resources for well-known individuals and regional variations
The Protestant Reformation (Internet Archive of Texts and Documents) online primary and secondary source materials and web resources
The Catholic Reformation (Internet Archive of Texts and Documents) online primary and secondary source materials and web resources
Reformation links includes e-versions of many important texts of Reformation writers
Reformation and Counter-reformation (Stephanie Marra, WWW-VL)
Early Modern Science links topics include astronomy, exploration, the Church, individual scientists
The Scientific Revolution (Internet Modern History Sourcebook)
Readings in Modern Philosophy (J Carl Mickelsen) resources for philosophers from the sixteenth to the early nineteenth centuries, including Grotius, Hobbes, Descartes, Locke, Kant
The Enlightenment (Internet Modern History Sourcebook)
Age of Reason and Enlightenment 1650-1800 (Robert L Jefferson) a taught course; lots of useful background information
The Enlightenment (The Guardian) extract from the late Roy Porter's book, giving a readable and intelligent introduction to the subject
More Specialised
Redefining the Sacred in Early Modern England some of the results of a collaborative study of the English Reformation at the Folger Shakespeare Library in 1998, specifically intended for use in teaching; includes images of printed texts and manuscripts with excellent commentaries
Change and Continuity: Religious Reformations in Early Modern Europe special issue of the online Early Modern Journal (note that the URL is likely to change in the future), presenting papers from the Claremont Annual Early Modern Symposium. Topics include: the science of religion; providence, fortune and gender
Dissent, Doubt and spiritual Violence in the Reformation (Norton Topics Online) focuses on the 1520s and 1530s in England, including material on the 'Pilgrimage of Grace' and Anne Askew
The Puritan Movement (Internet Shakespeare Editions)
The John Foxe Project (British Academy) the website for the planned new electronic edition of the Acts and Monuments; includes historical background, a 'demonstration' of a snippet from the text to show us what to expect, information about current John Foxe research
Fire and Ice: Puritan and Reformed Writings (Bill Carson) a site compiled by a Christian enthusiast, including extensive extracts from many important writers and poets, as well as biographical and historians' writings and links
Book of Common Prayer (Reformed Episcopal Church) links to various online versions of the Anglican prayer book, including the 1552, 1559 and 1662 editions
John Calvin (Christian Classics Ethereal Library) works about and by Calvin, and search facility
Methodism and the Wesleys the family and their religion
John Wesley: an Online Exhibition (John Rylands Library) selections from the library's Methodist Archives
Religion and the Founding of the American Republic (Library of Congress) from the first settlers seeking refuge from persecution to the Revolution, this online exhibit examines the role of religion in the making of the US
The Puritan Tradition and American Memory (Scott Atkins) 'Pilgrims' and 'Puritans' and their cultural influences
Religious Enfranchisement and Roman Catholics in Eighteenth-Century Newfoundland (Hans Rollmann) article on the establishment of official tolerance of religious diversity in late 18th-century Newfoundland
John Dee and the English Calendar: Science, Religion and Empire (Robert Poole) IHR electronic seminar on an always-fascinating Renaissance figure, the Welsh polymath (mathematician and magician among other talents) John Dee
Spirits, witches and science (Richard Olson) an essay on the connections between the developments in seventeenth-century science and beliefs in the supernatural
The art of Renaissance science (Joseph W Dauben) online essay 'devoted to the genius of Galileo and the relation between his role in the Scientific Revolution and the equally remarkable achievements of Renaissance artists reflected, in part, in the discovery and application of mathematical perpective'
Luther and Science an e-essay, written by a professor of physics, examining the attitudes of Luther and his followers towards science (particularly astronomy)
Jesuits and the Sciences, 1540-1995 (Loyola University Science Library) extensive sections on the early modern period
The Galileo Project devoted to Galileo Galilei and the science of his times: includes biography, bibliography, information on the instruments he used, maps, timelines, and 'Galileo's Daughter
The Plurality of Worlds (Norton Topics Online) microscopes and telescopes opened up new worlds in the later seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, here, this 'giant leap in perspective' is explored through contemporary writings
Alchemy Website (Adam McLean) 'over 1300 sections and providing thousands of pages of text, over 1700 images, over 200 complete alchemical texts, extensive bibliographical material on the printed books and manuscripts, numerous articles, introductory and general reference material', a searchable database
No High Heels in Paradise (London Review of Books) review by Keith Thomas of a new scholarly edition of Elysium Britannicum, or the Royal Gardens by John Evelyn: full of information on Evelyn, his gardening and politics
Renaissance Humanism and Christian Hebraism (National Library of Canada) an online exhibit, with examples of early printed texts in Hebrew: 'Nowhere was the contact between Jewish and Christian learning more evident than in the art of printing in the 16th century'
Catalogue of the Scientific Community in the 16th and 17th Centuries (Richard Westfall, Albert van Helden) database of over 600 detailed biographies, fully searchable
