Library guides: History and cultural heritage: Primary sources

Primary sources

What are primary sources?

Created by witnesses or recorders who experience first-hand the events or conditions being documented, primary sources are first-hand testimonies that provide direct evidence from a particular period of history. Primary sources may be everyday items produced whilst an event or phase is occurring, such as photographs, letters, periodicals and manuscripts, but can also include artefacts compiled later, such as memoirs and oral histories.

Key primary source databases

Gale Primary Sources
An interface that allows searching across any combination, or all, of Griffith University's Gale Primary Sources holdings. These 27 primary source databases can be searched individually or using this interface: Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Nineteenth Century Collections Online, The Making of Modern Law, Archives of Sexuality and Gender, British Library Newspapers, Women's Studies Archive, Refugees, Relief and Resettlement, American Civil Liberties Union Papers, The Times Digital Archive, Archives Unbound, China and the Modern World, Financial Times Historical Archive, Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals, Slavery and Anti-slavery, The Times Literary Supplement, Brazilian and Portuguese History and Culture, Crime Punishment and Popular Culture, Indigenous Peoples of North America, Political Extremism and Radicalism, The Economist Historical Archive and the Making of the Modern World.

Access the GALE Primary Sources and Tools self paced tutorial to learn how to search the Gale Primary Sources collections and how to use Gale's digital humanities tools to analyse text.

Adam Matthew Digital
Griffith University's Adam Matthew Digital holdings including China : Culture and Society, China : Trade, Politics & Culture, 1793-1980, China, America and the Pacific, Eighteenth Century Journals, Empire Online, Foreign Office files for China, 1919-1980, Foreign Office files for India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, 1947-1980, Gender : Identity and Social Change, Global commodities : trade, exploration, & cultural exchange, India, Raj and Empire, London Low Life, Market Research and American Business 1935-1965, Mass Observation Online, Mass Observation Project, 1981-2009, Migration to new worlds, Romanticism: Life, Literature and Landscape, Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice, 1490-2007 and Socialism on film.

Struggles for Freedom: Southern Africa
Focuses on the complex and varied liberation struggles in Southern Africa, with an emphasis on Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. The contents of this primary source collection document colonial rule, dispersion of exiles, international intervention, and the worldwide networks that supported successive generations of resistance within the region.
World Heritage Sites: Africa
World Heritage Sites: Africa is made up of 20 sub-collections and more than 57,000 objects ... The collection includes photographs, 3D models, GIS data, site plans, aerial and satellite photography, images of rock art, excavation reports, manuscripts, traveler's accounts, historical and antiquarian maps, books, articles, and other scholarly research.

Asia and the West : diplomacy and cultural exchange (Gale Nineteenth Century Collections Online)
A collection of manuscript collections consisting of British Foreign Office and United States consular and diplomatic service records relating to Asian countries during the nineteenth century. A selection of Asian missionary correspondence and journals is also included.

China, America and the Pacific (Adam Matthew Digital)
Archival material relating to the trade and cultural relationships between America, China and the Pacific region between the 18th century and early 20th century.
NOTE: Database allows data and text mining.
China : Culture and Society (Adam Matthew Digital)
Digitisation of Cornell University Library's Charles W. Wason Collection (c1750-1929), including additional secondary resources, including academic essays, an interactive chronology and guides.
NOTE: Database allows data and text mining.
China : Trade, Politics and Culture, 1793-1980 (Adam Matthew Digital)
Contains the Macartney and Amherst Embassies, the Opium War, Arrow War, Boxer Rebellion, Taiping Rebellion, the opening of treaty ports, the Chinese Maritime Customs Service and the birth of the People's Republic. Includes maps, drawings and photographs, and personal accounts.
Summary of licence
China and the Modern World (Gale Primary Sources)
Spanning 1800 to 1980s. Archival original documents, largely from Historical Archives of China and the British Library. Text can be analysised using the associated Gale Digital Scholar product.
Consisting of monographs, manuscripts, periodicals, correspondence and letters, historical photos, ephemera, and other kinds of historical documents, these collections provide excellent primary source materials for the understanding and research of the various aspects of China during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, such as diplomacy/international relations, economy/trade, politics, Christianity, sinology, education, science and technology, imperialism, and globalization.
Foreign Office files for China, 1919-1980 (Adam Matthew Digital)
Makes available the complete British Foreign Office files dealing with China, Hong Kong and Taiwan during the period 1919-1980. The archival materials in the database consist of diplomatic dispatches, letters, newspaper cuttings, maps, reports of court cases, biographies of leading personalities, summaries of events and diverse other materials.
Summary of licence
Foreign Office files for India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, 1947-1980 (Adam Matthew Digital)
This collection covers the years from 1947 to 1980, encompassing files on all the countries of South Asia: principally India and Pakistan, but also Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Ceylon/Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim and the Maldives. The collection is split into three, chronologically based parts: Section I: Independence, Partition and the Nehru Era, 1947-64; Section II: South Asian Conflicts and Independence for Bangladesh, 1965-71; Section III: Afghanistan and the Cold War, Emergency Rule in India, and the Resumption of Civilian Rule in Pakistan, 1972-80
Summary of licence

Brazilian and Portuguese history and culture (Gale Primary Sources)
A digitized collection of about 4000 pamphlets (of 50 pages or less) held at the Oliveira Lima Library at the Catholic University of America, published chiefly in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The pamphlets cover Brazilian and Portuguese history, politics, literature, and other important subject areas in the form of speeches, flyers, official decrees, sermons, poems, plays, concert and theater programs, and more.

