Colonial Film Site

Colonial Film

holds detailed information on over 6000 films showing images of life in the British colonies. Over 150 films are available for viewing online. You can search or browse for films by country, date, topic, or keyword. Over 350 of the most important films in the catalogue are presented with extensive critical notes written by our academic research team.

The Colonial Film project united universities (Birkbeck and University College London) and archives (British Film Institute, Imperial War Museum and the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum) to create a new catalogue of films relating to the British Empire. The ambition of this website is to allow both colonizers and colonized to understand better the truths of Empire.

Dictionary of English Slang 1909

For writers of steampunk and other Victorian / Edwardian era fare, here’s a free dictionary of English slang from 1909.

Everything You Wanted To Know About the Arquebus

The title says it all: Everything You Wanted To Know About The Arquebus. I found this to be a good and interesting read.

Four Mostly Forgotten Conflicts In US History

I ran across this interesting article about four mostly forgotten conflicts in US history. Not forgotten by me, of course, as I am a US history teacher. Still, there may be one in there you’ve has misremembered.

For my favorite forgotten conflict, I would nominate the Barbary War of 1801 – 1805.

Dahomey’s Women Warriors

An interesting colonial article in Smithsonian.

For the better part of 200 years, thousands of female soldiers fought and died to expand the borders of their West African kingdom. Even their conquerors, the French, acknowledged their “prodigious bravery.”