Colonial State Papers

ProQuest has worked in association with The National Archives to create Colonial State Papers. Up until now, researchers have only been able to view these documents in their authentic full-color detail by visiting the National Archives in London. However, the agreement with ProQuest to digitize this first collection will vastly improve access to these valuable hand-written documents that give a fascinating insight into British trade, history and overseas expansion between the 16th and 18th centuries.

This first collection (CO 1) represents thousands of papers that were presented to the Privy Council and the Board of Trade between 1574-1757, and that relate to the governance of, and activities in, the American, Canadian and West Indian colonies of England. Colonial State Papers also includes the Calendar of State Papers Colonial – an advanced bibliographic search tool providing over 40,000 records of bibliographic description for documents from many collections, including those of CO 1. Calendar of State Papers Colonial consists of bibliographic entries along with transcriptions, extracts and abstracts, in fully keyed XML.

All documents have been reproduced as full color, high quality images, including a number of unique contemporary hand-drawn maps. Users can search and browse in variety of ways.