Research Guides: Finding Primary Sources: Digitized Archival Collections Focusing on Specific Topics and Themes

Digitized Archival Collections Focusing on Specific Topics and Themes

African American Archives
Offers access to more than one million pages of original historical documents pertaining to the African-American experience over several centuries, material drawn from Essential Records Concerning Slavery and Emancipation from the Danish West Indies (1672-1917) and from some other slavery-related collections. Content includes letters, account books, annual reports, and news clippings.
African American Communities
"Focusing predominantly on Atlanta, Chicago, New York, and towns and cities in North Carolina …, presents multiple aspects of the African American community through pamphlets, newspapers and periodicals, correspondence, official records, reports and in-depth oral histories, revealing the prevalent challenges of racism, discrimination and integration, and a unique African American culture and identity."
Indigenous Histories and Cultures in North America
Draws on materials in the Edward E. Ayer Collection at The Newberry Library in Chicago. Spans the 17th through 20th centuries, from early contacts between European settlers and American Indians to long-term political, social, and cultural impacts on American Indian life. Includes treaties, speeches, petitions, diaries, travel journals, and ledger books; artwork; American Indian newspapers from the 1960s to the 1990s; rare printed books; photographs; and maps.
Black Studies Center
A gateway to Black Studies that includes articles from historical newspapers and recent periodicals as well as scholarly essays and material from the fields of literature, political science, sociology, philosophy, and religion.
Black Thought and Culture : African Americans to 1975
A collection of non-fiction works by prominent black American figures, as well as transcripts of speeches, interviews, trial transcripts, and other fugitive material.
China, America and the Pacific: Trade and Cultural Exchange
Includes correspondence, photographs, logbooks, and newspapers addressing trade between China and North America from the 18th to the early 20th century.
China: Trade, Politics and Culture 1793-1980
Offers documents, including letters, papers, illustrations, and maps, covering events in China from the 18th to the 20th century.
Civil War Primary Source Documents
Offers primary-source documents related to the American Civil War, including material from the years leading up to the War to the fall of the Confederacy, drawn from the collections of the New York Historical Society.
East India Company
Primary-source material covering the history of the East India Company, which originated as a 16th-century trading venture to the East Indies and at its peak became the world’s most powerful company and de facto ruler of India, controlling “over a quarter of the world’s trade and millions of the global populace.” Documents that include minutes of council meetings and council resolutions, charters, texts of legislation, correspondence, and printed books address subjects such as agriculture; courts and legal affairs; diplomacy, treaties and ambassadorial expeditions; railways; trade; and warfare and military matters.
Empire Online
"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 are accompanied by a host of secondary learning resources including scholarly essays, maps and an interactive chronology."

Epistolae: Medieval Women's Letters
A collection of medieval Latin letters to and from women dating from the 4th to the 13th centuries, presented in the original Latin as well as in English translation. Organized by the names and biographies of the women writers or recipients, and supplemented with biographical sketches, descriptions of letters' subject matter, and contextual historical information.

Age of Exploration
Archival materials spanning five centuries of European maritime exploration, c. 1420-1920. These include audio and visual material; manuscripts and early printed materials; maps and visual content; and correspondence, journals and personal accounts. Themes covered include expedition planning, financing & sponsorship; ships & provisions; new territories; life at sea; indigenous peoples; navigation, scientific observations and instruments; and more.
America in World War Two: Oral Histories and Personal Accounts
Oral histories, correspondence, diaries, photographs, artifacts, and military records telling the stories of American military personnel and civilians during the second World War. Content is digitized from the National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana.
American History 1493-1945
Correspondence, diaries, government documents, books, pamphlets, broadsides, photographs, artwork, and maps, digitized from the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History in New York. Consists of two modules: Module I, Settlement, Commerce, Revolution and Reform: 1493-1859 and Module 2, Civil War, Reconstruction and the Modern Era: 1860-1945.
American West
Broadsides, correspondence, diaries, drawings and illustrations, ephemera, financial records, maps, periodicals, photographs, and rare books documenting the westward expansion of the United States from 1718-1968.Covers papers of early pioneers, explorers and hunters; accounts of the Gold Rush; growth of railway and road networks; agricultural transformation of the West; Native American history and culture; and more.