China, America and the Pacific (Adam Matthew Digital)
Archival material relating to the trade and cultural relationships between America, China and the Pacific region between the 18th century and early 20th century.
NOTE: Database allows data and text mining.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online (Gale Primary Sources)
Coverage 1701 to 1800. Includes English-language and foreign-language titles printed in the United Kingdom, along with thousands of important works from the Americas.
Consists of books, pamphlets, broadsides, ephemera. Subject categories include history and geography; fine arts and social sciences; medicine, science, and technology; literature and language; religion and philosophy; law; general reference. Also included are significant collections of women writers of the eighteenth century, collections on the French Revolution, and numerous eighteenth-century editions of the works of Shakespeare. Where they add scholarly value or contain important differences, multiple editions of each individual work are offered.
Indigenous Peoples: North America (Gale Primary Sources)
Primary sources related to the cultural, political, and social history of Native Peoples of North America from the 17th Century to 1986.
Researchers can explore the impact of invasion and colonization on Indigenous Peoples in North America, and the intersection of Indigenous and European histories and systems of knowledge through the use of manuscripts, monographs, newspapers, photographs, motion pictures, images of artwork, and more.
Making of modern law : American Civil Liberties Union papers, 1912-1990 (Gale Primary Sources)
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has throughout its history consistently stood at the center of controversies involving the rights of Americans. Its records offer researchers a unique view of the inner workings of the organization and the hundreds of groups with which the ACLU interacted.
Covering the years from before the ACLU’s official founding in 1920 through the 20th century, this archive offers an array of primary source materials on some of the most important issues that affected the United States.
Making of modern law : Landmark records and briefs of the U.S. Courts of Appeals, 1950-1980. (Gale Primary Sources)
Expands dramatically the range of legal primary source documents available to researchers. This collection significantly deepens critical understanding of social, economic, political, and historical issues by surfacing over half a million pages of briefs from appellants, appellees, and supporters (amicus briefs), with their respective replies, as well as appendices, memoranda, petitions, plaintiff statements, transcripts, and more from the various circuits of the U.S. Courts of Appeals.
Making of modern law : Primary sources (Gale Primary Sources)
Part I, 1620-1926: Contains more than 1,300 individual titles sourced chiefly from the Lillian Goldman Law Library at Yale University, with additional materials provided by the Law Library of Congress. Its 1.8 million pages span over 300 years of legal primary sources, such as early U.S. state codes, municipal codes, constitutional conventions and compilations, and other documents. -- Part II, 1763-1979: Extends this acclaimed archive into the second half of the twentieth century with more than 1.6 million scanned pages drawn from the three world-class American law libraries: the Harvard Law School Library, the Yale Law Library, and the Law Library of Congress.
Making of modern law : Trials 1600-1926 (Gale Primary Sources)
This archive contains unofficially published accounts of trials, official trial documents, briefs, and arguments as well as official records of legislative proceedings, administrative proceedings, and arbitrations from England and America.

Mapping the world : maps and travel literature (Gale Primary Sources)
A collection of English, Canadian and American nineteenth-century maps and travel literature, travel and tourist periodicals and personal reminiscences.
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The Mapping the World: Maps and Travel Literature archive includes a myriad of maps representing the long nineteenth century. Selections have been culled from the vast map repositories of the British Library and the National Archives at Kew. In addition to these large map collections, maps representing the Americas, and in particular America's westward expansion, have been provided by the American Antiquarian Society. Maps depicting Canada and the polar regions have been generously provided by the University of Alberta. Bryn Mawr's extensive collection of European Travel accounts provides a sweeping glance of the travel narrative genre. In addition to the Bryn Mawr Collection, selected travel narratives have been included from the collections of the American Antiquarian Society and the British Library.

Political Extremism and Radicalism in the Twentieth Century (Gale Primary Sources)
A compilation of rare and unique archival collections covering a wide range of fringe political movements from across the political spectrum.
It has been sourced from distinguished libraries and archives across the world but also premiers some previously hidden treasure troves. With an extensive scope of content focused on political extremism and radical thought, this archive covers a broad assortment of both far-right and left political groups. It offers a diverse mixture of materials, including periodicals, campaign propaganda, government records, oral histories, and various ephemera, which allow researchers to explore unorthodox social and political movements in new and innovative ways and to understand what impact they have had on today's society.The collections cover a period of just over a century (1900s to 2010s) when the world saw the formation of several civil rights movements for the rights of minorities, women's rights, and gay rights. It also encompasses the rise and fall of a number of peripheral groups deemed 'extreme' or 'radical' by contemporaries, such as anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic, anti-war, communist or socialist, creationist, environmentalist, hate, holocaust denial, new left, survivalist, white supremacist, and white nationalist. Global in scope, although the archive presents materials largely from the US and Britain, it also showcases important factions from Europe and Australia, such as the Norwegian Nazi Party and the Australian National Socialist Party. By spanning multiple geographic regions, the resource shows both the cultural impact of radical groups at a national level as well as the international networking and cross-border exchanges of extreme political movements. Extremist literature has always been difficult to find because its authors intend the material for a limited number of true believers. Consequently, print runs tend to be small and erratic or materials are intentionally ephemeral in nature, for instance stickers, leaflets, or pamphlets. In most instances it has taken a dedicated effort to amass and organize collections of this type. These records provide a unique, behind-the-scenes view of often inaccessible groups, such as the John Birch Society or the Black Panther Party.

Public domain primary sources:

Digital Library on American Slavery
The University of North Carolina Libraries provide access to digital collections of primary resources concerning slavery. These include metadata and digital copies of the original documents. The Digital Library on American Slavery is well organized, includes several collections such as the Race and Slavery Petitions Project, and offers access to additional collections provided by other institutions. The resource continues to add collections, such as the North Carolina Slave Deeds now in development, and metadata are available for libraries to link to digital artifacts.
Documenting the American South
Documenting the American South (DocSouth) is a digital publishing initiative that provides Internet access to texts, images, and audio files related to southern history, literature, and culture. Currently DocSouth includes sixteen thematic collections of books, diaries, posters, artifacts, letters, oral history interviews, and songs.
KKK Newspapers / Hate in America: The Rise and Fall of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s
When the re-formed Ku Klux Klan reached its peak of influence in the mid-1920s, more than four million members were exposed to reactionary rhetoric through widely distributed newspapers produced by local, state, and national branches of the KKK, as well as affiliated publishers. Few libraries at the time collected the newspapers, however, making it difficult for later researchers to access these scattered titles. Reveal Digital, using a “crowdfunding” financial model, is digitizing and making available via open access a growing number of Klan newspapers.
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database has information on almost 36,000 slaving voyages that forcibly embarked over 10 million Africans for transport to the Americas between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. The actual number is estimated to have been as high as 12.5 million. The database and the separate estimates interface offer researchers, students and the general public a chance to rediscover the reality of one of the largest forced movements of peoples in world history.

Empire Online (Adam Matthew Digital)
Documents relating to Empire Studies, sourced from libraries and archives around the world. Primarily British Empire.
Summary of licence

Public domain primary sources:

ABS Statistics
Australia's national statistical agency and an official source of independent, reliable information. Access to the full range of the Bureau's statistical and reference information, including census data from 1996 onwards.

Australian Digital Collections
University of Sydney Library's collection of Australian Literary and Historical Texts. The texts are encoded according to the Text Encoding Initiative's guidelines for text encoding and interchange. The collection has been growing since 1997 with funding from a number of national grants and institutional collaborations.
Australian War Memorial
Includes photographs, text, art, private records, film, sound and official records.
Convict transportation registers database
The British Convict transportation registers 1787-1867 database has been compiled from the British Home Office (HO) records which are available on microfilm at all Australian State Libraries. You can find details for over 123 000 of the estimated 160 000 convicts transported to Australia in the 18th and 19th centuries - names, term of years, transport ships and more.
National Archives of Australia
"The National Archives of Australia holds the memory of our nation and keeps vital Australian Government records safe"
National Library of Australia
The National Library has an extensive collection of primary source material relating to the history and culture of Australia. These records give first-hand evidence of historical events or experiences.

