Guides: HIST 327: Age of the American Revolution: Home

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U.S. History
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American National Biography
Includes over 19,000 biographies of significant, influential, or notorious figures from American history written by prominent scholars.

Find Secondary Sources

Find books

Try searching the Library Catalogue for useful subject headings such as:

su: United States History Revolution, 1775-1783
su: France History Revolution, 1789-1799
su: Haiti History Revolution, 1791-1804

Library Catalogue

Find peer-reviewed articles

America: History and Life
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Provides historical coverage of the United States and Canada from prehistory to the present. Includes information abstracted from over 2,000 journals published worldwide.
Historical Abstracts (EBSCO)
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This database contains references to journal articles, book reviews and some dissertations about the history of all parts of the world from 1450 on, excluding Canada and the United States. This will be your best bet to search for articles on the Haitian and French Revolutions.

Find Primary Sources

Newspapers & Periodicals

America's Historical Newspapers (Readex)
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Over a thousand U.S. historical newspapers published between 1690 and 1922, including titles from all 50 states.
American Periodicals (ProQuest)
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Periodicals published between 1740 and 1940, including special interest and general magazines, literary and professional journals, children's and women's magazines and many other historically-significant periodicals. - Library can facilitate negotiating text-mining rights for this database for McGill faculty and students wishing to acquire the rights with their own research funds. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub
ProQuest Historical Newspapers
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Search across all ProQuest Historical Newspapers databases.

ProQuest Historical Newspapers: New York Collection
Includes several 18th- and 19th-century newspapers published in the colony and state of New York.

British Library Newspapers (Gale)
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Full-text database containing digitized regional and local newspapers published in Britain between the mid-eighteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. The content of this database is available for text-mining through Gale Digital Scholar Lab
Access to parts I-V, not part VI- Ireland, 1797-1950.

Primary Source Databases & Collections

Sabin Americana 1500-1926 (Gale)
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Based on the original Bibliotheca Americana bibliography of works by Joseph Sabin. this online collection contains books, pamphlets, serials and other works about the Americas, from the time of their discovery to the early 1900s. The content of this database is available for text-mining through Gale Digital Scholar Lab
Colonial America (Adam Matthew)
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Makes available all 1,450 volumes of the CO 5 series from The National Archives, UK, covering the period 1606 to 1822. CO 5 consists of the original correspondence between the British government and the governments of the American colonies, making it a uniquely rich resource for all historians of the period.
Text mining is permitted, but certain conditions apply. Please contact Digital Scholarship Hub

Archive of Early American Images
A database of graphic representations of the colonial Americas, from Hudson Bay to Tierra del Fuego, drawn entirely from primary sources printed or created between 1492 and ca. 1825. Created by the John Carter Brown Library, Brown University.

Early American imprints. Series 1, Evans (1639-1800) (Readex)
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Includes books, pamphlets, and broadsides published in America in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Early Encounters in North America (Alexander Street Press)
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Contains published and unpublished items that document the relationships among peoples in North America from 1534 to 1850. The collection focuses on personal accounts and provides unique perspectives from all of the protagonists, including traders, slaves, missionaries, explorers, soldiers, native peoples, and officials, both men and women.
Proquest History Vault
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The subcollection Southern Life, Slavery, and the Civil War consists of several modules:
-Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Law and Order in the 19th Century (1636-1880)
-Slavery and the Law (1775-1867)
Slavery and the Law features petitions on race, slavery, and free blacks that were submitted to state legislatures and county courthouses between 1775 and 1867.
-Slavery in Antebellum Southern Industries (1700-1896)
-Southern Life and African American History, 1775-1915, Plantations Records (4 parts)
Southern Plantation Records document the far-reaching impact of plantations on both the American South and the nation. Plantation records are both business records and personal papers because the plantation was both the business and the home for plantation owners.
Includes multiple sub-collections in broad subject areas like Civil Rights; Southern Life, Slavery, and the Civil War; American Indians and the American West; American Politics and Society; International Relations and Military Conflicts; Women's Studies; and Workers and Labor Unions
Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice, 1490-2007 (Adam Matthew)
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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.
North American Women's Letters and Diaries (Alexander Street Press)
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A collection of letters and diaries written by over 1,300 women who lived in North America from the 17th to the 20th century.

French National Archives
Access to 24,000 online finding aids and 8 million digitized items. Interface available in English, French, and Spanish.
French Archives Nationales d'Outre Mer
Service à compétence nationale installé à Aix-en-Provence depuis 1966, les Archives nationales d’outre-mer (ANOM) ont pour mission la conservation, la communication et la collecte des archives de l’expansion coloniale française.
John Carter Brown Library: French Collection
The French literature collection of the John Carter Brown Library is of particular interest to those interested in political, social, and intellectual history and in the literature of travel. In addition to accounts by writers such as Cartier, Champlain, Thevet, Hennepin, and Tonti, the collection is strong in translations of French works in other languages. Semi-legendary and imaginary voyages hold particular interest. The library also holds a substantial collection of laws, decrees, and proclamations relating to France’s American possessions.
Archives Nationales d'Haïti
From the Digital Library of the Caribbean.
John Carter Brown Library: Haiti Collection
The John Carter Brown Library holds one of the world's great collections relating to Haiti. Our rare books, maps and newspapers tell the story of the founding of the French colony of Saint Domingue (once the most lucrative colony in the Americas), its demise through the Haitian Revolution (the world's only successful slave revolution) and the founding of Haiti in its place.

Citations

History as a discipline uses the Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition) for citations, and usually the Notes-Bibliography form. This requires creating properly formatted footnotes footnotes and a Bibliography for your assignments. Resources to understand the Chicago style of citations are included below.

The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th Edition
Publication Date: 2017
There is a copy of the current Chicago Manual of Style available for reference at the McLennan Service Desk (first floor).
A Manual for Writers of Research Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, Ninth Edition by Kate L. Turabian
Call Number: LB2369 T8 2018
Publication Date: 2018
A guide to Chicago Manual of Style with more information on hard-to-cite or unusual sources than the original manual.

Guides

Chicago Manual of Style Citation Quick Guide
McGill Library Citation Subject Guide
Under "citation styles by subject", select "History" for more resources on Chicago style.

Library Support

Chicago Workshops
McGill Librarians offer two virtual Chicago Citation Style workshops per term. Follow this link to find and register for upcoming workshops!
Citation Management
Attend a workshop to learn how to use Zotero or EndNote, useful citation management systems. Zotero is highly recommended for History students!

Liaison Librarian

Kristen Howard

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Subjects: Classical studies, History, Indigenous studies, Religious studies

McGill University Collections Centre

Books are on the move from McLennan Redpath in Winter 2024!

Check on the progress of the move of the McLennan-Redpath Libraries' circulating collection at the Collections Centre website.