We are delighted to report that Oxford researchers now have access to Africa and the New Imperialism.

This Adam Matthew Digital resource documents the period of rapid colonial expansion by European powers across the African continent during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Many documents come from the Bodleian Libraries collections, esp. the Papers of Frederick Dealtry Lugard, Baron Lugard of Abinger.

As well as digitised archives, diaries, logbooks, minutes, official records, petitions, reports, telegrams, and more, the resource has rich visual resources, such as maps, photographs, artwork, and film.

[From the Adam Matthew Digital: Nature and Scope]
From the accounts of missionaries and European explorers navigating the interior of the continent in the early nineteenth century; to the rise in European desire for increased power, empire and wealth culminating in the Berlin Conference 1885-1886; to the subsequent power struggles, negotiations and conflicts that raged across the continent at the turn of the twentieth century, the documents within Africa and the New Imperialism charts Africa’s encounters with European imperialist regimes and their impact on the lives of peoples across the continent.

Some collection highlights:

• Diaries, journals and sketch books from key figures including David Livingstone, John Kirk and James Augustus Grant, whose sketchbooks from his Nile expedition are illustrated with watercolours of landscapes and peoples he encountered.
• The journals of British soldier Major General Charles Gordon, which includes his final journal written before the fall of Khartoum to the Mahdist forces led by Muhammad Ahmad of Sudan.
• Correspondence from Roger Casement and the resulting Casement Report which investigated, and confirmed, the atrocities committed in the Congo Free State under King Leopold II.
• British Foreign Office files for the Berlin Conference, the event which ignited the spark of late-nineteenth century European imperialist efforts across Africa, including papers relating to European intervention in the Congo, the involvement of Belgium and Germany, and the Malet papers which include the private correspondence of Sir Edward Baldwin Malet who was the British Ambassador to the German court, 1884-1895.
• The papers, photographs and correspondence of Frederick Lugard, a British soldier and administrator in Africa, covering British involvement in East Africa and West Africa from the 1870s to the early twentieth century. These are along with the papers of journalist and colonial commentator, Flora Shaw, Lugard’s wife.
• Correspondence, journals and reports from French explorer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza that provide insight into his expeditions to the Congo Basin; the establishment of the French Congo; de Brazza’s administration of the French Congo as Commissioner General; and de Brazza’s 1904 investigation into injustice, forced labour and brutality within the French Congo.
• London Missionary Society correspondence from Central Africa and Matabeleland, including first-hand accounts of audiences with King Lobengula of the Ndebele people and the activities of the British South Africa Company controlled by Cecil Rhodes.

Also of interest:

Finding critical readings on colonial history:

• Africa bibliography [Oxford subscription]
• Bibliography of British and Irish History [Oxford subscription]
• Historical Abstracts [Oxford subscription]

Key source databases

• Colonial Africa in Official Statistics, 1821-1953 [Oxford subscription]
• Confidential Print: Africa, 1834-1966 [Oxford subscription]
• European Colonialism in the Early 20th Century [Oxford subscription]
• Struggles for Freedom: Southern Africa [Oxford subscription]
• African Online Digital Library
• DLIR Digital Archive
• One More Voice: Lost Voices from the British Empire’s Archives

See Databases A-Z for more and our LibGuides on African newspapers.