Primary sources for humanities: Europe

This collection of Foreign Office files explores the history of Persia (Iran), Central Asia and Afghanistan from the decline of the Silk Road in the first half of the nineteenth century to the establishment of Soviet rule over parts of the region in the early 1920s. It encompasses the era of “The Great Game” - a political and diplomatic confrontation between the Russian and British Empires for influence, territory and trade across a vast region, from the Black Sea in the west to the Pamir Mountains in the east. It is comprised of correspondence, intelligence reports, agents’ diaries, minutes, maps, newspaper excerpts and other materials. This resource offers insights not only into the impact of Great Power politics on the region, but also the region’s peoples, cultures and societies.

The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World - primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies - and the powers of the Western world, primarily the U.S. and its NATO allies. This collection, which includes transcripts of oral recollections, provides an opportunity to understand the motivations for conflict and conciliation of many of the players in the Cold War.

This collection consists of items originating from prisoners held in German concentration camps, internment and transit camps, Gestapo prisons, and POW camps, during and just prior to World War II. Most of the collection consists of letters written or received by prisoners, but also includes receipts for parcels, money orders and personal effects; paper currency; and realia, including Star of David badges that Jews were forced to wear.

Database contains transcriptions of all handwritten documents from 1923 to July 1941, as well as subsequent writings that were dictated up to 1945. This edition is based on the reproduction of the entire diaries on glass microfiches commissioned by Goebbels himself that was discovered by Elke Frhlich in the former special archive in Moscow.

Portal brings together newspapers and rare journals printed between c1685 and 1835, illuminating all aspects of eighteenth-century social, political and literary life. Topics include: the writings of Sir Isaac Newton; the French Revolution; reviews of literature, the theater, and fashion throughout Europe; the origins and rise of Romanticism; political debates; gender, religion, influence of the press, and coffee house gossip and discussion.

Europeana.eu is a digital library containing over 30 million items, including images, texts, audio and video, from European museums, galleries, libraries, archives and audio-visual collections.

This resource brings together manuscript, printed and visual primary source materials for the study of global commodities in world history. The commodities featured in this resource have been transported, exchanged and consumed around the world for hundreds of years. They helped transform societies, global trading operations, habits of consumption and social practices.

This database includes information dating back to 1690 on the history of international law subjects such as war and peace, the Nuremberg trials, Law of the sea, International arbitration, Hague conferences and conventions and more. Included also are classic books from famous authors such as Hans Kelsen, Samuel Pufendorf and James Brown Scott. Also key journals such as the International Law Studies Series [U.S. Naval War College], International Conciliation, Studies in Transnational Legal Policy, and many others, links to scholarly articles discussing the history of international law, and a bibliography of works on international law.

The Internet Archive is a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artefacts in digital form, began in 1996. Includes the WayBackMachine for searching billions of web pages and archived web sites saved over time. Digitised books, videos, audio, software and images are also searchable.

This collection comprises documents from a wide variety of sources, including the Gestapo, local police and government offices, Reich ministries, businesses, etc., pertaining to Jewish communities. These records are organized into various sub-collections... and include newspaper clippings, letters, manuscripts, pamphlets, reports and other documents originating with the Sturmabteilung (SA), Schutzstaffel (SS), Gestapo, Reich Ministry of Justice, and Reichskulturkammer (RKK, Reich Chamber of Culture) from 1920- 1945.

David Diamant is the pseudonym of David Erlich, a Jewish communist and committed member of the underground resistance during World War II. This collection consists of original documents collected by Diamant over a period of approximately 30 years dealing primarily with the Jewish segment of the French underground resistance; many of the documents originate with communist groups, and some deal with Polish groups. Documents are in Yiddish and French.

The revolution of 1848 caused the final collapse of monarchy in France, and in the power vacuum that followed a range of competing voices sought to control the future direction of the country. The social and political upheavals of this period are comprehensively detailed in this unique collection of newspapers and periodicals, making it a useful resource for understanding modern European history. (In French)

So many research topics emerged from the colonial conquest and the legacy of slavery in modern South African society - the Anglo-Boer War, imperial policy, and race classification among them - that this volatile corner of nineteenth-century history draws enduring interest from scholars and students. To support their research, this archive delivers monographs, manuscripts, and newspaper accounts covering key issues of economics, world politics, and international strategy.

This online archive delivers essential primary sources for the study and understanding of the challenges facing the European peoples in the aftermath of World War II. It covers the politics and administration of the post war refugee crisis in Europe well as the day-to-day survival of the refugees themselves, and contains newly-commissioned essays by leading scholars. These essays offer an insight into key themes and provide direct links to the documents mentioned and a means to access for students unfamiliar with the original materials. Five documentary British Pathe films provide visual evidence of key issues covered by the documents.

This collection of digitized primary sources provides access to more than 150 years of the longest-established association dedicated to the furtherance of anthropology in its broadest sense, the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. This collection of association files, manuscripts, and photos documents the history of the association as well as the services it provided to contemporary anthropology and anthropologists. It is a collection of Wiley Digital Archives.

This database chronicles the plight of refugees and displaced persons across Europe, North Africa, and Asia from 1935 to 1950, bringing together over 590,000 pages of pamphlets, ephemera, government documents, relief organization publications, and refugee reports that recount the causes, effects and responses to refugee crises before, during and shortly after World War II. This rich collection makes it possible for researchers to unravel the complex history of forced migration in the twentieth century at every level.