Trove
Digital collection of Australian information including newspapers, governement gazettes, maps, magazines, newsletters, books, pictures, photographs, archived websites, music, diaries, letters, personal archives and inteviews.

Europe and Africa: commerce, Christianity, civilization, and conquest (Gale Nineteenth Century Collections Online)
Coverage 1800s. Includes monographs, manuscripts, and newspaper accounts covering key issues of economics, world politics.
European literature, 1790-1840 : The Corvey Collection (Gale Nineteenth Century Collections Online)
Collection contains English, French and German titles from the library of Victor Amadeus, Landgrave of Hesse-Rotenberg. Includes archives of the Romantic era, including fiction, short prose, dramatic works and poetry.

Making of the Modern World (Gale Primary Sources)
Primary sources that document the dynamics of Western economics and business between 1450 - 1945. Includes material on trade, finance, the modern labor movement, slavery, colonization, monarchy, revolution, social history, gender, politics, trade and transport.
It assists in understanding the competition for empire and the projection of European power from 1500 to the early twentieth century, and the historical underpinnings integral to the study of economics and European imperialism. Four modules may be searched individually or together: Part 1, The Goldsmith's-Kress Collection 1450-1850; Part 2, 1851-1914; Part 3, 1890-1945; and Part 4, (1800-1890).

Mapping the world : maps and travel literature (Gale Primary Sources)
A collection of English, Canadian and American nineteenth-century maps and travel literature, travel and tourist periodicals and personal reminiscences.
more...less...
The Mapping the World: Maps and Travel Literature archive includes a myriad of maps representing the long nineteenth century. Selections have been culled from the vast map repositories of the British Library and the National Archives at Kew. In addition to these large map collections, maps representing the Americas, and in particular America's westward expansion, have been provided by the American Antiquarian Society. Maps depicting Canada and the polar regions have been generously provided by the University of Alberta. Bryn Mawr's extensive collection of European Travel accounts provides a sweeping glance of the travel narrative genre. In addition to the Bryn Mawr Collection, selected travel narratives have been included from the collections of the American Antiquarian Society and the British Library.

Refugees, relief and resettlement: forced migration and World War II (Gale Primary Sources)
Collects a variety of primary sources that document the history of forced migration before, during and after World War II.

Public domain primary sources:

European History Primary Sources
The purpose of European History Primary Sources (EHPS) is to provide an easily searchable index of scholarly digital repositories that contain primary sources for the history of Europe. As the number of digital archives on the internet continues to grow, finding and selecting repositories becomes increasingly difficult. EHPS strives to fill that gap by listing the most important collections of digital primary sources for the history of Europe, either as a whole or for single countries.
Europeana
Images, text, audio and video from European libraries, galleries, museums and archives.

19th Century British Pamphlets
Throughout the 19th century, pamphlets were an important means of public debate, covering the key political, social, technological, and environmental issues of their day. 19th Century British Pamphlets, created by Research Libraries UK (RLUK), contains the most significant British pamphlets from the 19th century held in research libraries in the United Kingdom. The digitization of more than 26,000 pamphlets from collections in seven universities in the UK spanning more than one million pages brings together a corpus of primary sources for the study of sociopolitical and economic factors impacting 19th-century Britain.

19th century UK periodicals (Gale Primary Sources)
Covers the events, lives, values and themes that shaped the 19th century in Britain.
Series 1, New Readerships, provides insight into the evolving life of British culture, at a time when reading for leisure, women’s rights, children’s entertainment, and sports increased alongside the growth of publishing. Titles like Hearth and Home; Good Works for the Young; Punch; and Baily’s Monthly Magazine of Sports and Pastimes, and Racing Register, track the expansion of humour, education, and hobbies. Series 2: Empire: Travel and Anthology, Economics, Missionary and Colonial, addresses expansionism, perspectives on power, governmental theory, and cultural transmission, while providing students, researchers, and enthusiasts with unprecedented online access to both the economic and non-mercantile aspects of the Romantic and Victorian eras.
British Library Newspapers (Gale Primary Sources)
British Library Newspapers consists of collections from the British Library which span three hundred years of newspaper publishing in the U.K.
For decades, even hundreds of years after publication, researchers of all kinds, all over the world, turn to newspapers for information relating to a widest variety of research needs. The rise of newspapers in Britain was a phenomenon which characterized a new age. The newspaper was increasingly a medium for information required by the commercially minded societies of major cities and regional centers. Taken as a whole, the huge production of newspapers in Britain provides an enormous resource for research on all subjects for all of the U.K., both urban and rural. The bulk of advertising, particularly for new books and theatrical performances, has proved especially useful to historians. Cultural trends, political currents and social problems are reflected in the newspapers and give new freshness and immediacy to the historic events.

British politics and society (Gale Primary Sources)
Contains primary source documentation that enhances a greater understanding and analysis of the development of urban centers and of the major restructuring of society that took place during the Industrial Revolution. The archive is composed of a number of individual collections, drawn together from a variety of sources.
British theatre, music and literature : high and popular culture (Gale Primary Sources)
Features a wide range of primary sources related to the arts in the Victorian era, from playbills and scripts to operas and complete scores.

Eighteenth Century Collections Online (Gale Primary Sources)
Coverage 1701 to 1800. Includes English-language and foreign-language titles printed in the United Kingdom, along with thousands of important works from the Americas.
Consists of books, pamphlets, broadsides, ephemera. Subject categories include history and geography; fine arts and social sciences; medicine, science, and technology; literature and language; religion and philosophy; law; general reference. Also included are significant collections of women writers of the eighteenth century, collections on the French Revolution, and numerous eighteenth-century editions of the works of Shakespeare. Where they add scholarly value or contain important differences, multiple editions of each individual work are offered.
London Low Life (Adam Matthew Digital)
Primary sources and essays relating to the life and times of Victorian London. Access to maps, cartoons, street literature, slang dictionaries and ballads. Useful for students of literature, cultural studies, urban studies, geography and built environment, criminology, social history and leisure and tourism.
Summary of licence
Making of modern law : Trials 1600-1926 (Gale Primary Sources)
This archive contains unofficially published accounts of trials, official trial documents, briefs, and arguments as well as official records of legislative proceedings, administrative proceedings, and arbitrations from England and America.

