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*History: Primary Sources
University Sources
- History VaultProQuest History Vault consists of manuscript and archival collections digitized in partnership and from a wide variety of archival institutions. Major collection areas in History Vault focus on the Black Freedom Movement of the 20th Century, Southern Life and Slavery, Women's Rights, International Relations, American Politics and Society with a strong focus on the 20th Century, and labor unions, workers and radical politics in the 20th Century. On the topic of civil rights and Black Freedom, History Vault contains records of four of the most important civil rights organizations of the 1950s and 1960s: NAACP, SCLC, SNCC, and CORE. History Vault's collections on Slavery and Southern plantations candidly document the realities of slavery at the most immediate grassroots level in Southern society and provide revealing documentation on the functioning of the slave system.
- Confidential Print: Africa, 1834-1966This resource includes documents issued by the British Government between 1834 and 1966. From coastal trading in the early nineteenth century, through the Conference of Berlin of 1884 and the subsequent Scramble for Africa, to the abuses of the Congo Free State, fights against tropical disease, Italy’s defeat by the Abyssinians, World War II, apartheid in South Africa and colonial moves towards independence, the documents in Confidential Print: Africa cover the whole of the modern period of European colonization of the continent.
- Confidential Print: Latin America, 1833-1969The documents of Confidential Print: Latin America cover the whole of South and Central America, plus the non-British islands of the Caribbean, from just after the final Spanish withdrawal from mainland America in the 1820s to the height of the Cold War in the 1960s. Covering revolutions, territorial changes and political movements, foreign financial interests, industrial and infrastructural development (including the building of the Panama Canal), wars, slavery, immigration from Europe and relations with indigenous peoples, among other topics, the files in this title form a vital resource for any scholar of Latin American history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
- Slavery and Anti-SlaverySlavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive is a four-part historical archive devoted to the scholarly study and understanding of slavery from a multinational perspective. It consists of more than five million cross-searchable pages sourced from books, pamphlets, newspapers, periodicals, legal documents, court records, monographs, manuscripts and maps from many different countries
- Popular Culture in Britain and America, 1950- 1975This resource explores the dynamic period of social, political and cultural change between 1950 and 1975. The resource offers thousands of colour images of manuscript and rare printed material as well as photographs, ephemera and memorabilia from this exciting period in our recent history.
- Associated Press: European Bureaus CollectionThe European Bureaus Collection provides coverage of Vienna, Geneva, Warsaw, Bern, Berlin, and Prague—as well as a special cross-bureau collection that covers conflicts and crises that affected the entire continent. These records include news stories in the form of typescript carbons or wire copy – the versions that AP sent on to its member newspapers. Among the most covered topics are WWII and post-war reconstruction, Nazism and its aftermath, the Cold War, espionage, the arms and space races, the fall of the Soviet Union, and many other events and movements.
- Associated Press: Middle Eastern Bureaus CollectionWith stories stemming from Jerusalem, Ankara, Beirut, and their surrounding areas, these records include news stories in the form of typescript carbons or wire copy – the versions that AP sent on to its member newspapers. Among the most covered topics are military operations, civil and global wars, diplomacy, refugees, cultural clashes, and terrorism, providing dynamic, real-time insights from the second half of the twentieth century.
- Ancestry Library EditionGenealogical collection covering the United States and the United Kingdom, including census, vital, church, court, and immigration records, as well as record collections from Canada and other areas.
- First World War (Adam Matthew)This resource showcases primary source material for the study of the First World War, from personal narratives and printed books to military files, propaganda pamphlets and strong visual documents. The material is complemented by a range of contextual secondary material, including scholarly essays, case studies and interactive maps.
- American Broadsides and EphemeraBuilt in partnership with the American Antiquarian Society, this full-color digital edition offers searchable facsimiles of 15,000 broadsides printed between 1820 and 1900 and 15,000 pieces of ephemera printed between 1749 and 1900. Featuring documents produced locally across the country, these rare items vividly capture the daily lives of earlier Americans.
- Colonial State Papers (1574 - 1757)This collection includes thousands of papers presented to the British 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 AmericaColonial America consists of all 1,450 volumes of the CO 5 series of Colonial Office files held at The National Archives in London, plus all extracted documents associated with them. This unique collection of largely manuscript material from the archives of the British government is an invaluable one for students and researchers of all aspects of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century American history and the early-modern Atlantic world
- African American CommunitiesFrom communal struggle to creative outpourings: uncover the everyday lives of African Americans spanning two turbulent centuries.