Seventeenth and eighteenth-century Mathematicians (David R Wilkins) biographies of mathematicians and some other scientists
Early Modern Historians and Philosophers (Scholiast.org) biographical information and links for a selection of early modern thinkers
Selected Works of Francis Bacon (Liberty Library) texts include The Great Instauration, New Atlantis
Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan (The Secular Web) full text
John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding (The Secular Web) full text
The Electric Franklin (Independence Hall Association) a rather delightful mix of the light-hearted and the scholarly on Benjamin Franklin; includes a very good listing of links, biography, and texts of his writings as well as quotes
The Adam Smith Page (Edward J Harpham) sections on biography, bibliography, recent studies and general information on Smith
Thomas Paine (The Secular Web) texts of Paine's works and considerably more
Women Philosophers of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Peter Suber) mainly biographical with some biographical information on various women philosophers
The Bluestocking Archive (Elizabeth Fay) 'an archive of texts by or relating to the eighteenth-century British Bluestocking Circle and the second generation Blues, including predecessor texts, and literature of sensibility as it is derived from the Bluestockings' concerns with aesthetics, and with women's aesthetic achievements'
The Dictionary of Sensibility (Corey Brady et al) a hypertext resource for the language of eighteenth-century 'sensibility'; 24 'key terms', such as 'benevolence', 'sense', 'taste', are explored through extracts from primary texts
Everyday Life in Pre-modern Europe (Internet Modern History Sourcebook)
Social Conditions in 17th-century France (Internet Modern History Sourcebook)
Dartford (England), 1500-1800 (The Dartford Archive) sections on population, industry, religion among others in a southern English market town, an excellent local history site
Migration and the Early Modern Town (TLTP History Courseware Consortium) online tutorial with two aims: to trace 'the changing fortunes of towns and cities in early modern England, through the focus of migrants who were instrumental in peopling towns and allowing them to grow as they did', and also to introduce the range of sources that can be utilised by students. A fine resource
A Day in 18th-century London (Norton Topics Online) includes extracts from Swift, Addison, The Tatler 'On Shops', Smollett, Boswell: vivid and illuminating materials providing insights into the city
Land and Labour in Norfolk 1440-1580 text of the introduction to a recent book by Jane Whittle, The development of agrarian capitalism (OUP, 2000)
Farms and Fields of Deddington 1500-1950 (Deddington Online) a short but significant outline of the changes in farming patterns that took place in one Oxfordshire parish
Abraham Cowley, On Agriculture (Modern History Sourcebook) mid-seventeenth-century essay on English agriculture
The Economy of Europe in the Renaissance (E L Skip-Knox) background information, for a taught course
The Plymouth Colony Archive (University of Virginia) a collection of searchable texts, including court records, Colony laws, seventeenth century texts, research and seminar analysis of various topics, biographical profiles of selected colonists, probate inventories, wills, maps, town and fort plans, architectural and material culture studies
The Account Book of Richard Latham (Lorna Scammell) search this account book of an eighteenth-century Lancashire farmer (and there is useful background information as well)
Scottish Economic History Database, 1550-1780 (Alex Gibson) data categories include crop yields, demographic, price and wage data
The Statistical Accounts of Scotland (EDINA) digitised version of an important primary source for Scotland in the 1790s and 1830s, covering 'a wide variety of topics: wealth, class and poverty; climate, agriculture, fishing and wildlife; population, schools, and the moral health of the people'
Malthus' Essay on the Principles of Population (1798) (Ed Stephan) full text of this highly influential work
Industrial Revolution (Internet Modern History Sourcebook)
There are plenty of sites you can go
to for information on individual writers, artists and so on, so
only a handful of those are likely to be listed here.
For writers, check out:
The Voice of the Shuttle English
Literature page and Literatures
other than English; Jack Lynch's Eighteenth-century
Literature and Renaissance
Literary Resources; Index
to English Renaissance Literature (R Bailey)
Artists:
Try the splendid Web Gallery
of Art; Mark Harden's Artchive
Social Sites of Renaissance Lyrics a fascinating site, the results of a project by graduate students attempting 'to recover the connections between historical places and lyrics, to show the poems' attachments to material places and their social environs', with analysis of a number of renaissance poets, eg London taverns in Robert Herrick's poetry
An image-oriented introduction to Renaissance literature (Herman Asanow) images provided for a taught course: a series of copies of original images and texts aimed at suggesting the ideas and concerns to be found in British Renaissance literature
Renaissance literary resources another rich set of resources from Jack Lynch
A Literary Website (James Berg) taught course materials and resources
Publishing Drama in Early Modern Europe (British Library) online exhibit, accompanying the 1998 Panizzi lectures by Roger Chartier which examined 'the relationship between plays in performance and plays in print and the often tortuous transmission of texts from the theatre to the printing house in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries'.
