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Black History is strongly represented across many of Senate House Library’s collections, particularly the library’s area collections of United States studies, Commonwealth studies and Latin American studies, for the peoples of the Caribbean. The main history collections on the fifth floor feature the histories of Black peoples who have settled in Britain, Europe and elsewhere. Other aspects of Black lives are spread across the library’s social science collections. New entries into the collection can be found in the Periodicals Room on the fourth floor.

Useful classmarks

Special Collections

• Ron Heisler collection - contains pamphlets and ephemera relating to the civil rights movement in the United States, and race discrimination, racism and anti-racism in Great Britain.
• Goldsmiths’ Library of Economic Literature - holds a considerable amount of primary sources from the 18th and 19th century on the slave trade and abolition movement. Some of the material is available online on .
• Porteus Library - constitutes the working library of Beilby Porteus (1731-1809), Bishop of London and a leading advocate for the abolition of the slave trade, contains items relating to enslavement and the trade in enslaved people.
• Political Pamphlet collections - compiled by the Institute of Commonwealth Studies from current and former members of the Commonwealth, include materials from several Caribbean and African countries. They largely date from the 1960s and 1970s and give insight into processes of decolonisation and transitions to independence. The pamphlets can be explored by using the .

Archives

• records on apartheid in South Africa
• the papers of the African National Congress
• the papers of the Caribbean Council for Europe (CCE)
• materials from the Britain Tanzania Society
• materials from the Britain Zimbabwe Society
• a photographic collection of Soweto and the 1976 uprising (c1960-c1977) from the International Defence and Aid Fund for Southern Africa
• archives on the history of enslavement and enslaved people
• the papers of C L R James (1901 – 1989), Trinidadian writer and political activist
• the (1921-1998), Jamaican air force pilot, lawyer and political activist
• the (1901-1968), South African political activist and academic
• microfilm copies of the (1917-2013), Jamaican historian and politician
• the (covering ca. 1962-2022), South African anti-apartheid activists

E-resources

Doing your own searches

To discover clusters of material on specific topics, here are some suggested search terms (subject headings) you can use in our . Please note that some of the terminology used in the catalogue may not reflect current language use.

• Africans
• African Americans
• African diaspora
• Black people
• Race discrimination
• West Indians
• Slavery
• Racism
• Women, Black

For Black British History:

• Africans -- Great Britain -- History.
• Black people -- England.
• Black people -- England -- London.
• Black people -- Great Britain -- Social conditions.
• Ethnicity -- Great Britain.
• Great Britain -- Race relations.
• Immigrants -- Great Britain.
• Jamaicans in London.
• Minorities -- Great Britain.
• Multiculturalism -- Great Britain.
• Racism -- Great Britain.
• West Indians in London.
• West Indians -- Great Britain.
• West Indians -- Great Britain -- Social conditions.

Additional resources

• from the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS)

The resources Senate House Library offers to study cultural history are broad and varied and intersect with many other collection strengths. 

British cultural history is strongly represented, especially the culture of the Victorian and Edwardian era. European cultural history is another strength of the collection with specialist holdings in German history, which can be found in the former Institute of Germanic Studies library in the Middlesex North Reading Room (4th floor). Beyond Europe, the Library has strong holdings concerning the cultures of the current and former member nations of the Commonwealth, Latin America and the United States on the 6th floor (for more information see our guides on Commonwealth studies and Latin American studies.

Useful classmarks

Selected special collections

• Eliot-Phelips Collection 
• Gili Catalan Collection 
• M.S. Anderson Collection
• Harry Price Library of Magical Literature 

Explore all printed special collections

Selected e-resources

• Bloomsbury Cultural History
• ECCO: Eighteenth Century Collections Online
• Early Modern England
• Food and Drink in History 
• Popular Culture in Britain and America, 1950-1975
• Victorian Popular Culture

Doing your own searches

To discover clusters of material on specific topics, here are some suggested search terms (subject headings) you can use in our :   

• Architecture and history  
• Art and history  
• Cultural -- History
• Civilization -- [country]
• Cultural history of women
• Design and history
• Ethnohistory
• Intellectual life
• Intellectual history
• Literature and history
• Manners and customs
• Motion pictures and history
• Music and history
• Progress
• Television and history
• Specific civilizations, for example “Islamic Civilization”

Works on the economic and social histories of Britain and Europe can be found within the history collections and other parts of the library collections. The Library also has significant holdings on the economic and social history of the United States, Latin America, and the former and current members of the Commonwealth, all of which can be found on the 6th floor.