- American Indian Histories and CulturesThe wide range of material included in American Indian Histories and Cultures presents a unique insight into interactions between American Indians and Europeans from their earliest contact, continuing through the turbulence of the American Civil War, the on-going repercussions of government legislation, right up to the civil rights movement of the mid- to late-twentieth century
- More Primary ResourcesAM Explorer- Adam Matthew Primary Sources for Research.
External Links
- Japan Center for Asian Historical ResearchThis site provides access to official documents of the Japanese Cabinet, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as the Army and Navy showcasing the original records, including full images of the documents, all in digitized form, on an unprecedented scale.
- Chinese PamphletsMass education materials published in Hong Kong and in Mainland China, particularly Shanghai, in the years 1947-1954, include cartoon books, pamphlets, postcards and magazines,
- India Office Records and Private PapersBritish Library Collection
- European DocumentsPrimary documents and literature by country.
- Cold War DocumentsWilson Center Digital Archive-Very large range of Global Post WWII situations.
Most European documents are translated and many Asian documents are. Some of the Chinese secret documents remain so. - Americas ArchiveIts goal is to represent the full range and complexity of a multilingual “Americas” that includes Canada, the Caribbean, and Latin America from the beginning of colonization to the present.
Managed by the Center for Digital Scholarship at Fondren Library, Rice University. - Early Americas Digital ArchiveA collection of electronic texts originally written in or about the Americas from 1492 to approximately 1820... Published and supported by the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) at the University of Maryland.
- Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History, and GovernmentProduced by the Yale Law School, this site provides access to primary sources (charters, declarations, documents) pertaining to law, history, economics, politics, diplomacy, and government. The site covers sources from the pre 1800's to the present.
- American Notes: Travel in America, 1750-1920253 published narratives by Americans and foreign visitors recounting their travels in the colonies and the United States and their observations and opinions about American peoples, places, and society from about 1750 to 1920.
- Immigration to the United States, 1789-1930A digital collection of historical materials from Harvard's libraries, archives, and museums that documents voluntary immigration to the United States from the signing of the Constitution to the onset of the Great Depression. Concentrating heavily on the 19th century, Immigration to the US includes over 400,000 pages from more than 2,200 books, pamphlets, and serials, over 9,600 pages from manuscript and archival collections, and more than 7,800 photographs.
- Documenting the American SouthSponsored by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, this digital publishing initiative provides Internet access to texts, images, and audio files related to southern history, literature, and culture.
- Southern Historical CollectionUNC-Chapel Hill's Southern Historical Collection provides online access to manuscript collections.
- Low Country Digital LibraryCollege of Charleston
Literary Texts and Manuscripts
- Dictionary of Old English CorpusSearch the full text of Old English works by individual word, phrase, title, or author. Contains approximately three million words of Old English and two million words of Latin. If a particular text is significant because of dialect or date, there may be more than one copy of the work included in the Corpus.
- Early English Books OnlineContains digital facsimile page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473-1700 - from the first book printed in English by William Caxton, through the age of Spenser and Shakespeare and the tumult of the English Civil War.
- Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO)Including over 180,000 (200,00 volumes) English-language and foreign-language titles printed in the United Kingdom during the 18th century, along with thousands of works from the Americas. With full-text search capabilities this resource incorporates canonical titles of the period as well as contemporary works that analyze and debate those titles.
- ProQuest One LiteratureProQuest One Literature contains 3 million literature citations from thousands of journals, monographs, dissertations, and more than 500,000 primary works – including rare and obscure texts, multiple versions, and non-traditional sources like comics, theatre performances, and author readings.
Enhanced by interpretive sources such as book reviews and criticism sourced from wider, interdisciplinary publications in the fields such as humanities and history, it provides diverse, global perspectives with sources from all over the world – Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and North and South America - the majority of which are in full-text. - Literary Reference CenterProvides a broad spectrum of information on thousands of authors and their works across literary disciplines and timeframes.
- Parker LibraryParker Library on the Web provides access to high-resolution digital copies of every imageable page of most manuscripts in the Parker Library of Corpus Christi College (Cambridge University Press, 1912). The collection includes 559 manuscript, most of which were numbered and catalogued by M. R. James in his 1912 catalogue of the collection, as well as volumes given to the library after the James catalogue was published.