Mapping the world : maps and travel literature (Gale Primary Sources)
A collection of English, Canadian and American nineteenth-century maps and travel literature, travel and tourist periodicals and personal reminiscences.
more...less...
The Mapping the World: Maps and Travel Literature archive includes a myriad of maps representing the long nineteenth century. Selections have been culled from the vast map repositories of the British Library and the National Archives at Kew. In addition to these large map collections, maps representing the Americas, and in particular America's westward expansion, have been provided by the American Antiquarian Society. Maps depicting Canada and the polar regions have been generously provided by the University of Alberta. Bryn Mawr's extensive collection of European Travel accounts provides a sweeping glance of the travel narrative genre. In addition to the Bryn Mawr Collection, selected travel narratives have been included from the collections of the American Antiquarian Society and the British Library.

Mass Observation Online (Adam Matthew Digital)
Access to primary sources in social history with material related to British life dating from 1937-1967. Includes diaries, day surveys, topic collections, and file reports, an interactive chronology with key social, politial and cultural moments, an interactive map, photos and posters.
Summary of licence - Mass Observation Online
Summary of licence - Mass Observation I
Summary of licence - Mass Observation II
Summary of licence - Mass Observation III
Summary of licence - Mass Observation IV
Mass Observation Project, 1981-2009 (Adam Matthew Digital)
Documents social history in Britain. Volunteers write about their lives and opinions, providing qualitative social data. Current content dates from the 1980's, 1990's and 2000's.
Summary of licence
Political Extremism and Radicalism in the Twentieth Century (Gale Primary Sources)
A compilation of rare and unique archival collections covering a wide range of fringe political movements from across the political spectrum.
It has been sourced from distinguished libraries and archives across the world but also premiers some previously hidden treasure troves. With an extensive scope of content focused on political extremism and radical thought, this archive covers a broad assortment of both far-right and left political groups. It offers a diverse mixture of materials, including periodicals, campaign propaganda, government records, oral histories, and various ephemera, which allow researchers to explore unorthodox social and political movements in new and innovative ways and to understand what impact they have had on today's society.The collections cover a period of just over a century (1900s to 2010s) when the world saw the formation of several civil rights movements for the rights of minorities, women's rights, and gay rights. It also encompasses the rise and fall of a number of peripheral groups deemed 'extreme' or 'radical' by contemporaries, such as anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic, anti-war, communist or socialist, creationist, environmentalist, hate, holocaust denial, new left, survivalist, white supremacist, and white nationalist. Global in scope, although the archive presents materials largely from the US and Britain, it also showcases important factions from Europe and Australia, such as the Norwegian Nazi Party and the Australian National Socialist Party. By spanning multiple geographic regions, the resource shows both the cultural impact of radical groups at a national level as well as the international networking and cross-border exchanges of extreme political movements. Extremist literature has always been difficult to find because its authors intend the material for a limited number of true believers. Consequently, print runs tend to be small and erratic or materials are intentionally ephemeral in nature, for instance stickers, leaflets, or pamphlets. In most instances it has taken a dedicated effort to amass and organize collections of this type. These records provide a unique, behind-the-scenes view of often inaccessible groups, such as the John Birch Society or the Black Panther Party.

Public domain primary sources:

British Cartoon Archive
A library, archive, and exhibition gallery, and dedicated to the history of British cartooning over the last two hundred years. The BCA holds the artwork for more than 150,000 British editorial, socio-political, and pocket cartoons, supported by large collections of comic strips, newspaper cuttings, books and magazines. The collection dates back to 1904
British History Online
A digital library containing some of the core printed primary and secondary sources for the medieval and modern history of the British Isles.
London Lives, 1690 to 1800 - Crime, Poverty and Social Policy in the Metropolis
London Lives makes available, in a fully digitised and searchable form, a wide range of primary sources about eighteenth-century London, with a particular focus on plebeian Londoners. This resource includes over 240,000 manuscript and printed pages created by other projects.
UK Data Archive
The UK Data Service provides access to over 6,000 digital data collections for research and teaching purposes covering an extensive range of key economic and social data, both quantitative and qualitative, and spanning many disciplines and themes.
A Vision of Britain Through Time
A vision of Britain through time brings together primary source material from between 1801 and 2001. Includes maps, statistical trends and historical descriptions.

Archives Unbound (Gale Primary Sources)
Covers a broad range of topics from the Middle Ages forward, including U.S. foreign policy; U.S. civil rights; global affairs and colonial studies; and modern history.
British Library Newspapers (Gale Primary Sources)
British Library Newspapers consists of collections from the British Library which span three hundred years of newspaper publishing in the U.K.
For decades, even hundreds of years after publication, researchers of all kinds, all over the world, turn to newspapers for information relating to a widest variety of research needs. The rise of newspapers in Britain was a phenomenon which characterized a new age. The newspaper was increasingly a medium for information required by the commercially minded societies of major cities and regional centers. Taken as a whole, the huge production of newspapers in Britain provides an enormous resource for research on all subjects for all of the U.K., both urban and rural. The bulk of advertising, particularly for new books and theatrical performances, has proved especially useful to historians. Cultural trends, political currents and social problems are reflected in the newspapers and give new freshness and immediacy to the historic events.
China, America and the Pacific (Adam Matthew Digital)
Archival material relating to the trade and cultural relationships between America, China and the Pacific region between the 18th century and early 20th century.
NOTE: Database allows data and text mining.
China : Culture and Society (Adam Matthew Digital)
Digitisation of Cornell University Library's Charles W. Wason Collection (c1750-1929), including additional secondary resources, including academic essays, an interactive chronology and guides.
NOTE: Database allows data and text mining.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online (Gale Primary Sources)
Coverage 1701 to 1800. Includes English-language and foreign-language titles printed in the United Kingdom, along with thousands of important works from the Americas.
Consists of books, pamphlets, broadsides, ephemera. Subject categories include history and geography; fine arts and social sciences; medicine, science, and technology; literature and language; religion and philosophy; law; general reference. Also included are significant collections of women writers of the eighteenth century, collections on the French Revolution, and numerous eighteenth-century editions of the works of Shakespeare. Where they add scholarly value or contain important differences, multiple editions of each individual work are offered.
Eighteenth Century Journals (Adam Matthew Digital)
Contains newspapers and periodicals 1685-1835. Includes rare journals, covering all aspects of social, political and literary life in this time period.
Summary of licence - Eighteenth Century Journals I
Summary of licence - Eighteenth Century Journals I I
Summary of licence - Eighteenth Century Journals III
Summary of licence - Eighteenth Century Journals IV
Summary of licence - Eighteenth Century Journals V
Romanticism : Life, Literature and Landscape (Adam Matthew Digital)
Collects many of the working notebooks, verse manuscripts, correspondence, diaries and personal journals of prominent writers including William Wordsworth and his contemporaries.
Summary of licence
Times Digital Archive 1785-2014 (Gale Primary Sources)
Full text searchable digital edition of the London Times . Note: Coverage 1785-2014.
Summary of licence

Public domain primary sources:

London Lives, 1690 to 1800 - Crime, Poverty and Social Policy in the Metropolis
London Lives makes available, in a fully digitised and searchable form, a wide range of primary sources about eighteenth-century London, with a particular focus on plebeian Londoners. This resource includes over 240,000 manuscript and printed pages created by other projects.

