Category: Area Studies, Letters
Results
The Caribbean Documents Collection is comprised of correspondence and original financial and legal documents from the various islands of Antigua, Haiti, Jamaica, St. Kitts, St. Christopher, Trinidad and Tobago from the 16th to the 19th century. The collection consists of individually acquired items such as letters narrating travelers' impressions but also groupings of transactional papers from plantations and slave registers. Selected items from the Caribbean Documents Collection are digitized and available online.
Historical Context The Visions collection includes the written and photographed experiences of Europeans and Americans who traveled to Southeast Asia during the period of imperialism. The peoples of Southeast Asia experienced waves of colonization beginning in 1511 when the Portuguese took Melaka, a strategic and thriving port city on the Malay Peninsula. The Spanish established a colony in the Philippines which they ruled from the 1560s until 1899 when the United States ousted the Spanish and governed the colony until Philippine independence in 1946. The Dutch gradually conquered the areas known today as Indonesia beginning in 1596 and ending after WWII.
Early documents relating to events of the past make essential - and fascinating - reading for anyone interested in Scottish history. But these primary sources are often not readily accessible.
Fortunately, many of these rare documents have been published by historical clubs and societies, and are available at the National Library of Scotland.
