The French continue to battle to see to it that the web contains as much serious material as possible originating from outside the United States (and that is in languages other than English).
Europeana est un prototype de bibliothèque en ligne développé par la Bibliothèque nationale de France, dans le cadre du projet de Bibliothèque numérique européenne.
Europeana rassemble environ 12 000 documents libres de droits issus des collections de la BnF, de la Bibliothèque Nationale Széchényi de Hongrie et de la Bibliothèque nationale du Portugal.
From the main page you can search the materials or browse according to any one of a number of criteria, such as century of publication, library of origin, language, or theme (e.g. religion, philosophy, science etc.). Law is there as a social science, and pulls up 88 texts for the most part from the 19th century.
A look at what's there in English brought up first of all, appropriately enough, given the recent 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire, a 1772 monograph by Anthony Benezet, "Some historical account of Guinea, its situation, produce, and the general disposition of its inhabitants: with an inquiry into the rise and progress of the slave trade, its nature, and lamentable effects."