Apartheid South Africa, 1948-1980
British Government documents about South Africa during the Apartheid regime spanning the period 1948-1980. Resources include documents, dispatches, reports, telegrams and handwritten embassy notes both from South Africa and from Britain, the United States and other powers. These provide first-hand analyses of South Africa's relationship with the international community, struggles with internal resistance, civil unrest and anti-apartheid organizations and the implementation of policies to forcibly remove black Africans into Bantustans.
China: Culture and Society
Books, photographs, historical surveys, encyclopedia and periodical articles, and statistical works documenting the culture, population, and geography of China from 1750-1929. Content is digitized from the Charles W. Wason Collection on East Asia at Cornell University Library.
Church Missionary Society Periodicals
Periodicals from the Church Missionary Society, South American Missionary Society, and the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society, published 1804-2009. Documents relate to missiology and world Christianity as well as material on broader themes in global history, education, healthcare and medicine. Includes modules 1 and 2.
Colonial America
Correspondence between the British Government and the American colonies, covering the period of 1606 to 1822. Includes charters, correspondence, diaries, business and financial documents, legal documents, legislation, newspapers, speeches, treaties, and warrants, digitized from CO 5 series from The National Archives, United Kingdom. Documents relate to English settlement, colonial legislation, warfare, taxation, trade and protectionism, religion, piracy and privateering, surveying and exploration, and war. Includes modules 1-5.
Confidential Print: Africa 1834-1966
Documents of the Colonial Office, Dominions Office and Foreign Office of the British Government specific to Africa from 1834 to 1966. Includes correspondence, dispatches, reports, and treaties. Documents relate to coastal trading in the early 19th century, the Conference of Berlin in 1884, the abuses of the Congo Free State, tropical diseases, Italy’s defeat by the Abyssinians, World War II, apartheid in South Africa, and the colonial moves toward independence.
Confidential Print: Latin America 1833-1969
Documents of the Colonial Office, Dominions Office and Foreign Office of the British Government specific to Central and South America and the French- and Spanish-speaking Caribbean from 1833-1969. Includes correspondence, dispatches reports, and treaties. Documents relate to slavery and the slave trade, immigration, relations with indigenous peoples, wars and territorial disputes, the fall of the Brazilian monarchy, British business and financial interests, industrial development, the building of the Panama Canal, and the rise to power of populist rulers such as Perón in Argentina and Vargas in Brazil.
Confidential Print: Middle East 1839-1969
Documents of the Colonial Office, Dominions Office and Foreign Office of the British Government specific to the Levant and the Arabian peninsula, Iran, Turkey, Egypt, and Sudan from 1839-1969. Includes correspondence, dispatches reports, and treaties. Documents relate to the Egyptian reforms under Muhammad Ali Pasha in the 1830s, the Middle East Conference of 1921, the mandates for Palestine and Mesopotamia, the partition of Palestine, the 1956 Suez Crisis and post-Suez western foreign policy, and the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Confidential Print: North America, 1824-1961
Documents of the Colonial Office, Dominions Office, and Foreign Office of the British Government specific to the United States, Canada, the English-speaking Caribbean, and Central and South America, from 1824-1961. Includes correspondence, dispatches, reports, and treaties. Documents relate to slavery, Prohibition, the First and Second World Wars, racial segregation, territorial disputes, the League of Nations, McCarthyism, and the nuclear bomb.
Defining Gender
Primary source material from multiple museum and library collections relevant to the study of traditional gender roles, education, ideals of conduct, education, exercise, distribution of power within the family, and consumption and leisure. Primary sources include correspondence, diaries, ephemera, government documents, manuscripts, periodicals, printed books along with secondary material such as biographical information, chronologies, and topical essays.
Eighteenth Century Drama
Plays from the John Larpent Collection in the Huntington Library, as well as correspondence, diaries, legal and financial documents, and scrapbooks. Plays were those submitted for license from 1737 to 1824. Reference features include the London Stage 1660-1800, Biographical Dictionary database 1660-1800, an image gallery, thematic indexing, and background essays.
Ethnomusicology: Global Field Recordings
Produced in conjunction with the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive, this collection includes audio field recordings and interviews, educational recordings, film footage, field notebooks, slides, correspondence, and ephemera collected between 1905 and 2019.
Everyday Life and Women in America, c1800-1920
Primary resources on everyday life from 1800-1920, including political, social and gender issues, religion, race, education, employment, marriage, sexuality, home and family life, health, and pastimes. Emphasizes differences in regional, urban, and rural cultures.