Useful classmarks

Selected special collections and archives

• Goldsmiths’ Library of Economic Literature - around 70,000 printed items spanning from the 15th to the 20th century. Access to the full text of most items in the Goldsmiths’ Library published before 1851 and some published 1851-1914 is available online on .
• John Burns collection 
• Family Welfare Association Library
• Ron Heisler collection 

Explore all printed special collections

Selected e-resources

• Business, Economic & Labour History 
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•  
•  

Doing your own searches

To discover clusters of material on specific topics, here are some suggested search terms (subject headings) you can use in our :

• Aristocracy
• Business
• Capitalism
• Civilization
• Commerce
• [Country] -- Economic conditions
• [Country] -- Social conditions
• Economic history
• Economic History -- [country/period of history]
• Economics, political aspects
• Labor
• Labor and laboring classes
• Manners and customs
• Social Conflict
• Social History
• Working Class

Senate House Library holds numerous collections to research the history of sexuality and gender as well as women's history and LGBTQIA+ history. 

Selected Special Collections

• Craig collection - early to mid-twentieth-century books in English, French and German on sexual customs and practices alongside some works of literary and artistic erotica, offering an intriguing insight into the history of sexuality. 
• Ron Heisler collection - materials on 19th- and 20th-century feminist and LGBTQIA+ movements
• Haud Nominandum Collection - the library of bookseller, book collector, civil servant, and gay rights campaigner Jonathan Cutbill (1937-2019) 

Selected e-resources

• LGBTQ+ studies e-resources
• Orlando: Women's Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
• Seized Books! online exhibition
• Struggle for Women's Rights: Organizational Records, 1880-1990
• Women and Social Movements in the U.S.
• Women and Social Movements, International
• Women and Social Movements, Modern Empires Since 1820
• Women in the National Archives
• Women's Magazine Archive (1846-2005)
• Women's Studies

Special collections and archives

• Quick Memorial Library - over 1,000 printed items on education from the mid-16th to the end of the 19th century. 
• archives on education
• 91app archive 
• EPCOM collection - about 400 school textbooks used during the Third Reich which were confiscated by the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Expeditionary Forces in the post-war period.

Explore all printed special collections and archives

E-resources

• Education Magazine Archive

Special Collections and Archives

• Historians' papers in the archives
• Sir George Walter Prothero’s collection
•  

Senate House holds a collection on the history of science on the 7th floor. New additions to the collection on the history of science can be found in the Periodicals Room on the fourth floor.

Useful classmarks

Special collections

• De Morgan library - collection of rare books on the history of mathematics. The have been digitised and are available as part of our e-resources.

Doing your own searches

To discover clusters of material on specific topics, here are some suggested search terms (subject headings) you can use in our :   

• Science – History -- [century]
• Science -- [country] -- [country]
• Science, Medieval
• Science, Renaissance.
• Science -- Philosophy – History
• Scientific apparatus and instruments
• Scientific expeditions
• Scientists
• Medicine -- History -- [century]
• Medicine -- [country] -- History

The history of travel and exploration are widely covered in the Library’s collections. Our holdings also support research into the history of migration, particularly the  in European history.  

Useful classmarks

Special collections

• M.S. Anderson Collection
• E.G.R. Taylor Collection of Historic Printed Maps

Selected e-resources

Doing your own searches

To discover clusters of material on specific topics, here are some suggested search terms (subject headings) you can use in our :   

• Adventure and adventurers
• [Country] -- Description and travel
• [Country] -- Discovery and exploration.
• Discoveries in geography
• Emigration and immigration
• Maps
• Outer space exploration
• Pilgrims and pilgrimages
• Voyages and travels
• Voyages, Imaginary

Senate House Library houses the Institute of Commonwealth Studies (ICWS) collection, an extensive research-level collection that covers the Commonwealth and its member nations across Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Oceania and Europe, their histories and the history of the British Empire (for more information see our guide on Commonwealth studies). &�Բ�����;

Useful classmarks

Special collections and archives

The Institute of Commonwealth Studies (ICWS) has over 230 archival collections. The archives contain materials relating to the history of the British Empire and the Commonwealth from the 18th to the 20th century. Many Commonwealth countries and former British colonies are represented, but holdings on South Africa and the Caribbean are especially strong. 

ICWS archives can be searched through Senate House Library’s archive catalogue by using the and filtering by the Repository “Institute of Commonwealth Studies”. 

•  
•  
• papers of Commonwealth Studies researchers 
• Institute of Commonwealth Studies Political Pamphlets - compiled by the Institute of Commonwealth Studies from current and former members of the Commonwealth, include materials from over 60 countries. The pamphlets can be explored by using the .