Emory Women Writers' Project a collection of texts by women writing in English from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries
Early Modern French Women Writers (University of Minnesota) texts by French women writers
Seventeenth-century women poets bibliography with biographical and text resources
Transgressing boundaries: women's writing in the renaissance and reformation (Janet Clare) essay in Renaissance Forum
The Aphra Behn Page (Ruth Nestvold) includes biographical material, primary sources, links, sections on Behn and racism and on women in the Restoration theatre
The Aphra Behn Society 'dedicated to encouraging and advancing research that focuses on issues of gender and/or women's role in the arts of early modern culture, circa 1660-1800'; links and syllabi as well as society information
Selected Poetry of Anne Bradstreet (University of Toronto)
The Margaret Cavendish Society includes online resources and bibliography, information on membership
Aemilia Lanyer (Kari Boyd McBride) biography, bibliography, e-text, listserv
As One Phoenix: Four seventeenth-century women poets (Ron Cooley and students) a project produced by students at the University of Saskatchewan: looks at Margaret Cavendish, Aemilia Lanyer, Katherine Philips and Lady Mary Wroth, providing bibliographies, biographies and texts for each poet, plus web links and a bibliography of anthologies
Internet Beaumont and Fletcher Editions (Drew Whitehead) aims to provide a complete, searchable database of the works of this prolific pair of dramatists
The Milton Reading Room a collaborative project: much of Milton's poetry and major prose works are already available, and aims to form a comprehensive digital resource of his work; also web links and a substantial bibliography of recent criticism
Milton-L Home Page the discussion group devoted to John Milton and his life, work and times, which aims to be a comprehensive index for information on the poet
Mr William Shakespeare and the Internet (Terry Gray) a multi-award-winning site which has two main aims: as a comprehensive guide to scholarly Shakespeare resources on the internet, and to present new material unavailable elsewhere on the net
Sidneiana (Gavin Alexander, CERES) 'a developing multimedia archive of projects and materials relating to the Sidney family'
Edmund Spenser Home Page (Andrew Zurcher, CERES) the home of Edmund Spenser on the web, has biography, bibliography, e-texts, discussion list, the Spenser Society
The Metaphysical Poets (Anniina Jokinen) resources for these seventeenth-century English poets, including John Donne, George Herbert, Andrew Marvell
The Magician, the Heretic, and the Playright: Faustus, Marlowe, and the English Stage (Norton Topics Online) Marlowe's life, plays and death examined
Bodleian Broadside Ballads Project 30,000 ballads online, from the Bodleian Library's collections, fully indexed and searchable by author, title, subject etc. There are also woodcut images and some musical scores
Sixteenth-century ballads (Greg Lindahl) an on-going project focusing on pre-1600 ballads, includes a database, transcripts and related resources
Blackletter Ballads (L E Pearson) a selection of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century ballads
Early English Musick 1385-1714 (EXLibris) brief biographical information on hundreds of musicians, arranged within chronological sections, as well as an extensive bibliography
Early Music Sites (Renaissance and Baroque Society of Pittsburgh)
Acadia early music resources (Gordon J Callon)
Women's early music, art, poetry (much wider in its coverage than early modern Europe) a great range of resources and links
A Survey of French Opera (1670-1770) (François R Velde) a of the development (and controversies) of opera in Paris in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
Early English Drama (Records for Early English Drama) 'REED has for the last 25 years worked to locate, transcribe, and edit all surviving documentary evidence of drama, minstrelsy, and public ceremonial in England before 1642'; includes extensive listing of online resources
Elizabethan Theatre (Hilda Spear) text and accompanying slides from a lecture
Shakespeare's Stage (Internet Shakespeare Editions) examines the development of theatres and stages from the middle ages to Shakespeare's times
The Drama and Shakespeare (Internet Shakespeare Editions) introduction to the dramatic traditions/genres
English Renaissance drama (Michael J Redmond)
Theatre history on the web (Jack Wolcott) includes sections on medieval and renaissance theatre, Elizabethan, eighteenth century and other useful stuff
Shakespeare's Globe includes information about the original Globe theatre (as well as the new one) and London playhouses
Early Modern Plays Presented in London Playhouses (Tom Dale Keever) data on drama performances in London from 1576 to 1642
The World of London Theater 1660-1800 (text-only version) a collaborative graduate students' project (Patricia Craddock's students at the University of Florida); includes timeline, information on places, people, plays, web resources, bibliography
Renaissance Art Resources (Chris Witcombe) along with the next two entries, part of a massive set of art history resources: resources for individual artists, for types of art, themes
Baroque Art Resources (Chris Witcombe)
Eighteenth-century Art Resources (Chris Witcombe)
Antony van Dyck (Robin Blake) celebrating the 400th anniversary of the painter's birth; biography, a virtual exhibition of images, online resources