19th century UK periodicals (Gale Primary Sources)
Covers the events, lives, values and themes that shaped the 19th century in Britain.
Series 1, New Readerships, provides insight into the evolving life of British culture, at a time when reading for leisure, women’s rights, children’s entertainment, and sports increased alongside the growth of publishing. Titles like Hearth and Home; Good Works for the Young; Punch; and Baily’s Monthly Magazine of Sports and Pastimes, and Racing Register, track the expansion of humour, education, and hobbies. Series 2: Empire: Travel and Anthology, Economics, Missionary and Colonial, addresses expansionism, perspectives on power, governmental theory, and cultural transmission, while providing students, researchers, and enthusiasts with unprecedented online access to both the economic and non-mercantile aspects of the Romantic and Victorian eras.
Archives Unbound (Gale Primary Sources)
Covers a broad range of topics from the Middle Ages forward, including U.S. foreign policy; U.S. civil rights; global affairs and colonial studies; and modern history.

Asia and the West : diplomacy and cultural exchange (Gale Nineteenth Century Collections Online)
A collection of manuscript collections consisting of British Foreign Office and United States consular and diplomatic service records relating to Asian countries during the nineteenth century. A selection of Asian missionary correspondence and journals is also included.
Brazilian and Portuguese history and culture (Gale Primary Sources)
A digitized collection of about 4000 pamphlets (of 50 pages or less) held at the Oliveira Lima Library at the Catholic University of America, published chiefly in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The pamphlets cover Brazilian and Portuguese history, politics, literature, and other important subject areas in the form of speeches, flyers, official decrees, sermons, poems, plays, concert and theater programs, and more.

British Library Newspapers (Gale Primary Sources)
British Library Newspapers consists of collections from the British Library which span three hundred years of newspaper publishing in the U.K.
For decades, even hundreds of years after publication, researchers of all kinds, all over the world, turn to newspapers for information relating to a widest variety of research needs. The rise of newspapers in Britain was a phenomenon which characterized a new age. The newspaper was increasingly a medium for information required by the commercially minded societies of major cities and regional centers. Taken as a whole, the huge production of newspapers in Britain provides an enormous resource for research on all subjects for all of the U.K., both urban and rural. The bulk of advertising, particularly for new books and theatrical performances, has proved especially useful to historians. Cultural trends, political currents and social problems are reflected in the newspapers and give new freshness and immediacy to the historic events.

British politics and society (Gale Primary Sources)
Contains primary source documentation that enhances a greater understanding and analysis of the development of urban centers and of the major restructuring of society that took place during the Industrial Revolution. The archive is composed of a number of individual collections, drawn together from a variety of sources.
British theatre, music and literature : high and popular culture (Gale Primary Sources)
Features a wide range of primary sources related to the arts in the Victorian era, from playbills and scripts to operas and complete scores.
Children's literature and childhood (Gale Primary Sources)
Provides a range of primary sources related to the experience of childhood in the long nineteenth century. Included in the archive are books and periodicals for children, primers and other material related to education, pamphlets produced by child welfare groups, documents and photos related to children and crime, newspapers produced by youths, and more.
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Curated by experts in the field of children's literature, this unique assemblage of material is sourced from such renowned institutions as the University of Florida's Baldwin Library Collection of Historical Children's Literature, the National Archives (UK), and the British Library, among others.

China, America and the Pacific (Adam Matthew Digital)
Archival material relating to the trade and cultural relationships between America, China and the Pacific region between the 18th century and early 20th century.
NOTE: Database allows data and text mining.
China and the Modern World (Gale Primary Sources)
Spanning 1800 to 1980s. Archival original documents, largely from Historical Archives of China and the British Library. Text can be analysised using the associated Gale Digital Scholar product.
Consisting of monographs, manuscripts, periodicals, correspondence and letters, historical photos, ephemera, and other kinds of historical documents, these collections provide excellent primary source materials for the understanding and research of the various aspects of China during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, such as diplomacy/international relations, economy/trade, politics, Christianity, sinology, education, science and technology, imperialism, and globalization.
China : Culture and Society (Adam Matthew Digital)
Digitisation of Cornell University Library's Charles W. Wason Collection (c1750-1929), including additional secondary resources, including academic essays, an interactive chronology and guides.
NOTE: Database allows data and text mining.
China : Trade, Politics and Culture, 1793-1980 (Adam Matthew Digital)
Contains the Macartney and Amherst Embassies, the Opium War, Arrow War, Boxer Rebellion, Taiping Rebellion, the opening of treaty ports, the Chinese Maritime Customs Service and the birth of the People's Republic. Includes maps, drawings and photographs, and personal accounts.
Summary of licence
Crime, punishment and popular culture (Gale Primary Sources)
Spanning 1790-1920, this archive is on Crime, Punishment, and Popular Culture, contains manuscripts, books, broadsheets, and periodicals, printed matter. Documents can be converted to text and analysed using Gale Digital Scholar.
The collection covers Europe, North America, India, and the Antipodes and includes material in English, Spanish, French, Italian, and German. Using this archive, it is possible to trace the influence of a legal judgement or development of a penal methodology through various different jurisdictions. The archive also unites a number of disciplines, from law, criminology, and history to studies of popular culture and fiction.
Economist Historical Archive 1843-2016 (Gale Primary Sources)
Original archival content from The Economist with text translations available. Text can be analysed with accompanying Gale Digital Scholar tool. Note: Coverage from 1843 to 2015
Summary of licence

Europe and Africa: commerce, Christianity, civilization, and conquest (Gale Nineteenth Century Collections Online)
Coverage 1800s. Includes monographs, manuscripts, and newspaper accounts covering key issues of economics, world politics.
European literature, 1790-1840 : The Corvey Collection (Gale Nineteenth Century Collections Online)
Collection contains English, French and German titles from the library of Victor Amadeus, Landgrave of Hesse-Rotenberg. Includes archives of the Romantic era, including fiction, short prose, dramatic works and poetry.

