Primary Sources for History

A collection of primary and secondary content relating to British and Irish history, and histories of empire and the British world. In addition to texts, the collection includes images, maps, guides, and datasets.

This collection includes the experiences of hundreds of women, as revealed diaries and letters, spanning more than 300 years.

Provides images of almost every work printed in the British Isles and North America, as well as works in English printed elsewhere, from 1470-1700.

Historical collection of India Office Records from the British Library, London. Containing royal charters, correspondence, trading diaries, minutes of council meetings, and reports of expeditions, among other document types. This resource charts the history of British trade and rule in the Indian subcontinent and beyond.

A corpus of books, pamphlets and broadsides in all subjects printed between 1701 and 1800. It is a digitization of the eighteenth-century section of the works catalogued in the English Short-title Catalogue, a project has been recording all works published or printed in Britain, Ireland, territories under British colonial rule, and the United States.

This resource brings together manuscript, printed and visual primary source materials for the study of 'Empire' and its theories, practices and consequences. The materials span across the last five centuries and tell the story of the Empire from the French, Spanish, Portuguese, and German points of view, as well as that of indigenous peoples from Africa, India and North America. Document types include exploration journals and logs, letter books and correspondence, periodicals, official government papers, missionary papers, travel writing, slave papers, memoirs, fiction, children’s adventure stories, traditional folk tales, exhibition catalogues and guides, maps, and marketing posters.

Historical primary source visual, manuscript, and printed materials documenting the trade of major commodities around the world from the 16th century to the present day. Commodities are: chocolate, coffee, cotton, fur, opium, oil, porcelain, silver/gold, spices, sugar, tea, timber, tobacco, wheat, and wine/spirits.

Provides complete online coverage of the sessional papers of the British House of Commons and the 19th Century House of Lords. It includes detailed primary source for the history of Britain, its colonies, and the wider world. It covers working documents of government for all areas of social, political, economic and foreign policy.

A collection of primary sources that cover the history of Western trade, encompassing the coal, iron, and steel industries, the railway industry, the cotton industry, banking and finance, and the emergence of the modern corporation. Additional material covers the modern labor movement, the evolving status of slavery, the condition and making of the working class, colonization, the Atlantic world, Latin American/Caribbean studies, social history, gender, and the economic theories that championed and challenged capitalism in the nineteenth century.

A global digitization and publishing program focusing on primary source collections of the nineteenth century. Includes a variety of material types: monographs, newspapers, pamphlets, manuscripts, ephemera, maps, statistics, and more. Collections include Asia and the West; British Politics & Society; British Theatre, Music, and Literature; Children's Literature and Childhood; Europe and Africa: Colonialism and Culture; European Literature, 1790-1840: The Corvey Collection; Maps and Travel Literature; Photography; Religion, Reform, and Society; Science, Technology, and Medicine; And Women and Transnational Networks.

This collection provides complete FCO 7 and FCO 82 files for the entire period of Richard Nixon’s presidency. It inlcudes top-level Anglo-American discussions and briefing papers, and material on social conditions, domestic reforms, trade, culture and the environment. There is strong coverage of US policy decisions by the FCO and the British embassy in Washington; White House staff appointments and UN discussions; views on Europe; the deployment of F-111 aircraft on US airbases in the UK and Nixon’s battles over funding from Congress; visits to the US by Harold Wilson and Edward Heath; and the internal situation in the US and domestic reform.

This module, subtitled Rock and Roll, Counterculture, Peace and Protest, traces the development from 1950s austerity to the excess of the 1970s through a range of printed and manuscript sources, visual material, ephemera and video footage including: pamphlets, letters, government files, and eye witness accounts covering key events of the period; the renowned Social Protest Collection from University of California, Berkeley; underground magazines including OZ and IT; as well as American fanzines and alternative press titles from Bowling Green State University; photographs depicting the people and events of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s; ephemera and memorabilia – posters, pins and artifacts; a collection of carefully selected video footage that brings the sights and sounds of the period to life.