The Art of William Hogarth (Haley Steele online exhibit) described as 'a comprehensive exhibition of early impressions of his work', and just goes to show that 'commercial' sites can be top-quality resources; the quality of the images is very good
The Hogarth Archive (University of Wales, Lampeter) again, a substantial collection of images online, as well as an extensive bibliography
Jan Vermeer (World Art Treasures) biography, paintings, historical context
Artemisia Gentileschi and the Age of Baroque (Rebecca Corbell and Samantha Guy) a student project which includes a biography, analysis of paintings in the light of the rape trial (and an extract of the trial itself). Sadly, none of the graphics work (on my browser at least)
English Caricature Prints 1720-1820 (Haley Steele)
Architecture and Public Space (The Italian Renaissance)
Renaissance and Baroque Architecture (C W Westfall) a collection of photographs ranging from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries; mainly Italian but some French and English examples
Early Modern Crime, Law and Order: a bibliography (at this site) a broad-ranging themed bibliography of printed (English-language) secondary sources
Crime and Punishment inEarly Modern Europe (Susan Dinan) taught course syllabus, interesting introductory discussion, reading lists and supplementary bibliography
Tyburn Tree excellent resource on execution in early modern England, including a range of useful links, primary documents and images and a bibliography
The Complete Newgate Calendar (University of Texas, Law in Popular Culture collection) complete text of the 1926 edition of this amazing eighteenth-century source (for the development of crime fiction as much as for studying crime itself). Try also Newgate Calendar Stories (Dennis Denisoff)
London's disreputable south bank in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Jessica Browner) examining Southwark's notorious reputation during the early modern period, a shady world of petty crime, alehouses and prostitution
Crime and the Law in Elizabethan England (Internet Shakespeare Editions) includes sections on the Elizabethan underworld, attitudes to crime, punishment
Female Crime in Renaissance Drama (Matthew Clothier and Leah Edwards) a student project which considers media representations of murderous women, focusing on the play Arden of Faversham (but drawing interesting parallels with the present day)
The duello in Elizabethan England (Maelgwyn Dda) a lively look at the culture of the duel in early modern England
Dartford assizes in the sixteenth century (Dartford Archive) an abstract of criminal cases from Dartford tried at the Assize courts: gives a flavour of the types of offence tried at these important English courts
The Court Structure of Quebec and Lower Canada, 1764-1860 (Donald Fyson) a basic guide to the courts: 'the intention is that researchers knowing only the name of the court whose documents they are consulting can easily determine its position in the judicial hierarchy, its predecessors and successors, and its general competence'
Lost Women (Mary Elizabeth Perry) extracted from the book Crime and Society in early modern Seville, looks at the women of the Seville 'underworld' and the city authorities' attempts to deal with them as a perceived threat to order
Crime, litigation and the courts in the Isle of Man (Stephen Miller) (htm version) outline of a research project using a rich but neglected set of archives, from a range of courts in the early modern Isle of Man
Clothing, cloth and cloth-theft in Defoe's England (Melissa Johnson) essay looking at clothing, the second-hand clothes trade and theft in the early eighteenth century
Crime and punishment in early modern Germany (Robert Selig)
Violence in early modern Europe (Julius Ruff) extensive bibliographical essay (a longer version of material contained in Ruff's book on violence in early modern Europe): sections on representations of crime; states, arms and armies; justice; interpersonal violence; ritual group violence; violent popular protest; organised crime
Pirates and their Enemies (C R Pennell) materials for a taught course: includes primary documents, bibliography, web links
Outlaws and Highwaymen (Gillian Spraggs) as well as a varied range of texts (including ballads, newspaper reports, fictional stories, memoirs), includes an outline history, bibliography and links
Capital punishment in the Isle of Man (Peter Edge)
Torture in early modern Spain and Latin America (Tamar Herzog) outlining the context, doctrine and practice of early modern legal torture
Making Sense of English Law Enforcement in the 18th Century (David Friedman) essay examining the eighteenth-century English criminal justice system
Forced Labour, Workhouse-prisons and the Early Modern State (Thomas Munck, IHR seminar) examining early developments in institutionalised poor relief, through a case study of Danish workhouses and forced labour schemes
Honour, Reputation and Defamation (at this site) a short bibliography of printed materials relating to defamation and slander, honour and insult
Trade Products in Early Modern Europe cloves, cod, coffee, porcelain, potato, sugar, tea... a delightful site that has grown out of a seminar on 'the Expansion of Europe' at the James Ford Bell Library
Coins in colonial America (University of Notre Dame) online exhibit of coins, including state, national and imported coins. Also a similar exhibit on Colonial Paper Currencies
Renaissance Maiolica (Anita Kovacevic) studies maiolica (tin-glazed earthenware) for its significance in material culture
