A large group of cosmographical and geographical works, atlases, and maps offer unusual opportunities for research in the history of geography and cartography. Maritime history is also one of the Library’s specialties. Numerous legal works reflect the response of European legal systems to the growth of overseas empires and in particular deal with the development of international law. A major collection centers on the adaptation of religion and religious institutions to the New World, with particular strength in works concerning the activities of the Franciscans, the Jesuits, and other missionary orders, and of Puritans and Anglicans in New England. An important group of works on natural history record the appearance of American plants and their use as food and medicine.

The John Carter Brown Library collection is entirely distinct from the Brown University Library collection and is only partially accessible online. Some 40,000 JCB titles (about 85 percent of the holdings) are recorded on both the Brown University online catalogue “JOSIAH” and in the WorldCat database.

Full knowledge of the holdings of the JCB requires use of its card catalogue. Another source of information about the holdings, however, are various Library publications, such as the Library’s printed catalogues, which began in 1865 and were published in different series until as late as 1973. Other helpful works are: European Americana: A Chronological Guide to Works Printed in Europe Relating to the Americas, 1493–1750 (6 Vols.); Maritime History: A Hand-List of the Maritime Books in the John Carter Brown Library; Die Wunderbare Neue Welt: German Books about the Americas in the John Carter Brown Library; Scotland and the Americas; Spanish Historical Writing about the New World; Les Nouvelles Frances: France in America, 1500–1815; The Italians and the Creation of America; Africans in the New World; Portuguese Exploration to the West and the Formation of Brazil; The Dutch in the Americas, 1600–1800; and the John Carter Brown Library Annual Reports, 1901–1966.

While terminal dates vary from area to area, the collections range from the late fifteenth century to about 1825, when direct European involvement in American affairs came to an end. Approximately 20 percent of the collection consists of books printed before 1700. Because the focus is thematic as well as regional and chronological, the Library’s holdings are useful for the study of subjects that cross conventional boundaries. The following survey, by no means exhaustive, suggests some applications of these resources.

The original European travel narratives concerning both North and South America, from the early Spanish chronicles onwards, are substantially complete and form the point of departure for the collections. Numerous works dealing with native Americans in North and South America, including both printed and manuscript items in Indian languages, offer opportunities for research in anthropology, archaeology, and linguistics. A wide range of colonial architecture books, prints on American themes, and English cartoons and caricatures from the eighteenth century are available to art historians, while the art of book illustration over four centuries and other essentially bibliographical subjects may be studied throughout the collections.

Economic history is widely represented in works illustrating the impact of the Americas on economic theory, commerce, investment, landholding, monetary policies, taxation, and labor. A large group of cosmographical and geographical works, atlases, and maps offers unusual opportunities for research in the history of geography and cartography.

The Library holds early editions of literary works on New World themes by English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, German, and Dutch authors. Numerous legal works reflect the response of European legal systems to the growth of overseas empires and in particular deal with the development of international law. A major collection centers on the adaptation of religion and religious institutions to the New World, with particular strength in works concerning the activities of the Franciscans, the Jesuits, and other missionary orders, and of Puritans and Anglicans in New England. An important group of works on natural history records the appearance of American plants and their use as food and medicine.

The well-known bibliographer Rubens Borba de Moraes once wrote in his Bibliographia Brasiliana that the John Carter Brown Library’s collection of books about and/or printed in Brazil is “perhaps the finest” in the United States. In December 2001 the Library completed cataloguing of its Brazilian imprints and launched the Código Brasiliense . The Código consists of the first government documents printed in Brazil after the relocation to America at the end of 1807 of the king of Portugal, D. João VI, along with the entire royal court. These laws, decrees, alvarás, and similar documents dating from 1808 are now for the first time available on the internet.

These primary materials are supported by a large bibliographical reference collection and are extended by the collections of the Brown University Libraries.

TOP OF PAGE