LibGuides: History: Global South

Selected Journals

Journal of Global South Studies
South Asian History and Culture
Journal of Caribbean History
African Journal of History and Culture
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A Guide to Decolonised Searching

Decolonising Literature Searching
by John Barbrook Last Updated Sep 25, 2024 1812 views this year

This Library Guide contains advice on how to better surface resources on the Global South.

Glocal Collection

The Glocal Collection is a physical collection curated in collaboration with Lancaster Black History Group to support community research through the Slavery Family Trees Project. It is both local and global in scope, and includes resources which show Lancashire’s connections to Atlantic Slavery, encouraging us to discover more about the histories of the places across the globe that Lancaster became connected to through its ties to the wider ‘slavery business’.

Slavery Unseen

The Gun, the Ship, and the Pen

Surviving Slavery in the British Caribbean

Empire of Cotton: A New History of Global Capitalism

Slavery in the Age of Memory

Resource Spotlight

Africa Commons This link opens in a new window
An online resource to help digitize, disseminate and discover African cultural materials.
Aims of Africa Commons: to enable Africa easily to control, digitize, and disseminate its archival sources - those within Africa and items residing internationally. Also to save and preserve at-risk content
History and Culture
Africa Commons: History and Culture is a comprehensive database for searching and discovering African materials from 1500 to today. It indexes African organizations, collections, and documents from archives around the world. Find books, magazines, newspapers, historical journals, government documents, oral history, photographs, art, music, videos, and more.
URL: https://africacommons.net/modules/history-and-culture/

Black South African Magazines
Black South African Magazines is the first and only digital collection of magazines created for Black audiences in Africa from 1937 to 1973. Find over 50,000 pages of extremely rare, yet historically significant magazines, written for Black African audiences. Coverage includes Drum, Zonk!, The Townships Housewife, Hi-Note, and others.
URL: https://africacommons.net/modules/black-south-african-magazines/

Southern African Films and Documentaries
With content spanning the 1900s to present, Southern African Films and Documentaries offers—for the first time—streaming access to more than a century of African history, politics, and culture. Propaganda films from South Africa’s Information Service and newsreels from African Mirror, showing life under apartheid and major historical events as they unfolded (Rand rebellion, Africa during WWII, mining industry efforts, the Soweto uprising, the Rhodesian Bush War, and other topics). Documentaries and interviews (e.g., unedited interviews of Winnie Mandela and Oliver Tambo), sociopolitical documentary films such as Sharpeville Massacre; Side by Side: Women Against Aids in Zimbabwe; We are Marching to Pretoria, Voices of Robben Island, and Black Beulahs. Feature films, such as African Jim from 1949, South Africa’s first feature film, showing a picture of vibrant township culture before apartheid.
URL: https://africacommons.net/modules/southern-african-films-and-documentaries/

Policy Commons This link opens in a new window
Research reports, working papers, policy briefs, data sources, and other media from think tanks, agencies, governments and cities, including unique content from the Global South. Search by region or country, across hundreds of topics including local history, government policy, climate, trade, and much more.
Global Think Tanks
Global Think Tanks is a living database of research produced by the world’s leading policy experts, think tanks, research centers, IGOs, and NGOs. Access to more than 30 million pages of curated, high quality policy reports, briefs, analyses, working papers, and datasets from 10,000 policy organizations. Global Think Tanks covers many disciplines—agriculture, energy, pharmaceuticals, diversity, crime, librarianship, and much more.
URL: https://policycommons.net/modules/global-think-tanks/

North American City Reports
North American City Reports preserves the full text of surveys, budgets, statistical records, case studies, planning documents, training manuals, policy guidelines, reports, and news from the five hundred largest cities in North America. It also includes select materials from hundreds of related agencies and non-governmental organizations. With more than 200,000 documents, it provides a new and typically unmined source for observing policy in action.
URL: https://policycommons.net/modules/north-american-city-reports/

Public Health & Social Care
Public Health and Social Care brings together critical research, pilot projects, real-world evaluations, newsletters, and collaborative projects from frontline health providers, hospital systems, foundations, patient groups, practitioner communities, governments, think tanks, and other organizations. Public Health and Social Care integrates this wealth of information into a single, high-functionality resource.
URL: https://policycommons.net/modules/public-health-and-social-care/

World Cities
World Cities preserves the full text of surveys, budgets, statistical records, case studies, planning documents, training manuals, policy guidelines, reports, and news from the world’s top 100 cities by population, capital cities with populations greater than 20,000 people, major cities in the Global South, and cities with particular research importance, such as those dealing with climate change, political instability, or rapid growth.
URL: https://policycommons.net/modules/world-cities/

South Asia Open Archives (SAOA) This link opens in a new window
SAOA is a rich and growing collection of historical and contemporary sources in the arts, humanities and social sciences from and about South Asia. Collections include: Caste & social structure; Literature; Social & economic history; Women & gender.