Pl[a]ying the Trades: trades and crafts in early modern plays (Doris Teske) syllabus with links for a taught course
Children's Toys written by three high school students, an interesting discussion (but beware: the pictures are terrible)
Dress and Fashion in Early Modern Europe (at this site)
Renaissance Dance online resources and sources, bibliography, discography, Rendance mailing list
Minstrel Page (Greg Lindahl) plenty of useful material related to the performing arts in the middle ages and early modern period, primarily aimed at re-enactors
Medieval & Renaissance Weddings despite a personal aversion to weddings, I find this site wonderful; includes articles, images, primary documents
Consuming Pleasures: Food, Drink and Drugs (at this site)
The Printing Press Online (at this site) resources for early modern printing, publishing and books, including the growing number of online exhibitions and digitisation projects by libraries devoted to their holdings of early printed materials
Gunpowder, Compass and Printing Press (History department, Oxford University) materials for a course on technology and society in early modern Europe; images, texts, artefacts
The Bubble Project (co-ordinated by David McNeil) a collaborative, interdisciplinary research project on the South Sea Bubble (which burst in 1720), focusing on its cultural history and influence on the arts: at present contains an overview of the events, bibliography, links; with much more planned, this looks set to become an invaluable resource
'The Legacy of the Horse' 600-1630 and 1660-1830; online exhibition at the International Museum of the Horse
Luxury in Eighteenth-century London (Warwick Eighteenth-century Centre) reading list of primary and secondary sources, and some extracts
Taste in the Eighteenth Century (Warwick Eighteenth-century Centre) a bibliography of primary and secondary sources
Eighteenth-century mirrors (Clive Edwards) aimed at antiques collectors in fact, but an informative short article
North American Fur Trade (White Oak Society) lots of useful information; includes sections on languages of the fur trade, women in the trade and the beaver hat (and the beaver itself)
Witchcraft and Magic Beliefs
Folk Magic in Britain (Brian Hoggard)exploration of objects, such as witch-bottles, written charms, horse skulls, that that were concealed in and around buildings as spells or counter-spells; sections on each of the various kinds of object, links, book list
Witchcraft in Salem an excellent resource for the history of the 1692 witchcraft trials
Salem and Seventeenth-century New England bibliography and web links, including some links for The Crucible play and film
Best Witches a wide range of material relating to the witch trials [this site has apparently disappeared, which is a shame - unless anyone has other information?]
The Witching Hours (Shantell Powell) a beautifully designed site, with sections on: documents; potions and spells; modern parallels; people; punishment and torture; and much more. A terrific resource. (Even better if it stayed in one place for more than a few months at a time)
The Salem Witchcraft Papers full transcripts of the 1692 court records, and the text of Burr's Narratives of the Witchcraft Trials, with search facility
The Witch Hunts (Internet Archive of Texts and Documents) online primary and secondary source materials and web resources
Johann Weyer's defence of Witches (Elisa Slattery) an essay on Weyer's 'De praestigiis demonum'
Plague and public health in Renaissance Europe a hypertext archive 'documenting the arrival, impact and response to the problem of epidemic disease in Western Europe between 1348 and 1530' (currently only fourteenth-century examples)
Burial of the plague dead in early modern London (Vanessa Harding) part of Epidemic Disease in London, a collection of papers, some focused on the early modern period, from an Institute of Historical Research Symposium held in 1992
John Graunt's Observations on the Bills of Mortality (Ed Stephan) full text of this 1662 work - a remarkable early piece of statistical analysis
A Journal of the Plague Year (MasterTexts) Defoe's 1722 account of the Great Plague of 1664/5
Herbal Medicine in Shakespeare's England (Michael Tierra) article on John Hall, a sixteenth-century physican-herbalist
Elizabeth Blackwell and her 'Curious Herbal' (British Library) online exhibit based on the British Library's copy of Elizabeth Blackwell's Curious Herbal containing five hundred cuts of the most useful plants, published in 1737
Islamic culture and the medical arts: late medieval and early modern medicine (US National Library of Medicine) looks at European influences on early modern Islamic medicine and vice versa
Words and deeds of madness in eighteenth-century France (Laurent Cartayrade) a remarkable bilingual (French and English) site, containing excerpts from the records of a legal process known as interdiction: the appointment of a guardian to look after the insane or mentally impaired. The extracts are taken from petitions, interviews and inquiries into individual cases, 'sometimes utterly banal, sometimes mysterious, sometimes tragic'
The Diary of Martha Ballard (Film Study Center, Harvard University) at the heart of this sophisticated site is the diary (of over 1400 pages) kept by Martha Ballard, a late eighteenth-century midwife and healer in Massachusetts. There is also an archive of primary sources used in the project, which can be browsed in a variety of ways including topic headings (which include: domestic life; religion; law and justice; midwifery and birth). But it's also a superb teaching resource - not only does it offer practice in reading handwriting, it also has guided exercises in such crucial historical skills as the interpretation of conflicting evidence, and an excellent section on the use of primary sources