- Women Writers OnlineWomen Writers Online is a full-text collection of early women’s writing in English, published by the Women Writers Project at Northeastern University. It includes full transcriptions of texts published between 1526 and 1850, focusing on materials that are rare or inaccessible.
- Digital ScriptoriumThis is a growing image database of medieval and renaissance manuscripts that unites scattered resources from many institutions into an international tool for teaching and scholarly research. It bridges the gap between a diverse user community and the limited resources of libraries by means of sample imaging and extensive rather than intensive cataloguing.
Document Collections and Classified/Declassified Sources
- Archives UnboundPresents topically-focused digital collections of historical documents. Collections cover a broad range of topics from the Middle Ages forward-from Witchcraft to World War II to twentieth-century political history.
- Wilson Center Digital Archive-International History DeclassifiedThis depository collects the research of three Wilson Center projects which focus on the interrelated histories of the Cold War, Korea, and Nuclear Proliferation.
- Digital National Security Archive (DNSA)Created in collaboration with the National Security Archive, this database is a comprehensive collection available of primary documents central to U.S. foreign and military policy since 1945. Contains declassified government documents. Includes 33 collections consisting of over 80,000 indexed documents, with more than 500,000 total pages.
1945 - present - Human Rights Studies OnlineA research and learning database providing comparative documentation, analysis, and interpretation of major human rights violations and atrocity crimes worldwide from 1900 to 2010. Includes primary and secondary materials across multiple media formats and content types for each selected event, including Armenia, the Holocaust, Cambodia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Rwanda, Darfur, and more than thirty additional subjects. Resources for each topic guide users through the full scope of the event, from the historical context that made such violations possible through the international response, prosecution of perpetrators, and steps toward rebuilding.
- Vietnam War and American Foreign Policy, 1960–1975This module covers U.S. involvement in the region from the early days of the Kennedy administration, through the escalation of the war during the Johnson administration, to the final resolution of the war at the Paris Peace Talks and the evacuation of U.S. troops in 1973. Along the way, documents in this module trace the actions and decisions at the highest levels of the U.S. foreign policy apparatus, as well as events on the ground in Vietnam, from the perspective of State Department officials, Associated Press reporters, and members of the U.S. Armed forces, including the Marines and the Military Assistance Command Vietnam.
- History VaultProQuest History Vault consists of manuscript and archival collections digitized in partnership and from a wide variety of archival institutions. Major collection areas in History Vault focus on the Black Freedom Movement of the 20th Century, Southern Life and Slavery, Women's Rights, International Relations, American Politics and Society with a strong focus on the 20th Century, and labor unions, workers and radical politics in the 20th Century. On the topic of civil rights and Black Freedom, History Vault contains records of four of the most important civil rights organizations of the 1950s and 1960s: NAACP, SCLC, SNCC, and CORE. History Vault's collections on Slavery and Southern plantations candidly document the realities of slavery at the most immediate grassroots level in Southern society and provide revealing documentation on the functioning of the slave system.
- AM ExplorerThis database includes access to 100 Titles across 64 unique Primary Source Digital Collections from Adam Matthew. Topics range from Medical Services and Warfare to Shakespeare, from Victorian Popular Culture to Jewish Life in America.
Document Sources
- The Georgian PapersWelcome to the catalogue of the Georgian Papers held in the Royal Archives and the Royal Library at Windsor Castle.
This catalogue currently contains descriptions and digitised images of material dating from the reigns of George III to William IV, including personal letters, diaries, account books and records of the Royal Household.
- Queen Victoria’s JournalsQueen Victoria is the longest serving British monarch. One hundred and forty-one volumes of her journal survive, beginning in 1832, ending the year of her death in 1901, and numbering approximately 33,000 pages. As well as detailing household and family matters, the journals reflect affairs of state, describe meetings with statesmen and other eminent figures, and comment on the literature of the day. This full-text searchable website reproduces every page of the surviving volumes of Queen Victoria's journals, as high-resolution color images along with separate photographs of the many illustrations and inserts within the pages.
- A Vision of Britain through TimeA vision of Britain between 1801 and 2001.
Including maps, statistical trends and historical descriptions - London Lives - Crime, Poverty and Social Policy in the MetropolisPrimary documentation on individual social histories of the less-than-famous and even the infamous. A unified database of 240,000 manuscripts from eight archives and fifteen datasets (1690-1800; searchable database for manuscript facsimiles and transcriptions) -Old Bailey, Bodolph, etc.
