253 published narratives by Americans and foreign visitors recounting their travels in the colonies and the United States and their observations and opinions about American peoples, places, and society from about 1750 to 1920.
Try a keyword search for travel and then filter document type to diary, journal, periodical, or rare book. You can also filter to a particular region or state.
Covers early pioneers and explorers, the gold rush, railroads, emigrant guides and travel journals, Native American history and culture and much more.
Sourced form the British Library, the module The Empire Writes Back: Part One includes Indian views on Britain and Empire, 1810-1915. India During the Raj: Eyewitness Accounts includes diaries and related records describing life in India, 1712-1925.
Try searching for the keyword travel and limit the document type to periodical, personal accounts and miscellaneous manuscripts, or printed book.
The collection provides a wide variety of original source material detailing China's interaction with the West from Macartney's first Embassy to China in 1793, through to the Nixon/Heath visits to China in 1972-74. It is based on substantial collections of unique manuscript materials held at the library of the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and the British Library, with additional sources from other major universities.
The categories Book and Diary/Memoir/Autobiography listed under Content type are the ones most likely to retrieve travel accounts.
Includes prints, drawings, paintings, maps, bibliographies, letters, photographs, and original facsimile pages documenting the relationships among peoples and with the environment in North America. Focuses on personal accounts and providing unique perspectives from all the protagonists, including traders, slaves, missionaries, explorers, soldiers, Native Americans as well as a wide range of Europeans.
Includes exploration journals and logs, missionary papers, and travel writing. Try searching for the keyword travel, then limit document types to diary and manuscript. You can also limit to a geographic region.
Includes 70,000 images of original manuscript and printed documents to support study and research in the field of colonial and empire studies. Five sections include: Cultural Contacts, 1492-1969; Empire Writing and the Literature of Empire; The Visible Empire; Religion and Empire; and Race, Class, Imperialism and Colonialism, c. 1607-1969. In addition to original documents, this database contains scholarly essays and analysis.
Delivers maps, photographs, and published materials, as well as field notes, letters, and a unique range of manuscript materials on selected expeditions between 1626 and 1953
Includes diaries and journals and published travel writings primarily of English aristocrats who travelled abroad c1550-1850 in what was called the "Grand Tour." The document type drop-down menu allows you to limit to manuscript, manuscript journal, printed journal, rare book, or travel diary.
This collection of manuscript, visual and printed works allows scholars to compare a range of sources on the history of travel for the first time, including many from private or neglected collections. Provides information on daily life in the eighteenth century, highlighting such everyday issues as transportation, money, communications, food and drink, health and sex. The material also covers European political and religious life, British diplomacy; life at court, and social customs on the Continent. There is a wealth of detail about cities such as Paris, Rome, Florence and Geneva, including written accounts and visual representations of street life, architecture and urban planning.
In the documents section you can narrow your search to the two "Society, Travel, and Leisure" themes.
The resource consists of the manuscript collections of the National Library of Scotland relating to South Asian history between 1615 and 1947 and cover material on India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Malaysia, and Singapore. Types of resources include diaries, journals, private as well as official papers, letters, sketches, paintings, and other original documents related to Indian history and literature. Sources include the East India Company, government documents, and papers of British military officers and civil servants in India.
The digital collection at the Goettingen Digitization Center includes more than 1400 travel narratives, dating from the 16th century to the 20th century, in a broad range of languages.
Manuscripts of important works of European travel writing from the later medieval period. The chief focus is on journeys to central Asia and the Far East, including accounts of travel to Mongolia, Persia, India, China and South-East Asia.
The core of the material is a collection of medieval manuscripts dating from the 13th to the 16th centuries. The main focus is accounts of journeys to the Holy Land, India and China. The manuscripts are sourced from the British Library; Bodleian Library; Bibliotheque nationale de France; Cambridge University Library; Trinity College, Cambridge; Universitatsbibliothek Heidelberg; Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Oesterreichische Nationalbibliothek; Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallen; the Beinecke Library at Yale University, Trinity College, Dublin, and about 15 other libraries and archives.
"Photography: The World through the Lens assembles collections of photographs, photograph albums, photographically illustrated books and texts on the early history of photography from libraries and archives from across the globe."
"Some images are well-known while many have rarely been viewed. The nineteenth century was about family and society, invention and scientific discovery, exploration and colonization, urban versus rural life, work, leisure and travel—all this is captured in photographs. This engaging resource serves multiple disciplines and supports a range of research and study topics."
Choose the Sport, Leisure and Tourism category from "Explore Content by Subject." Use the filters on the left to specify language.
The South Asia Archive provides digital access to rare and out of print materials ranging from the mid-18th to mid-20th century in a mix of English and vernacular languages. Search across multiple document types, including government acts, books, calendars, catalogs, censuses, directories, gazette, journals, film pamphlets, legal documents, magazines, manuals, maps, proceedings, reports, and statistics. The material included is interdisciplinary, covering art history, economics, law, science, education, literature, and more.
Forman was a prominent photojournalist and world traveler and a Fellow of the American Geographical Society. In his career as a photographer, Forman created a unique visual record of the life and cultures of East Asia, Indochina, the Middle East, South Pacific, Africa and South America.
Hundreds of accounts by women of their travels across the globe from the early 19th century to the late 20th century.
Voyages by rail, road, sea and air are all covered as are walking, cycling and even a journey by stagecoach. Some items are relatively brief such as the record of a car journey when cars were relatively new, which records the places that were passed through, the weather and the road conditions. Others are daily journals which describe long tours of Europe, where all the details of the trip are meticulously recorded. Then there are scrapbooks containing fantastic visual material such as photographs, postcards, cuttings and sketches and other ephemera.
Materials from the RGS library, archives & map collections including maps, charts, manuscript materials, field notes, correspondence, drawings, photographs, pamphlets, atlases, gazetteers, and other published and unpublished material.
"The RGS archive sheds light on the impact of geographical science on history, exploration, colonialism, & diplomatic policies, as well as natural resources, cultural studies, anthropology, and ethnography.
Maps are available in georeferenced formats.
Collections include:
Arabia & the Middle East Photographic Collections
Papers of Dr. David Livingstone & Henry Morton Stanley
Expedition Reports, including the Everest Collection
Robert Gunther Collection
Photographic & Artwork Collections on desert exploration, the Arctic, & Antarctica
Harry Johnston Collection on Africa & the Caribbean
Central Asia & Tibet Photographic Collections
Travel Guides & 17th-19th century Roadbooks
Royal Geographical Society Manuscript Maps Collection"
Diaries written by British and American women who documented their travels to places around the globe, including India, the West Indies, countries in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, as well as around the United States.