Absolutism (Internet Modern History Sourcebook) mainly on France, a little on Spain and England
Constitutional States (Internet Modern History Sourcebook) including English Revolution, Restoration and 'Glorious' Revolution, the Netherlands, philosophy
Absolutism (WWW-Virtual Library)
The Path to Royal Absolutism (Bibliotheque Nationale de France) online exhibit tracing the political and cultural history of France from the late fifteenth to early seventeenth century; part of the 'Creating French Culture' exhibition, as is:
The Rise and Fall of Absolute Monarchy which covers the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to Enlightenment and Revolution
Thirty Years War (Stephanie Marra, WWW-VL) a useful set of resources
Thirty Years' War Resources (Google Directory)
Gunpowder Plot Society information on the plot, primary documents, links
Gunpowder Plot Online Classroom all sorts of useful resources for teaching
To Picture a Plot (Centre for Fawkesian Pursuits), examining images of the Plot ever since its happening as cultural products, changing in their significance through time
The English Revolution (Modern History Sourcebook) a good selection of resources and texts
Civil Wars of Ideas (Norton Topics) exploring politics, religion and culture in seventeenth-century England through images and extracts of contemporary texts, with an informative introduction
The World Turned Upside Down site on the 'English Revolution', very much from the perspective from 'below'; plenty of links, bibliography. Stimulating and engaging on the various radical movements (and their twentieth-century descendants)
English Civil War (E L Skip-Knox) a more conventional narrative account, from a taught course
British Civil Wars and Commonwealth () timelines, battles, biographies, links
Women's Lives in the British Civil Wars (at this site) extracts from personal narratives by a range of women, accounts of seventeenth-century war and revolution from their perspectives and in their own words
Oliver Cromwell produced by Cambridgeshire County Council to celebrate the 400th anniversary of his birth in 1599, includes biographical info, resources, 'history's verdict'
The Pamphleteer's Protestant Champion (Kevin Creed) essay on Cromwell, arguing that he was in the main a pragmatic politician; it was the print media of the time that cast him as a 'protestant savior'
Oliver Cromwell resources (Google Directory) impressive listing of Cromwell-related sites. Why should I go to all the trouble when Google has done it for me, I ask myself?
The Levellers: Libertarian Radicalism and the English Civil War (David Hoile) essay arguing that the Levellers have more in common with libertarianism than socialism
The Execution of Charles I (David Cornfield) full text of a contemporary printed account from 'The Intelligencer'
The Execution of Charles I (Frieda Blackwell and Jay Losey) a useful essay, with plenty of reference to contemporary documents
English Reformation and Civil War and Protectorate, Restoration and 'Glorious Revolution' (Doris Ostendorf) a short, useful outline of religious/political developments in sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
The Glorious Revolution of 1688 (D Wilkes and M Kramer) a fledgling site with various resources including an 'encyclopaedia' of the people involved, links, chronology covering 1685-89 and planned bibliography
The Drawn Sword (University of Aberdeen) images from the MacBean Stuart and Jacobite collection, which covers 'every aspect of the Jacobite rebellions, the causes and effects, and the personalities, royal, national and local
Enlightened Despotism (Internet Modern History Sourcebook) Russia, Austria, Prussia, Poland
Representation and Democracy in the 18th Century (Steve Muhlberger) resources for a taught course, including materials on both the American and French revolutions
The American Revolution a site to accompany an American documentary on the American Revolution: bibliography, discussions and essays, web resources (and brief notes on the programmes)
Guided readings: the American Revolution (Gilder Lehrman Institute)
American Independence (Internet Modern History Sourcebook)
American Revolution Timelines (The History Place)
Spy Letters of the American Revolution (Clements Library, University of Michigan) a 'gallery' of letters, with images, links to information about the spies and the methods used: fascinating
Recollections of an Old Soldier (Denise G Jones) electronic version of the memoir of David Parry, a soldier in the American revolutionary wars
America in Caricature 1765-1865 (Lilley Library) online exhibit of political cartoons
Charters of Freedom (NARA) the Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights online
Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution (CUNY/George Mason University collaboration) a high quality site numbering Lynn Hunt and Jack Censer among its authors; as well as articles, it includes images, texts (translated into English), maps, songs, timelines, glossary. The articles are well written, and it looks good too
French Revolution (Internet Modern History Sourcebook)
French Revolution (Stephanie Marra, WWW-VL)
The French Revolution: Apocalyptic Expectations (Norton Topics Online) focusing on the impact of the French Revolution on radical English writers rather than events in France itself
