Early Caribbean History

Consider the following search terms or formulations for use in Quick Search and/or QuickSearch Advanced Search. 

If using Advance Search to search with subject headings, go to Advance search--> from the drop-down menu on the left, change Any Field to "Subject". Then click "Sources" to limit your search to primary sources, then you can try these headings:

• Caribbean
• slave trade-- history sources
• slavery 
• slave trade -- Africa (or brazil, cuba, etc)-- history sources

You might combine these with the following subject headings for locating primary sources specifically: 

• Other subject keywords also indicate primary source: 
• Archives*
• Correspondence*
• Diaries*
• Early works to 1800
• Facsimilies
• Notebooks, sketchbooks, etc.
• Pamphlets
• Personal narratives (used in relation to specific events only) 
• Songs and music
• Sources 
• Speeches, addresses, etc.*
• Treaties

Below is a list of printed books and materials that should contain primary documents related to Caribbean history. Most of these can be found in Alexander Library stacks. Otherwise, they can be ordered to Alexander Library circulation desk for you to checkout! 

• Conrad RE. Children of God’s Fire : A Documentary History of Black Slavery in Brazil. Princeton University Press; 1983.
• Africa and the West : a documentary history from the slave trade to independence / William H. Worger, Nancy L. Clark, and Edward A. Alpers. Phoenix, Ariz. : Oryx Press, 2001. ALEXANDER STACKS, CARR REF DT353.5.E9A34 2001
• Africans abroad : a documentary history of the Black Diaspora in Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean during the age of slavery / Graham W. Irwin. New York : Columbia University Press, 1977. ALEXANDER, DOUGLASS and CARR STACKS HT861.A4
• Extending the frontiers : essays on the new transatlantic slave trade database / edited by David Eltis and David Richardson. New Haven : Yale University Press, c2008. ALEXANDER STACKS HT1321.E98 2008
• Caribbean slavery in the Atlantic world : a student reader / [editors], Verene A. Shepherd, Hilary McD. Beckles. Rev. and expanded ed. Kingston, Jamaica : Ian Randle ; Oxford : James Currey ; Princeton, NJ : M. Weiner, 2000. ALEXANDER STACKS HT1071.C343 2000
• Colonial Latin America : a documentary history / edited by Kenneth Mills, William B. Taylor, and Sandra Lauderdale Graham. Wilmington, Del. : Scholarly Resources, c2002. CAMDEN STACKS F1412.C642 2002
• Eyewitness accounts of slavery in the Danish West Indies : also graphic tales of other slave happenings on ships and plantations / Isidore Paiewonsky. New York : Fordham University Press, 1989, c1987. DANA NEWARK HT1119.V6P34 1989
• Historia de la esclavitud en Puerto Rico : (información y documentos) / Cayetano Coll y Toste ; compilación de Isabel Cuchí Coll. 3. ed. San Juan, Puerto Rico : Litografía Metropolitana, 1977. ALEXANDER and CARR STACKS HT1086.C64
• Libète : a Haiti anthology / Charles Arthur and Michael Dash (eds). Princeton, NJ : Markus Wiener Publishers ; London : Latin America Bureau, 1999. ALEXANDER STACKS F1921.L53 1999
• New Iberian world : a documentary history of the discovery and settlement of Latin America to the early 17th century / edited, with commentaries, by John H. Parry and Robert G. Keith ; with the assistance of Michael Jimenez. 4 vols.  New York : Times Books : Hector & Rose, 1984. ALEXANDER STACKS F1411.I18 1984
• Reales asientos y licencias para la introducción de esclavos negros a la América Española, 1676-1789. Ed. fascimilar. Windsor [Ontario, Canada] ; México : Rolston-Bain, 1985. ALEXANDER STACKS HT1052.5.R4 1985
• Slavery and abolition of the slave trade, 1700-1890 [microform] : (manuscript collection). [Wilmington, DE] : Scholarly Resources Inc., [1995] ALEXANDER M-FILM 2928
• Voices of the enslaved in nineteenth-century Cuba : a documentary history / Gloria García Rodríguez ; translated by Nancy L. Westrate ; foreword by Ada Ferrer. Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, c2011. ALEXANDER STACKS HT1076.G3713 2011
• West Indian (Haiti) collection [microform] : 1716-1817 and 1857. Wilmington, Del. : Distributed on microfilm by Scholarly Resources Inc., 1996. ALEXANDER M-FILM 2881
  • Reproduces 120 manuscripts that are chiefly governmental and military documents concerning Toussaint Louverture, Henri Christophe, and Napoleon Bonaparte, dating from 1716 to 1817.