Financial Times Historical Archive 1888-2010 (Gale Primary Sources)
Search and browse every printed copy of the Finanacial Times Newspaper. Topics include economic and business history and current affairs.
Summary of licence
London Low Life (Adam Matthew Digital)
Primary sources and essays relating to the life and times of Victorian London. Access to maps, cartoons, street literature, slang dictionaries and ballads. Useful for students of literature, cultural studies, urban studies, geography and built environment, criminology, social history and leisure and tourism.
Summary of licence

Mapping the world : maps and travel literature (Gale Primary Sources)
A collection of English, Canadian and American nineteenth-century maps and travel literature, travel and tourist periodicals and personal reminiscences.
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The Mapping the World: Maps and Travel Literature archive includes a myriad of maps representing the long nineteenth century. Selections have been culled from the vast map repositories of the British Library and the National Archives at Kew. In addition to these large map collections, maps representing the Americas, and in particular America's westward expansion, have been provided by the American Antiquarian Society. Maps depicting Canada and the polar regions have been generously provided by the University of Alberta. Bryn Mawr's extensive collection of European Travel accounts provides a sweeping glance of the travel narrative genre. In addition to the Bryn Mawr Collection, selected travel narratives have been included from the collections of the American Antiquarian Society and the British Library.
Photography, the world through the lens (Gale Nineteenth Century Collections Online)
Contains collections of photographs, photograph albums, photographically illustrated books and texts on the early history of photography from libraries and archives internationally.
Religion, society, spirituality, and reform (Gale Nineteenth Century Collections Online)
Brings together monograph and manuscript collections into a single, searchable environment to help scholars examine religion’s influences on the shaping of politics, law, economics, and social mores.
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Researchers can explore religious and philosophical movements that resulted in reaction to the dramatic changes in culture and society brought on by the Industrial Revolution and modern advancements. Topics covered include positivism, freethought, alternative Christianity, and the application of social principles of Christianity to everyday life by a variety of denominations.

Romanticism : Life, Literature and Landscape (Adam Matthew Digital)
Collects many of the working notebooks, verse manuscripts, correspondence, diaries and personal journals of prominent writers including William Wordsworth and his contemporaries.
Summary of licence

Science, technology, and medicine: 1780-1925, Part II (Gale Nineteenth Century Collections Online)
Contains scientific material from the late seventeenth century to the early twentieth century. Divided into four major areas: science, natural history, public health and entomology.
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Taken together, the documents in this collection offer students and scholars a rare window onto the development of modern science and its methods. Of particular utility to all scientific researchers is the unique collection Academies of Science Publications, which runs from 1665 to 1925.
Science, technology and medicine: 1780-1925, Part I (Gale Nineteenth Century Collections Online)
Collects a selection of journal, books, reports, and personal documents that explore the rapid acceleration of scientific, technical, and medical knowledge across the 19th Century.
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Changes can be traced from the Newtonian world to that of Einstein, from the horse to the automobile, from medical treatments based on humors and bloodletting to antiseptics and epidemiology. This archive covers every aspect of nineteenth-century science. The documents collected represent the most theoretical pursuits as well as practical applications and popular science.

Times Digital Archive 1785-2014 (Gale Primary Sources)
Full text searchable digital edition of the London Times . Note: Coverage 1785-2014.
Summary of licence

Women: transnational networks (Gale Nineteenth Century Collections Online)
Primary source collection focusing on the 19th century, gender, and class through a transnational perspective.

Crime, punishment and popular culture (Gale Primary Sources)
Spanning 1790-1920, this archive is on Crime, Punishment, and Popular Culture, contains manuscripts, books, broadsheets, and periodicals, printed matter. Documents can be converted to text and analysed using Gale Digital Scholar.
The collection covers Europe, North America, India, and the Antipodes and includes material in English, Spanish, French, Italian, and German. Using this archive, it is possible to trace the influence of a legal judgement or development of a penal methodology through various different jurisdictions. The archive also unites a number of disciplines, from law, criminology, and history to studies of popular culture and fiction.
Making of modern law : American Civil Liberties Union papers, 1912-1990 (Gale Primary Sources)
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has throughout its history consistently stood at the center of controversies involving the rights of Americans. Its records offer researchers a unique view of the inner workings of the organization and the hundreds of groups with which the ACLU interacted.
Covering the years from before the ACLU’s official founding in 1920 through the 20th century, this archive offers an array of primary source materials on some of the most important issues that affected the United States.
Making of modern law : Foreign, comparative and international law, 1600-1926 (Gale Primary Sources)
Includes pre-1926 treatises and similar monographs on foreign, comparative and international law, sourced from the collections of the law libraries at Yale, George Washington University, and Columbia University.
International Law constitutes the largest category in the archive. It corresponds mainly to the period of Making of Modern Law: Legal Treatises, with classics since the sixteenth century, including works by Gentili, Grotius, Selden, Zouche, Pufendorf, Bijnkershoek, Wolff, Vattel, Martens, Mackintosh, Wheaton, among many others. Foreign Law encompasses foreign legal treatises of a variety of countries. Because the term "treatise" is more of a common-law category, the equivalent works in civil-law systems may have other names such as commentaries, encyclopedias, textbooks, monographs, or festschriften. Comparative Law compares more than one legal system and includes Ancient, Roman, Jewish Law, and Islamic Law. The collection recognizes that the roots of English common law will be found in the deep recesses of European history.
Making of modern law : Foreign primary sources (Gale Primary Sources)
This archive, which complements the collection of treatises found in Foreign, Comparative and International Law 1600-1926, provides an interpretive analysis with books on codes, the "primary sources" of law.
Part I focuses on Europe, including regulations, session laws, journals, and codes and commentaries. Included codes fall into several categories, such as Administration of Justice, Civil Law, Commercial Law, Military Law, and others. Part II covers United States state and territorial codes, municipal codes, and constitutional conventions and compilations. The collection also includes commentaries on codes, drawn from Spain, Portugal, Italy, Latin America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Africa, and Asia.
Making of modern law : Landmark records and briefs of the U.S. Courts of Appeals, 1950-1980. (Gale Primary Sources)
Expands dramatically the range of legal primary source documents available to researchers. This collection significantly deepens critical understanding of social, economic, political, and historical issues by surfacing over half a million pages of briefs from appellants, appellees, and supporters (amicus briefs), with their respective replies, as well as appendices, memoranda, petitions, plaintiff statements, transcripts, and more from the various circuits of the U.S. Courts of Appeals.
Making of modern law : Legal treatises 1800-1926 (Gale Primary Sources)
Originally derived from two essential reference collections for historical legal studies, the Nineteenth Century and Twentieth Century Legal Treatises microfilm collections. Provides digital images on every page of 22,000 legal treatises on US and British law published from 1800 through 1926.
Full-text searching on more than 10 million pages provides researchers access to critical legal history, including casebooks, local practice manuals, form books, works for lay readers, pamphlets, letters, speeches and more.
Making of modern law : Primary sources (Gale Primary Sources)
Part I, 1620-1926: Contains more than 1,300 individual titles sourced chiefly from the Lillian Goldman Law Library at Yale University, with additional materials provided by the Law Library of Congress. Its 1.8 million pages span over 300 years of legal primary sources, such as early U.S. state codes, municipal codes, constitutional conventions and compilations, and other documents. -- Part II, 1763-1979: Extends this acclaimed archive into the second half of the twentieth century with more than 1.6 million scanned pages drawn from the three world-class American law libraries: the Harvard Law School Library, the Yale Law Library, and the Law Library of Congress.
Making of modern law : Trials 1600-1926 (Gale Primary Sources)
This archive contains unofficially published accounts of trials, official trial documents, briefs, and arguments as well as official records of legislative proceedings, administrative proceedings, and arbitrations from England and America.
Political Extremism and Radicalism in the Twentieth Century (Gale Primary Sources)
A compilation of rare and unique archival collections covering a wide range of fringe political movements from across the political spectrum.
It has been sourced from distinguished libraries and archives across the world but also premiers some previously hidden treasure troves. With an extensive scope of content focused on political extremism and radical thought, this archive covers a broad assortment of both far-right and left political groups. It offers a diverse mixture of materials, including periodicals, campaign propaganda, government records, oral histories, and various ephemera, which allow researchers to explore unorthodox social and political movements in new and innovative ways and to understand what impact they have had on today's society.The collections cover a period of just over a century (1900s to 2010s) when the world saw the formation of several civil rights movements for the rights of minorities, women's rights, and gay rights. It also encompasses the rise and fall of a number of peripheral groups deemed 'extreme' or 'radical' by contemporaries, such as anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic, anti-war, communist or socialist, creationist, environmentalist, hate, holocaust denial, new left, survivalist, white supremacist, and white nationalist. Global in scope, although the archive presents materials largely from the US and Britain, it also showcases important factions from Europe and Australia, such as the Norwegian Nazi Party and the Australian National Socialist Party. By spanning multiple geographic regions, the resource shows both the cultural impact of radical groups at a national level as well as the international networking and cross-border exchanges of extreme political movements. Extremist literature has always been difficult to find because its authors intend the material for a limited number of true believers. Consequently, print runs tend to be small and erratic or materials are intentionally ephemeral in nature, for instance stickers, leaflets, or pamphlets. In most instances it has taken a dedicated effort to amass and organize collections of this type. These records provide a unique, behind-the-scenes view of often inaccessible groups, such as the John Birch Society or the Black Panther Party.