The French Revolution in British Newspapers (Alan Liu) and as for less radical English writers... a small but scintillating online archive of reactions to 'Unspeakable Events' across the Channel
French Revolutionary Pamphlets (Mark Olsen) for French readers, digitised versions of three rare pamphlets
The 1798 Irish Rebellion (Jacqueline Dana) web resources, texts, chronologies relating to the rising
The Whiskey Rebellion (Tom Hart) in Pennsylvania 1794, an early test of the new government
Early Modern Women Online (Georgianna Ziegler) a bibliography of web resources, mainly for sites relating to women writers and artists
Society for the Study of Early Modern Women an interdisciplinary network for scholars studying and teaching on just about any topic relating to early modern women
Women and power in early modern England (J L Klein) pages for a taught course, including an extensive bibliography, image gallery and links
Gender, family, household: seventeenth-century norms and controversies (Norton Topics Online) discussion and selections from seventeenth-century texts, including advice books, diaries and letters, religious rites, published tracts (such as Milton on divorce)
Huswifery (Internet Shakespeare Editions) a selection of 'how to be the ideal housewife' texts (with commentary and glossary), showing the sheer range of skills that this involved, from medicine to marketing
The Housewife's Rich Cabinet (Folger Library) illustrated commentary from an exhibition of 90 books and manuscripts of the 16th through the 18th century
Order in the sexes (Internet Shakespeare Editions) extracts on gender relations
Impudent women: carnival and gender in early modern culture (Kate Chedgzoy) wide-ranging essay on the 'carnivalesque' and its gendered meanings
The Querelle des Femmes (University of Arizona) online versions of the early seventeenth-century texts surrounding the 'woman controversy', including The Arraignment of Lewd Women (1615) and responses to it and the two pamphlets of 1620, Hic Mulier and Haec Vir
Radical women in the English Revolution (Modern History Sourcebook) extracts from the Women's petition (1649) and Mary Cary, The New Jerusalem's Glory (1656)
'Kiss me with the kisses of his lips': blurred masculinity in early modern spirituality (Tom Webster) an e-seminar paper at the Winthrop Papers web site
Bridget Cooke and the art of godly female self-advancement (Michael Winship) Winthrop Papers e-seminar
Women and Methodism Women and the Wesleys
British Quaker Women (Tina Helfrich) covering the activities and writings of women in the Quaker movement from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries
Homosexuality in Eighteenth-century England (Rictor Norton) an online sourcebook (with essay overview), includes trial reports, newspaper accounts etc with short comments/introductions, mainly from London
Early Modern Kinship: sexualities, materialities, localities website for a conference held in London, March 2001
Explorations and Encounters
The Early Modern World (Internet Modern History Sourcebook) sections on the early modern world system, mercantile capitalism, trade and the 'new economy'
Columbus and the Age of Discovery (Millersville, Pennsylvania) searchable database of articles etc relating to 'encounter themes, as well as links to other sites
The European Voyages of Discovery (Department of History, University of Calgary) an online tutorial focusing on the Portugese and Spanish explorations of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in Africa, America and Asia
Discoverers' Web (Andre Engels) all kinds of web materials on voyages of discovery, exploration and explorers
Renaissance Exploration and Trade (Annenberg/CPB Project) part of an on-line exhibit on the Renaissance
Renaissance Exploration, Travel, and the World outside Europe (Norton Topics Online)
Cultural Readings: Colonization and Print in the Americas (University of Pennsylvania Library) online exhibition, exploring Europeans' attempts 'to "read" native cultures of the Americas' (and vice versa); six thematic sections, including 'promotion and possession', 'viewers and the viewed', 'colonial fictions, colonial histories'
Imagining Early Modern Worlds (Grant Williams) material for a course exploring 'some of the worlds discovered by early modernity', including images and reading
History of the Atlantic World 1500-1800 an international seminar at Harvard University (directed by Bernard Bailyn): seminar topics have included 'the movement of peoples' and 'cultural encounters', with abstracts of papers online, an Atlantic History discussion list at H-Net and an online newsletter, Atlantic Perspectives
Atlantic World Roundtable AHA roundtable discussion (January 2000); summary of the panel; abstracts; links to course syllabi
1492: An Ongoing Voyage (Library of Congress) an exhibit looking at 'the rich mixture of societies' in five areas just before the arrival of Europeans, and at the subsequent contacts between them and the new arrivals from 1492-1600. Divided into six sections, including the life and myths of Columbus, 'inventing America', 'Europe claims America'
Discovery, Explorations and the 'New World' (Stephanie Marra) list of resources from the WWW-Virtual Library
Founding the American Colonies (The TimePage) basic information on the founding of the '13 Originals'
Some representations of America and their diffusion in Elizabethan England (Catherine Armstrong) online article that 'aims to refute the claim by historian Howard Mumford Jones that the relationship between Elizabethans and the New World was characterised by fear', examining texts that presented America and Americans in a positive way, to encourage English exploration and settlement
