Historical Primary Sources: Africa: Images & Maps

The collection contains more than 3000 slides, 500 photographs, and 50 hours of sounds from forty-five different countries.

Explore incredible photographs spanning over 100 years of African history, from the 1860s onwards, taken from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office photographic collection

More than 7000 historical photographic postcards documenting an important visual record of Africa and its peopleduring the historically intensive years of European colonialism, from 1895 to 1960.

A selection of images from the extensive photographic holdings of the American Geographical Society (AGS) Library.

The more than 15,000 images in the Frank and Frances Carpenter Collection represent the extensive photographic files assembled by Frank G. Carpenter and his daughter Frances to illustrate his popular writings on travel and geography. The images reflect the Carpenters travels in Europe, the Near and Far East, Africa, Central and South America, and some areas of the Caribbean.

Comprises 3027 postcards showing Africans and African-Americans in the period of colonialism. It is based on the collection of a private person from Hamburg who released the scans for digitisation.

Currently the database comprises some 110.000 images (photos, water colours, pencil and ink drawings etc.). They were produced between 1830 and the 1960s and display rock art and landscapes, portraits and everyday life, architecture and material culture. Most of the images were produced during expeditions organized by the Frobenius Institute in the first half of the 20th century to Africa, but also to Australia, Indonesia and South America. Please note that most of the image′s metadata are in German language.

A selection of photographs taken in the 1930s.

The collection includes about 7,610 photographs organized in 76 separate albums, scrapbooks or loose collections. The photographs depict life, primarily in East Africa, between about 1860 and 1960.

Images from late-19th and early-20th century trade cards and illustrated European newspapers of East Asia, South Asia, and Africa

Historical images from Protestant and Catholic missionary collections in Britain, Norway, Germany, France, Switzerland, and the United States.

Varied collection of texts, excerpts, and links to primary sources relating to the history of Africa.

Over 30,000 images from the 1940s to the present. Photographers include Liberian and American government officials and employees, private citizens, missionaries, development workers, concessions employees and ethnographic researchers.

The collection include classics of illustrated travel and regional archaeology, as well as the NYPL's earliest works of photography in the Middle East region.

These posters represent a sampling of the growing collection of over 5000 Africana posters housed at the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies. The subjects covered here include politics, health, religion, liberation struggles, art exhibitions, and social issues.

Presenting approximately 5000 pictures of African art published before 1921. Its historic sources afford exceptional insight into early European and American views - literal and figurative - of Africa's art. Texts are presented here verbatim in the original - often erroneous and sometimes racist - language. Foreign texts appear in English translation followed by the original language.

These images of African daily life date from the mid-20th century. Photographs come from the following countries and territories: Basutoland, Belgian Congo, Dahomey, French Equatorial Africa, French Guinea, French Togoland, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Liberia, Mauritania, Niger (French), Nigeria, Northern Rhodesia, Ruanda-Urundi, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Southern Rhodesia, Southwest Africa, Tanganyika, and Tunisia.

National Archives (UK) collection of over 3000 images taken from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office photographic collection.

More than 100 maps dating from 1530 to 1915.

Includes more than 2,700 of historical maps focused on Africa. The content spans over 500 years, covering all regions and scales, and in 8 different languages.

This collection of Liberia maps includes twenty examples from the American Colonization Society (ACS), organized in 1817 to resettle free black Americans in West Africa.