European literature, 1790-1840 : The Corvey Collection (Gale Nineteenth Century Collections Online)
Collection contains English, French and German titles from the library of Victor Amadeus, Landgrave of Hesse-Rotenberg. Includes archives of the Romantic era, including fiction, short prose, dramatic works and poetry.

Romanticism : Life, Literature and Landscape (Adam Matthew Digital)
Collects many of the working notebooks, verse manuscripts, correspondence, diaries and personal journals of prominent writers including William Wordsworth and his contemporaries.
Summary of licence

19th century UK periodicals (Gale Primary Sources)
Covers the events, lives, values and themes that shaped the 19th century in Britain.
Series 1, New Readerships, provides insight into the evolving life of British culture, at a time when reading for leisure, women’s rights, children’s entertainment, and sports increased alongside the growth of publishing. Titles like Hearth and Home; Good Works for the Young; Punch; and Baily’s Monthly Magazine of Sports and Pastimes, and Racing Register, track the expansion of humour, education, and hobbies. Series 2: Empire: Travel and Anthology, Economics, Missionary and Colonial, addresses expansionism, perspectives on power, governmental theory, and cultural transmission, while providing students, researchers, and enthusiasts with unprecedented online access to both the economic and non-mercantile aspects of the Romantic and Victorian eras.
British Library Newspapers (Gale Primary Sources)
British Library Newspapers consists of collections from the British Library which span three hundred years of newspaper publishing in the U.K.
For decades, even hundreds of years after publication, researchers of all kinds, all over the world, turn to newspapers for information relating to a widest variety of research needs. The rise of newspapers in Britain was a phenomenon which characterized a new age. The newspaper was increasingly a medium for information required by the commercially minded societies of major cities and regional centers. Taken as a whole, the huge production of newspapers in Britain provides an enormous resource for research on all subjects for all of the U.K., both urban and rural. The bulk of advertising, particularly for new books and theatrical performances, has proved especially useful to historians. Cultural trends, political currents and social problems are reflected in the newspapers and give new freshness and immediacy to the historic events.
Economist Historical Archive 1843-2016 (Gale Primary Sources)
Original archival content from The Economist with text translations available. Text can be analysed with accompanying Gale Digital Scholar tool. Note: Coverage from 1843 to 2015
Summary of licence
Eighteenth Century Journals (Adam Matthew Digital)
Contains newspapers and periodicals 1685-1835. Includes rare journals, covering all aspects of social, political and literary life in this time period.
Summary of licence - Eighteenth Century Journals I
Summary of licence - Eighteenth Century Journals I I
Summary of licence - Eighteenth Century Journals III
Summary of licence - Eighteenth Century Journals IV
Summary of licence - Eighteenth Century Journals V
Financial Times Historical Archive 1888-2010 (Gale Primary Sources)
Search and browse every printed copy of the Finanacial Times Newspaper. Topics include economic and business history and current affairs.
Summary of licence
Times Digital Archive 1785-2014 (Gale Primary Sources)
Full text searchable digital edition of the London Times . Note: Coverage 1785-2014.
Summary of licence
Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive 1902-2014 (Gale Primary Sources)
Full text archive which contains reviews of books, theatre and musical performances, art exhibitions, film and other cultural events. Note: Coverage 1902-1914.

KKK Newspapers / Hate in America: The Rise and Fall of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s
When the re-formed Ku Klux Klan reached its peak of influence in the mid-1920s, more than four million members were exposed to reactionary rhetoric through widely distributed newspapers produced by local, state, and national branches of the KKK, as well as affiliated publishers. Few libraries at the time collected the newspapers, however, making it difficult for later researchers to access these scattered titles. Reveal Digital, using a “crowdfunding” financial model, is digitizing and making available via open access a growing number of Klan newspapers.

Archives of sexuality and gender (Gale Primary Sources)
Provides a significant collection of primary sources for the historical study of sex, sexuality, and gender.
With material dating back to the sixteenth century, researchers and scholars can examine how sexual norms have changed over time, health and hygiene, the development of sex education, the rise of sexology, changing gender roles, social movements and activism, erotica, and many other interesting topical areas. This growing archival program offers rich research opportunities across a wide span of human history.