Besides ICWS’s holdings Senate House Library’s special collections and archives provide further material to study the British Empire and Commonwealth.

• Goldsmiths Library of Economic Literature - covers British imperial economics, trade and related issues during the 16th-20th centuries.
• Prothero Collection - covers the period 1880-1914 including materials on Irish home rule
• Bromhead Library - includes holdings on the early colonisation of Australia.
• Ron Heisler collection - includes print materials from the late 19th- and 20th century relating to anti-imperialist movements. 

The archives include several manuscripts and collections of papers relating to the British Empire.

• (fl 1770-1926) - residents of British India, contain Thomas Herbert Lewin’s papers reflecting his interest in India and its languages
• Apartheid archives
• Archives related to slavery
• Archives related to the East India Company: , , , , , , , 
• Archives related to the South Sea Company: , , , 

Selected e-resources

•  
• Confidential Print series on 

Doing your own searches

To discover clusters of material on specific topics, here are some suggested search terms (subject headings) you can use in our :

• Anti-imperialist movements
• Autonomy and independence movements
• Colonies
• Colonization
• Decolonization
• Great Britain -- Colonies
• Imperialism
• Postcolonialism 

Senate House Library holds an extensive collection on the history of the city of London and its surroundings covering culture, economy, politics, society and topography.

Useful classmarks

Special collections

• Bromhead Library - over 4,000 rare printed items on London history. 
• Historical materials published about and within London can also be found across our other special collections.

Selected e-resources

Doing your own searches

To discover clusters of material on specific topics, here are some suggested search terms (subject headings) you can use in our :

• London (England) -- Antiquities
• London (England) -- Buildings, structures, etc.
• London (England) -- Commerce
• London (England) -- Description and travel
• London (England) -- Gilds
• London (England) -- History
• London (England) -- Intellectual life
• London (England) -- Politics and government
• London (England) -- Social life and customs
• Minorities -- England -- London

Many printed modern and special collections and archives at Senate House Library chart the history of left-wing, alternative and radical political movements, including working-class movements, communist movements, feminism and pacifism among many others. This guide provides an overview of resources for selected themes.

Selected special collections and archives

• Apartheid archives
•  
• Cartonera collection
• Family Welfare Association
• Goldsmiths Library of Economic and Social Literature
• John Burns Collection
• Latin American political pamphlets
•  pamphlets
• Pelling Collection 
• Playne Collection and the 
• Ron Heisler Collection and 
• Trotskyist archives subject guide

Selected e-resources

• Hansard Parliamentary Debates
•  

Doing your own searches

To discover clusters of material on specific topics, here are some suggested search terms (subject headings) you can use in our :

• African American communists / civil rights workers / feminists / political activists / women civil rights workers
• Anti-fascist movements
• Anti-imperialist movements
• Antinuclear movement
• Bisexual feminism
• Black power
• Civil rights movements / workers
• Communism
• Communist countries / parties
• Communists
• Conscientious objectors
• Cooperative societies
• Decolonization
• Demonstrations
• Disarmament
• Guilds
• Employee rights
• Equal pay for equal work
• Feminism
• Feminists
• Industrial relations
• Insurgency
• Labor laws and legislation
• Labor movement / unions
• Lesbian feminism
• Pacifism
• Pacifists
• Peace building
• Peace movements
• Peace societies
• Political activists
• Propaganda, Anti-communist / Propaganda, Communist
• Protest movements
• Pressure groups
• Radicalism
• Reproductive rights
• Socialism
• Socialist feminism
• Suffrage
• Suffragists
• Suffragettes
• Strikes and lockouts
• Student movements / pacifists
• Trade-unions
• Women and peace
• Women civil rights workers
• Women in the labor movement / in politics
• Women labor union members
• Women’s liberation movement
• Women pacifists / political activists / radicals 
• Women’s rights
• Working class
• Youth protest movements

The U.S. Studies collection is located on the 6th floor. New acquisitions on U.S. History and the history of the Americas can be found in the Periodicals Room on the fourth floor under the classmarks E and F.

The U.S. Studies collection is a substantial, research-level collection with broad coverage of the history, institutions and culture of the United States with strengths in Art History, History, and Literature.

We hold the former library of the United States Information Service, an information agency of the Foreign Service of the U.S. Government which used to be situated in Grosvenor Square, London. At the time of its closure in 1966 the library’s collection more than 25,000 volumes represented the largest and most complete body of American literature in England.

Special collections and archives

• archives related to U.S. History on topics such as politics, trade and slavery 
• Manton Marble Collection of printed materials on American politics, foreign relations and economics

Selected e-resources

• Early American Imprints  and