- The Parliamentary history of England from the earliest period to the year 1803 byCall Number: J301 .H2 36 VolumesPublication Date: 1806-1820"From which last-mentioned epoch it is continued downwards in the work entitled "Hansard's parliamentary debates."
Other slight variations in subtitle - The parliamentary debates (Authorized edition) 41 Volumes 1803-1820 byCall Number: Special Collections J301 .H22Publication Date: 1804-1821
- Charles Booth Online ArchiveCharles Booth and the survey into life and labour in London (1886-1903)
- Parliament and the British Slave Trade, 1600-1807The Act of Parliament to abolish the British Slave Trade, passed on 25 March 1807, was the culmination of one of the first and most successful public campaigns in history.
To mark the bicentenary the Parliamentary Archives has digitised a wealth of archival material which provides evidence of the issues, processes and people at the heart of Parliament's relationship with the slave trade. - Connected HistoriesConnected Histories currently includes 22 major British digital resources for the period 1500-1900. You can find information about all of them here, including their coverage, the technical methods used in their creation, their particular strengths and weaknesses, and any access arrangements which may apply.
- European Political Print CollectionThis is a fully illustrated inventory of over 200 graphic arts items dating from 1720 to 1843. More than half of the items relate directly to America, and a large number of the remaining prints highlight dealings with the West Indies, Canada, trade in the Atlantic and international relationships between European rivals.
- First World War (Adam Matthew)This resource showcases primary source material for the study of the First World War, from personal narratives and printed books to military files, propaganda pamphlets and strong visual documents. The material is complemented by a range of contextual secondary material, including scholarly essays, case studies and interactive maps.
- National Archives-Great BritainOnline collections
a little over 5% of The National Archives' records have so far been digitised and we are continuing to put records online. Browse this section to find out how to search some of our most popular online collections.
- Confidential Print: Africa, 1834-1966This resource includes documents issued by the British Government between 1834 and 1966. From coastal trading in the early nineteenth century, through the Conference of Berlin of 1884 and the subsequent Scramble for Africa, to the abuses of the Congo Free State, fights against tropical disease, Italy’s defeat by the Abyssinians, World War II, apartheid in South Africa and colonial moves towards independence, the documents in Confidential Print: Africa cover the whole of the modern period of European colonization of the continent.
- Popular Culture in Britain and America, 1950-1975This source includes original archival material - manuscript, typescript and ephemera - from key libraries in Britain and America concerning topics such as changing lifestyles, 1950-1975; Youth Culture; Student Protests; Popular Culture; TV; Music; Movies; Civil Rights; Women’s Liberation; Minority Groups; the Space Race; Vietnam War and Nuclear Disarmament.
- 17th-19th Century British Religious, Political, & Legal TractsUniversity of Missouri Digital Library
- Vive la différence! The English and French stereotype in satirical prints, 1720-1815The Fitzwilliam Museum- University of Cambridge
- Hong Kong Government Reports Online (1842-1941)University of Hong Kong Digital Libraries
- British Cartoon PrintsLibrary of Congress
- The "Special Relationship" British Diplomatic Files from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Digital ArchivesFranklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum. Marist University
- British Campaign in Mesopotamia, 1914-1918The Mesopotamian Campaign deserves to be far better known than it is—both in terms of its impact on the war and the subsequent course of the history of the Middle East. This new collection provides the opportunity to review the telegrams, correspondence, minutes, memoranda and confidential prints gathered together in the India Office Military Department on Mesopotamia. In 1914 the British/Indian Army expedition to Mesopotamia set out with the modest ambition of protecting the oil concession in Southern Persia but, after numerous misfortunes, ended up capturing Baghdad and Northern Towns in Iraq.
- Indian Army and Colonial Warfare on the Frontiers of India, 1914-1920For generations of British and Indian Officers and men, the North-West Frontier was the scene of repeated skirmishes and major campaigns against the trans-border Pathan tribes who inhabited the mountainous no-man’s land between India and Afghanistan. This collection contains Army Lists; Orders; Instructions; Regulations; Acts; Manuals; Strength Returns; Orders of Battle; Administration Summaries; organization, commissions, committees, reports, maneuvers; departments of the Indian Army; and regimental narratives.