Recommended Resources

For more information about what is contained in the resources below, please click on the (i) symbol:

Colonial Caribbean Module 1 : Settlement, Slavery, and Empire, 1624-1832. This link opens in a new window This digital resouce covers three centuries of Caribbean history. Drawn from the extensive files of the British Colonial Office, this is an essential resource for all students and researchers of the Caribbean and British colonial rule.
This first module stretches from the turbulent years of early British settlement to the rise of the abolition movement, amongst the fierce rivalries with the Spanish, Danish and French powers in the Caribbean region. Settlement, Slavery, and Empire, 1624-1832 documents the rise of absentee landlords, and traces the rise and decline of the slave trade, from the regular transportation of enslaved peoples through trade and shipping, to the rise of the abolition movement.
Decolonization: Politics and Independence in Former Colonial and Commonwealth Territories This link opens in a new window
The development of party politics, trade unions and other local and national movements in former colonies and Commonwealth nations across Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Australasia and the Americas took many different forms. This archive allows insight into the variety of systems and modes of national and international political thought that became prominent in the twentieth century, including socialism and communism, anti-imperialism, regional independence movements, trade unionism, student activism, Pan-Africanism and many modes of constitutional democracy.
East India Company Archives This link opens in a new window This is a digital archive of the India Office Records on the East India Company from its inception until it dissolution [1599-1947].
Containing royal charters, correspondence, trading diaries, minutes of council meetings and reports of expeditions, among other document types, this resource charts the history of British trade and rule in the Indian subcontinent and beyond from 1599 to 1947.
Royal Geographical Society Archives This link opens in a new window The Society’s archive contains vast collections of documents, maps, photographs, expedition reports, manuscript materials and books, and span 500 years of geography, travel and exploration.
Wiley Digital Archives has partnered with RGS-IBG to digitise and bring a large part of this world-class collection to researchers around the world. The majority of content in the Wiley Digital Archive collection presents primary source materials from new scanning that have never been published before and hitherto have only been accessible by visiting the physical archive.

The Archive includes Maps, Atlases, Charts and Plans; Expedition Reports; Fieldnotes, Correspondence and Diaries; Grey Literature; Photographs, Artwork and Illustrations; Journal Manuscripts; Photographs; Proceedings, Lectures, and Ephemera. The collection spans a wide variety of interdisciplinary research areas, and supports educational needs in Anthropology, Area Studies; Cartography and Visualizations, Colonial, Post-Colonial & Decolonisation Studies; Development Studies; Environmental Degradation; Historical & Cultural Geography; Historical Sociology; Human Geography; Identity, Gender & Ethnic Studies; Geology; International Relations; Trade and Commerce, and Law and Policy relating to Colonization.
Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice This link opens in a new window Designed for both teaching and research, this resource brings together documents and collections from libraries and archives across the Atlantic world covering an extensive time period from 1490. Close attention has been given to the varieties of slavery, the legacy of slavery, the social justice perspective and the continued existence of slavery today.
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.
Slavery and Anti-Slavery This link opens in a new window Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive is devoted to the study and understanding of the history of slavery in America and the rest of the world from the 17th century to the late 19th century. It contains cross-searchable pages sourced from books, pamphlets, newspapers, periodicals, legal documents, court records, monographs, manuscripts, and maps from many different countries covering the history of the slave trade.
Part I: Debates over Slavery and Abolition sheds light on the abolitionist movement, the conflicts within it, the anti- and pro-slavery arguments of the period, and the debates on the subject of colonization. It explores all facets of the controversial topic, with a focus on economic, gender, legal, religious, and government issues.

Part II: Slave Trade in the Atlantic World charts the inception of slavery in Africa and its rise as perpetuated on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, placing particular emphasis on the Caribbean, Latin America, and United States. More international in scope than Part I, this collection was developed by an international editorial board with scholars specializing in North American, European, African, and Latin American/Caribbean aspects of the slave trade.

Part III: The Institution of Slavery expands the depth of coverage of the topic. Part III explores, in vivid detail, the inner workings of slavery from 1492 to 1888. Through legal documents, plantation records, first-person accounts, newspapers, government records, and other primary sources, this collection reveals how enslaved people struggled against the institution. These rare works explore slavery as a legal and labor system, the relationship between slavery and religion, freed slaves, the Shong Masacre, the Dememara insurrection, and many other aspects and events.

Part IV: Age of Emancipation includes numerous rare documents related to emancipation in the United States, as well as Latin America and the Caribbean. This collection supports the study of many areas, including activities of the federal government in dealing with former slaves and the Freedmen's Bureau, views of political parties and postwar problems with the South, documents of the British and French government on the slave trade, reports from the West Indies and Africa, and other topics.
State Papers Online Colonial: Asia Part I - Far East Digital Archive This link opens in a new window These documents record Britain's administration and governance of countries under Britain’s colonial rule, their international relations across the period, and the changing demographics and daily life of their inhabitants. Types of documents: original correspondence, letter/entry books of incoming and outgoing letters, confidential print, maps, photographs
Date span: 1570-1967
Types of documents: original correspondence, letter/entry books of incoming and outgoing letters, confidential print, maps, photographs
Struggles For Freedom: Southern Africa This link opens in a new window The liberation of Southern Africa and the dismantling of the Apartheid regime was one of the major political developments of the 20th century, with far-reaching consequences for people throughout Africa and around the globe. This collection focuses on the complex and varied liberation struggles in the region, with an emphasis on Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. It brings together materials from various archives and libraries throughout the world documenting colonial rule, dispersion of exiles, international intervention, and the worldwide networks that supported successive generations of resistance within the region

Resource spotlight: Global Commodities

The Global Commodities collection provides a vast range of visual, manuscript and printed materials sourced from over twenty key libraries and more than a dozen companies and trade organisations around the world. These original sources will help scholars to explore the history of fifteen major commodities and to examine the ways that these have changed the world.

Global Commodities This link opens in a new window
This is a truly global resource documenting the trade in 15 commodities around the world from c1500 to the present day.
The 15 major commodities are: chocolate, coffee, cotton, fur, opium, oil, porcelain, silver and gold, spices, tea, sugar, tea, timber, tobacco, wheat, and wine and spitirts.