To search only on one, two or three of the four subcollections, go to Advanced Search and select the subcollection(s) in the 'By Archive' dropdown menu.

Women: transnational networks (Gale Nineteenth Century Collections Online)
Primary source collection focusing on the 19th century, gender, and class through a transnational perspective.

Women's Studies Archive (Gale Primary Sources)
This global archive covers the social, political, and professional aspects of women's lives and offers a look at the roles, experiences, and achievements of women in society. Focus is on the evolution of feminism throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
The first module in the Women’s Studies Archive, Issues and Identities traces the path of women’s issues from past to present, pulling primary sources from manuscripts, newspapers, periodicals, and more. It captures the foundation of women’s movements, struggles and triumphs, and focuses on the social, political, and professional achievements of women throughout the nineteenth and twentieth century. Module 2, Voice and Vision, builds on the platform started with Issues and Identities and brings yet more female voices to the forefront. Particular attention has been paid to the mediums through which women have created a voice for themselves, with female-authored literature, journals and magazines that were produced by women, not just for women. Looking beyond simply women’s suffrage, the archive covers multiple areas that are of key importance to the study of women’s history from a diverse and global perspective, from the abolition of slavery, alcohol and temperance movements, pacifism, and political activism, to domestic service, education, health and hygiene, divorce, and social reform. Module 3, Rare Titles from the American Antiquarian Society, 1820-1922, brings together over one million pages of women-authored works from the American Antiquarian Society, the pre-eminent collector of pre-20th century Americana, covering over a century of female writing. This unique corpus of female-authored literature centres on the American female experience in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The database not only provides women’s perspective of history but is an essential resource for researchers wanting to undertake in-depth analysis into women’s authorship enabling researchers to track the development of female language, literature, and ideas. Module 4, Female Forerunners Worldwide, concerns women trailblazers, both individuals and organisations, who have impacted society through social reform, popular culture, healthcare and more.

Public domain primary sources:

The Australian's Women's Register
Biographical information about Australian women and their organisations.

Archives Unbound (Gale Primary Sources)
Covers a broad range of topics from the Middle Ages forward, including U.S. foreign policy; U.S. civil rights; global affairs and colonial studies; and modern history.
Chatham House Online Archive
Contains research, analysis and commentary originating from the Royal Institute of International Affairs. Archive includes original scanned documents and OCR text of the orginial documents, also audio, photographs, maps. Covers twentieth century global world history. Part of the Gale Primary Sources collection. Content can be used in conjunction with Gale Digital Scholar for text analysis.
Subject-indexed briefing papers, special reports, pamphlets, conference papers and monographs will allow users to quickly retrieve and analyze material relevant to their own research or study. Users will also have access to the full-text of Chatham House's publications and audio recordings of Chatham House lectures and their fully searchable transcripts.
Empire Online (Adam Matthew Digital)
Documents relating to Empire Studies, sourced from libraries and archives around the world. Primarily British Empire.
Summary of licence
Global commodities : trade, exploration and cultural exchange (Adam Matthew Digital)
This original will help scholars to explore the history of fifteen major commodities and to examine the ways that these have changed the world.
Summary of licence
Global Plants
JSTOR Global Plants offers access to botanical resources from dozens of herbaria, libraries, museums and other research institutions. The database includes plant type specimens from herbaria around the world, scientific research articles and correspondence dating back hundreds of years, and full-text books and reference works on botany.
Making of the Modern World (Gale Primary Sources)
Primary sources that document the dynamics of Western economics and business between 1450 - 1945. Includes material on trade, finance, the modern labor movement, slavery, colonization, monarchy, revolution, social history, gender, politics, trade and transport.
It assists in understanding the competition for empire and the projection of European power from 1500 to the early twentieth century, and the historical underpinnings integral to the study of economics and European imperialism. Four modules may be searched individually or together: Part 1, The Goldsmith's-Kress Collection 1450-1850; Part 2, 1851-1914; Part 3, 1890-1945; and Part 4, (1800-1890).

Mapping the world : maps and travel literature (Gale Primary Sources)
A collection of English, Canadian and American nineteenth-century maps and travel literature, travel and tourist periodicals and personal reminiscences.
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The Mapping the World: Maps and Travel Literature archive includes a myriad of maps representing the long nineteenth century. Selections have been culled from the vast map repositories of the British Library and the National Archives at Kew. In addition to these large map collections, maps representing the Americas, and in particular America's westward expansion, have been provided by the American Antiquarian Society. Maps depicting Canada and the polar regions have been generously provided by the University of Alberta. Bryn Mawr's extensive collection of European Travel accounts provides a sweeping glance of the travel narrative genre. In addition to the Bryn Mawr Collection, selected travel narratives have been included from the collections of the American Antiquarian Society and the British Library.
Photography, the world through the lens (Gale Nineteenth Century Collections Online)
Contains collections of photographs, photograph albums, photographically illustrated books and texts on the early history of photography from libraries and archives internationally.

Refugees, relief and resettlement: forced migration and World War II (Gale Primary Sources)
Collects a variety of primary sources that document the history of forced migration before, during and after World War II.
Romanticism : Life, Literature and Landscape (Adam Matthew Digital)
Collects many of the working notebooks, verse manuscripts, correspondence, diaries and personal journals of prominent writers including William Wordsworth and his contemporaries.
Summary of licence
Slavery and Anti-Slavery : a Transnational Archive (Gale Primary Sources)
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 covering slave trade history. The archive is not just valuable to researchers in African history, but the wider scope of African studies and African-American studies, making it an unprecedented collection developed under the guidance of a board of scholars, it offers never-before-available research opportunities and endless teaching possibilities.
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 covering slave trade history. The archive is not just valuable to researchers in African history, but the wider scope of African studies and African-American studies, making it an unprecedented collection developed under the guidance of a board of scholars, it offers never-before-available research opportunities and endless teaching possibilities.
Times Digital Archive 1785-2014 (Gale Primary Sources)
Full text searchable digital edition of the London Times . Note: Coverage 1785-2014.
Summary of licence
Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive 1902-2014 (Gale Primary Sources)
Full text archive which contains reviews of books, theatre and musical performances, art exhibitions, film and other cultural events. Note: Coverage 1902-1914.

Public domain primary sources:

Harvard Digital Collections
Harvard University Library has a number of digital collections that cover important historical primary sources from around the world.

Griffith Archive

Griffith Archive
The Griffith Archive is a repository for historical artefacts relating to Griffith University since its conception. The Archive records Griffith’s story by collecting and digitally/physically preserving relevant documents, photographs, oral histories, memorabilia and other artefacts. It also details significant aspects of the organisation’s history and changes through the years.