Life and Times of Henry Hudson (Ian Chadwick) material about this early seventeenth-century English explorer and his obsessive search for the northern passage, which was abruptly terminated in 1611 when his crew mutinied
La Salle Shipwreck Project (Texas Historical Commission) fascinating web site for the project to excavate the Belle, the wrecked ship of Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle (1643-87). As well as the many photos chronicling the excavation work, there are materials relating to La Salle's ill-fated attempt to establish a French colony in Texas
The Eighteenth-century Maritime World (Jane Samson) lecture notes and links
The Canadian Iroquois and the Seven Years' War (D Peter McLeod) texts of a number of papers/articles by the site author
Captain James Cook (Michael Dickinson) site on the life, voyages and times of Captain Cook; timelines for the voyages, maps etc
The George Raper collection (National Library of Australia) in 1787 the 17-year-old George Raper joined the crew of HMS Sirius; he made a record of the voyage that followed, before the ship was lost off Norfolk Island
Maps, images and texts
Mapping Early Modern Worlds (Folger Library) developments in mapping: from the cosmos, the world, the nation, down to manorial boundaries
The maps of exploration (University of Virginia) online exhibition of early modern European maps of north America; commentary and digitised images, and related reading and online resources
Discovery and Exploration (American Memory) maps covering the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries, documenting the processes of 'discovery' from coast to interior
The cartographic gaze in Elizabethan accounts of the New World (Mark Koch) an article from the online journal Early Modern Literary Studies (Literature & Geography special issue)
The Cartographic Creation of New England (Osher Map Library) 'An exhibition of early maps that chronicles the effects of European exploration and settlement in north-eastern North America in creating a spatial concept called "New England."'
Decades of the New World (Richard Eden, 1555) extracts from a sixteenth-century English merchant's experience of West Africa (from the website for the anthology Reading about the World, vol. 2, which contains a number of extracts taken from the book)
On Cannibals (Michel Montaigne, 1580) an early example of romanticisation of 'the noble savage' (from Reading about the World)
Sir Joseph Banks' papers (State Library of New South Wales) the wide-ranging papers of an eighteenth-century naturalist, traveller, correspondent and royal adviser, who travelled with Cook on The Endeavour and was involved in the ill-fated expedition of The Bounty (digitised images, fully indexed)
Anthology of the Discovery of Australia (Rainer Radok) from the first European contacts, by the Dutch in the seventeenth century, extracts from their accounts of what they found
Nations
Colonial America (Diana Laulainen-Schein) a page for a 'mock' taught course; material on Spanish, British and French colonial America, West Indies, native American, African-Americans, women, etc. Plenty of useful links and texts
Tunisia in the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries (Department of History, University of Melbourne) fledgling site of resources for students
Early Modern India and World History (John Richards) essay attempting to 'place India (or South Asia) within its own context in the early modern world'
Early modern Japan (Robert Y Eng) part of a larger set of resources on the history of Japan
Re-thinking eighteenth-century China (EH.Net) a forum debating and questioning the conventional images of eighteenth-century China
The Dutch Golden Age (N De Bruin) a promising site which aims to be 'a unique research and teaching instrument for Dutch early modern history', currently has sections on primary and secondary texts, bibliographical resources, research projects
Slavery
The Origins and Nature of New World Slavery (Gilda Lehrmann Institute) short 'guided readings' on a set of related topics, from the beginnings and justifications for slavery in the Americas through to abolition
The Rise and Fall of Atlantic Slavery (Diana Paton) taught course materials; include reading list and lecture and film handouts
Chronology on the history of slavery (Eddie Becker)
Pictorial Images of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (Jerome Handler and Michael Tuite) a searchable database of images; from African societies to New World auctions, as well as maps, and photos of a recent archaeological dig of a West Indies plantation
Slavery and the Slave Trade in Britain (Norton Topics Online) from early tensions (Locke espoused natural liberty but invested in the slave trade) to abolition, as well as horrifying accounts of conditions on board slave ships: a powerful collection of extracts
Olaudah Equiano (Brycchan Carey) pages on the freed slave who wrote a famous autobiography of his experiences. Also at the site: Ignatius Sancho; Quobna Ottabah Cugoano; British Abolitionists; General slavery, abolition and emancipation resources. An indispensable site
Excerpts from slave narratives (Steven Mintz) including enslavement, the middle passage, arrival, conditions of life, childhood, family
Slavery Links (Google Directory)
Early Modern Resources www.earlymodernweb.org.uk
This page last updated 14 April 2003 by Sharon Howard
E-mail: sharon@earlymodernweb.org.uk