First World War Portal
Letters, diaries, photo albums, posters, propaganda, interactive maps, film clips, and official documents offering an international perspective on the Great War. Includes modules for Global Conflict, Personal Experiences, Propaganda and Recruitment, and Visual Perspectives.
Food and Drink in History
Manuscript and printed cookbooks, menus, and advertisements documenting the history of food and drink in the United States and Europe from 1500 to 2000. Content addresses issues such as gender, race, status, agriculture, nutrition, and food production from both a culinary and socio-economic approach. Includes Modules I and II.
Foreign Office Files for China, 1919-1980
British Foreign Office files relating to China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan between 1919 and 1980. Sources include government documents, dispatches, correspondence, newspaper clippings, maps, reports detailing influential Chinese personalities, and economic assessments during the rise of the modern state.
Foreign Office Files for India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, 1947-1980
British Foreign Office files relating to South Asia, post- World War II. Content includes reports, dispatches, maps, photographs, analyses, and statistical information documenting social and political history of India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Includes Modules 1-3.
Foreign Office Files for Japan, 1919-1952
British Foreign Office files relating to Japan during Imperialism, World War II, and occupation. Content includes diplomatic dispatches, correspondence, maps, newspaper clippings, and reports. Also includes files from the Western and American Department, and Far Eastern sub papers. Includes Modules 1-3.
Foreign Office Files for South East Asia
This collection follows the establishment of an independent Malaysia in 1963, following the release of the Cobbold Commission Report. Under President Sukarno, Indonesia strongly opposed this decision and hostilities between the two countries escalated. Alongside tensions with Malaysia, Indonesia would experience growing civil unrest in this period, with anti-Communist sentiments on the rise. Documents featured in this collection cover these fundamental events alongside a number of key themes, including trade, economic development and authoritarian rule in this period.
Foreign Office Files for the Middle East, 1971-1981
British Foreign Office files relating to the Middle East during the Arab-Israeli War, oil crisis, Lebanese Civil War, Iranian Revolution, and the Iran-Iraq War. Includes reports, dispatches, maps, photographs, analyses, and statistical information. Includes Modules 1-3
Frontier Life
Art, broadsides, diaries, memoirs, letters, photographs, maps, legal and business documents documenting the lives of people living at the edges of the Anglophone world from 1650-1920. It covers the colonial frontiers of North America, Southern Africa, Australia and New Zealand.
Gateway to North America: People, Places, and Organizations of 19th Century New York
Offers manuscripts, travel guides, maps, and other sources addressing New York City from the 18th through early 20th centuries, drawn from the collections of the New York Historical Society. Topics covered include industry, commerce, and immigration.
Global Commodities: Trade, Exploration and Cultural Exchange
A collection of primary sources focusing on “fifteen significant commodities whose stories are often intertwined: chocolate, coffee, cotton, fur, oil, opium, porcelain, silver and gold, spices, sugar, tea, timber, tobacco, wheat, and wine and spirits. These commodities have been transported, exchanged and consumed around the world for hundreds of years, transforming societies, global trading operations and habits of consumption, giving rise to new consumer desires and aspirations.”
India, Raj and Empire
Offers digital facsimiles of official and private papers, letters, diaries and journals, literary works, sketches, and paintings, material dating from 1710 to 1937 that has been drawn the manuscript collections of the National Library of Scotland. Addresses the relationship between Britain and India in an empire where the Scots played a central role as viceroys, governors-general, military officers, East India Company officials, traders, and missionaries.
Literary Print Culture/The Stationers' Company Archive, London
Based on the archive of the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspapers Makers, an entity that was “instrumental in the development of the printed book in early modern England, exerting enormous power over the publishing industry as it developed.” Includes the Entry Book of Copies (1554-1842); the Court Records (1602-1982); and the English Stock documents (1603-1961). Offers primary-source documents addressing the history of printing, publishing, bookselling, and copyright, material relevant to research on the book trade; print culture from the early modern period to the twentieth century; English literature; Renaissance theatre; and the history of the City of London.
London Low Life
A collection of primary-source material addressing working-class culture, criminality and policing, prostitution, social reform, street literature, popular music, and urban topography in 19th-century London. Includes street ephemera (posters, advertising, playbills, ballads, and broadsides), penny fiction, cartoons, maps, a complete collection of Tallis’ Street Views, and “swell’s guides” to London prostitution, gambling, and drinking dens.
