The original version of this site came into existence in 2000-01, as a single page in a ragbag website I created as a first-year PhD student, and became a separate website in about 2001-02. The site was conceived as a gateway site for any one interested in studying the early modern period (c.1500-1800CE) – academics, students and others. I only list resources that are free to access. I avoid sites whose only discernible function appears to be to persuade you to spend money, and I don’t (except for a handful of good general reference sites) usually list the many sites that cover long periods of history and happen merely to include short sections on early modern topics: by ‘early modern resources’ I mean sites/pages that are primarily or substantially about early modern history.
I do not rigorously evaluate the sites listed and make no guarantees about their accuracy or value. Nor is the site ever going to be comprehensive. I add new links when I can, and I aim to check the entire site for dead links at least once a year. I do not always remove apparently dead links on the first failure (although I add a note that the resource was found to be unavailable), because websites can disappear and return (eg, teaching resources for specific courses). They can also move: if you click on a link in this site and get a ’404 Not Found’ or similar result, it’s always worth searching Google to see if that has happened.
If you find a broken link, please be patient; better still, let me know. If your own site, or one that you really like, is not included, send me the URL. You can get in touch using this contact form.
November 2011
Visual redesign of the site. Addition of some new categories including ‘Editions’ for primary sources of scholarly research quality, and a new site map. Undertaking extensive manual checking of resources and cleaning up dead links, etc.
Page last updated November 2011
