Curated OER
Virginia Tobacco Plantation
Four accounts of the complex power relationships between slaves and slave holders within English colonies in Barbados, Virginia and Pennsylvania, as well as documents about slave revolts and anti-slavery agitation.
Yale University
Yale Law School: Resolutions of the Continental Congress, 1765
Contains the primary text of the resolutions against the Stamp Act sent to King George III.
Nagoya University (Japan)
Nagoya University: British Authors on the Web
An excellent and detailed site which lists over 750 British authors. The site provides links to more information about each author and is categorized by alphabet and time period. Some links may no longer work in the archived URL.
Digital History
Digital History: Explorations: Indentured Servitude and Slavery
South of New England, half of all immigrants arrived in various forms of unfreedom: as indentured servants, apprentices, tenants, convicts, or slaves. George Washington's namesake--a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses named George...
Blackdog Media
Classic Reader: The Tempest by William Shakespeare
This is the full text of the five-act play The Tempest by William Shakespeare including a list of characters and an epilogue.
Organization for Community Networks
Academy Curricular Exchange: A Practical Experiment in Colonization
A detailed lesson plan depicting life in the early American colonies.
Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation
History Is Fun: Life at Jamestown [Pdf]
A 16-page history of the establishment and growth of the colony of Jamestown. Covers the early challenges, the starving time, the Virginia Company, the conflict with Powhatan, the beginnings of the tobacco economy, the introduction of...
PBS
Pbs Learning Media: Primary Source Set: Dutch New Netherland
This collection uses primary sources to explore the Dutch colony of New Netherland.
University of Virginia
University of Virginia: A View of the Rights of British America
Before writing the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson made his views known through "A Summary View of the Rights of British America" and other essays. This essay discusses the historical roots of independence and inalienable...
University of Pennsylvania
Penn Library: Walum Olum Ii
Side-by-side English translation of The Walam Olum, which purports to be a pictographic record of the Delaware or Lenni Lenape Indians.
University of Pennsylvania
Penn Library: Walum Olum I
The Walam Olum purports to be a pictographic record of the Delaware or Lenni Lenape Indians. Linked to second page showing the side-by-side pictographs and English translation rendered in 1833.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Go Ahead, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
A Spanish, an English, and a French account of the enormous challenges in maintaining a colonial presence in North America and of the potential national loss-of pride, wealth, and possibility for expansion-if nations abandoned these...
Digital History
Digital History: The French and Indian War [Pdf]
Read about George Washington's role in the beginning of the French and Indian War, which started in the wilderness of the English colonies and spread to Europe. Was this war a major cause of the American Revolution? Students are asked to...
University of Groningen
American History: Outlines: The Revolution Begins
General Thomas Gage, an amiable English gentleman with an American-born wife, commanded the garrison at Boston, where political activity had almost wholly replaced trade. Gage's main duty in the colonies had been to enforce the Coercive...
University of Illinois
University of Illinois: Early Trade With China: Early American Trade Routes to China [Pdf]
Once the colonies gained their independence, American ships began to search the oceansfor markets to replace the British colonial markets from which they were now excluded (theWest Indies) or in which they were subjected to heavy tax...
University of Illinois
University of Illinois: Early American Trade With China: Europe's Economic Tradition [Pdf]
Most well-educated American colonists (including early American leaders like Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Benjamin Franklin) were familiar with the writings andideas of European scholars, so it makes sense that Americans came to...
Independence Hall Association
U.s. History: Britain in the New World: Jamestown Settlement
Jamestown, although not a financial sucess, was the first succesful English colony in North America. Find out how the colony was financed, what the first colonists hoped to find, how the colony was governed, and the hardships that were...
Internet History Sourcebooks Project
Fordham University: Modern History Sourcebook: Program for Communist of Indochina, 1930
This English translation of Ho Chi Minh's plan for the Communist Party of Indochina in 1930 provides a blueprint for his goal of the communist overthrow of the French colonial regime in Vietnam.
CommonLit
Common Lit: Chief Powhatan's Address to Captain John Smith (1609)
The Powhatan are Native American people from Virginia who share an Algonquian language. In 1607, the Jamestown settlement in the Virginia colony became the first permanent English settlement in the Americas. At the initial arrival of the...
National Women’s History Museum
National Women's History Museum: Mary Musgrove
Mary Musgrove become a negotiator between English and Native American communities and played an important role in the development of Colonial Georgia.
Other
Uwo: Early Writing in Canada Susannah Moodie
These are excerpts from Susannah Moodie's book 'Roughing it in the Bush'.
Other
Athabasca University: Centre for Language and Literature: Susanna Moodie
A biograhpy about Susanna Moodie, with information on her marriage and family life, emigration to Canada, and early publications. Read about her best-known book, "Roughing it in the Bush," and her latter works.
National Humanities Center
National Humanities Center: Toolbox Library: Enslaved Peoples, American Beginnings: 1492 1690
Two Spanish accounts of enslaved Indians in the Caribbean and enslaved Africans in Mexico and statements of the difficulty of maintaining slavery and the lurking threat of a slave revolt.
Yale University
Yale New Haven Teachers Institute: Connecticut: A Case Study in Anti Imperialism
Lesson plan for 7th and 8th grade. Gives notes on imperialism, mercantilism and how Great Britain used the colonies as a source for raw materials.