Mass Observation Online, 1937-1972
Archive of Mass Observation, a pioneering social research organization founded in Great Britain in 1937. Holds material that can be relevant to research in cultural and social history, sociology, anthropology, education, literature, gender studies, and war studies. Among the subjects addressed in diaries, survey questionnaires and responses, file reports, original manuscript and typescript papers, printed publications, photographs, and interactive maps are various aspects of day-to-day lives of respondents during the period of 1937-1967. Topics include class, race, religion, sexual behavior, marriage, fashion, reading, radio and music, cinema, gambling, smoking, capital punishment, politics, World War II, propaganda, the atomic bomb, and the Korean War.
Nineteenth Century Collections Online
Offers an array of collections of primary-source material addressing many different aspects of the long nineteenth century. Specific collections available: Asia and the West: Diplomacy and Cultural Exchange; British Politics and Society; British Theatre, Music, and Literature: High and Popular Culture; Children's Literature and Childhood; Europe and Africa: Commerce, Christianity, Civilization, and Conquest; European Literature, 1790-1840: The Corvey Collection; Mapping the World: Maps and Travel Literature; Photography: The World through the Lens; Religion, Society, Spirituality, and Reform; Science, Technology, and Medicine: 1780-1925 (Parts I & II); Women: Transnational Networks.
North American Indian Thought and Culture
Offers access to primary and secondary sources on Native Americans of the 18th and 19th centuries. Includes biographies, oral histories, photos, drawings, and audio files related to North American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Canadian First Peoples.
Oral History Online
Offers access to thousands of English-language oral histories, e.g., Ellis Island oral history narratives and Black Panther Party interviews.
Political Extremism and Radicalism
A collection of primary-source material drawn from collections such as the American Radicalism Collection at Michigan State University; the Hall-Hoag Collection of Dissenting and Extremist Printed Propaganda at Brown University; the Searchlight Archive at the University of Northampton, UK; and the National Archives of the UK. Content includes oral histories, campaign materials, government records, and ephemera.
Shakespeare in Performance
"Showcases rare and unique prompt books from the world-famous Folger Shakespeare Library. These prompt books tell the story of Shakespeare’s plays as they were performed in theatres throughout Great Britain, the United States and internationally, between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries."
Sixties: Primary Documents and Personal Narratives 1960-1974
Offers material related to American social and political history, including diaries, letters, autobiographies and memoirs, written and oral histories, manifestos, government documents, memorabilia, and scholarly commentary. Themes addressed: Arts, Music, and Leisure; Civil Rights; Counter-Culture; Environmental Movement; Gay and Lesbian Rights; Law and Government; Mass Media; New Left and Emerging Neo-Conservative Movement; Science and Technology; Student Activism; Vietnam War; and Women’s Movement.
Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice
Offers primary-source documents drawn from archives and libraries across the Atlantic world to address key aspects of six centuries of slavery worldwide. Among topics covered are the African Coast, the Middle Passage, varieties of slave experience, religion, revolts, abolition, and legislation. Also includes case studies from the U.S., the Caribbean, Cuba, and Brazil.
Victorian Popular Culture
Offers primary-source material addressing these topics: Spiritualism, Sensation and Magic; Circuses, Sideshows and Freaks; Music Hall, Theatre and Popular Entertainment; Moving Pictures, Optical Entertainments and the Advent of Cinema. Among the types of material included are books, periodicals, manuscripts, diaries, correspondence, scripts, sheets music, engravings, photographs, films, pamphlets, handbills, posters, post cards, and scrapbooks.
Visual History Archive (Shoah Foundation and ProQuest)
Portal that allows users to search through and view more than 54,000 video testimonies of survivors and witnesses of genocide. Initially a repository of Holocaust testimony, the Visual History Archive has expanded to include testimonies from the Armenian Genocide that coincided with World War I, the 1937 Nanjing Massacre in China, the Cambodian Genocide of 1975-1979, the Guatemalan Genocide of 1978-1983, the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, the ongoing conflicts in the Central African Republic and South Sudan, and anti-Rohingya mass violence. It also includes testimonies about contemporary acts of violence against Jews.
Women and Social Movements, International
An online archive of published and manuscript primary sources focusing on women's international activism since the mid-nineteenth century. Includes proceedings of women's international conferences; books; pamphlets; articles from newspapers and journals; publications of contemporary non-governmental organizations; correspondence; diaries; amd memoirs.
Women and Social Movements US 1600-2000
Collection documenting American women's social reform activities. Offers both primary and secondary sources, including documents, images, books, scholarly essays, commentaries, and bibliographies.