IE or Firefox browser preferred
This collection of writings reveals the eventful history of Russia during the revolutionary era, from the perspective of metropolitan and provincial newspapers and journals published by the most radical political forces. Furthermore, these materials shed new light on the relationship of the anarchists with the Bolsheviks and the Soviet State, and also reveal the impact of anarchist ideas on the literature and art of the period. Note: In Russian.

IE or Firefox browser preferred
This collection represents works of all Russian literary avant-garde schools. It comprises almost 800 books, periodicals and almanacs most of them published between 1910-1940 and thus offers a varied and well-balanced overview of one of the most versatile movements in Russian literature. The books in this collection can be regarded as objects of art, illustrated by famous artists such as Malevich, Goncharova and Lisitskii.

IE or Firefox browser preferred
This collection of theatre periodicals provides a detailed picture of metropolitan and provincial Russian theatre, and reflects the cultural life in Russia at the turn of the 20th century. These periodicals contain, as well as articles, reviews, theatre repertoires, librettos, documentary materials, announcements and advertisements. The collection is a unique source for a wide range of scholars in the fields of history, cultural studies, theatre history and sociology.

This Brill collection includes Soviet film magazines and newspapers, 1918-42, reflecting a most productive period in the history of Russian film. These publications shed light on the production side of Soviet cinematography, as well as on the theoretical and practical concepts developed by the period's leading directors and critics. They also highlight the role of film in Soviet cultural life. Film magazines and newspapers featured articles by leading Soviet directors (Lev Kuleshov, Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, Aleksandr Dovzhenko, Abram Room), as well as members of the avant-garde LEF, leading authors and philologists.

The documents in this Brill collection cover the period when state monopoly control over the Soviet cinema industry - production, distribution and exhibition - was being established between 1923 and 1935. The collection contains administrative, personnel and financial records, transcripts of meetings, statistical reports, documents related to film export, film import, and film production, reviews, film repertoire, etc. The list and contents of the documents in this collection is shaped by the fact that Soviet cinematography was the target of focused official policies.

This resource brings together hundreds of accounts by women of their travels across the globe from the early 19th century to the late 20th century. Sources cover many topics and a wide variety of forms of travel writing is represented, ranging from unique manuscripts, diaries and correspondence to drawings, guidebooks and photographs. The resource includes a slideshow with hundreds of items of visual material, including postcards, sketches and photographs. The sources can also be used to examine the variety of motivations for travel including tourism, work, exploration, missionary work and pilgrimages. They also show the diverse range of women who travelled.

This primary source database focuses on North American and European adult comic books and graphic novels. The collection includes original material from the 1950s to today from the works of artists both celebrated and overlooked, along with interviews, commentary, theory, and criticism from journals, books, and magazines. It is the first ever scholarly, primary-source database concerned primarily with adult comic books and graphic novels. Included in this collection are the complete transcripts of the senate subcommittee hearings that birthed the Comics Code Authority and, inadvertently, the underground comix movement.

The Wiley Digital Archives: Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) collection includes materials from the society’s library, as well as its extensive archival and map collection. Hundreds of thousands of manuscript maps are complemented by manuscript material, fieldnotes, correspondence, drawings, pamphlets, atlases, gazetteers, and a range of other published and unpublished material. The archive sheds light on the impact of geographical science on history, exploration, colonialism, and diplomatic policies, as well as natural resources, cultural studies, anthropology, and ethnography.

Witchcraft in Europe and America is a comprehensive collection offering a wide range of writings on the subject of witchcraft. As such, it affords scholars an invaluable opportunity to explore this intriguing historical phenomenon from a variety of perspectives. Included are many rare and fragile manuscripts containing eyewitness accounts and court records of the trials of witches, including harrowing original manuscript depositions taken from the victims in the torture chamber ... Spanning the 15th to 20th centuries, the majority of texts are in Latin, English and German

The resource is provided in two modules, 1850-1927 and 1928-1949. It tells the story of medical advances during warfare from the mid-nineteenth century to the outbreak of the influenza epidemic in 1918, the discovery of penicillin in 1928, and up to post-war reforms such as the foundation of the British National Health Service. The wealth of documents cover multiple conflicts as well as interwar developments from a range of perspectives. Material has been sourced from across the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Europe to enable comparisons on key areas of systematic reform, improvements to sanitation and the treatment of disease, rehabilitation, nursing care, surgical techniques and wound treatment. The four conflicts robustly represented are the Crimean War, the American Civil War, the First World War and the Second World War.

This digital archive currently includes 150,000 pages of conference proceedings, reports of international women's organizations, publications and web pages of women's non-governmental organizations, and letters, diaries, and memoirs of women active internationally since the mid-nineteenth century. It also includes photographs and videos of major events and activists in the history of women's international social movements. There are also 25-30 essays exploring themes illuminated by the primary documents in the archive commissioned from leading contemporary scholars. The primary source material illuminates how women’s international organizations have focused on issues related to peace, poverty, child labor, literacy, disease prevention, and global inequality.

Scroll down to the 'by archive' dropdown and select "L'enfer de la Bibliothèque nationale de France". Enfer("Hell") from the Bibliothèque nationale de France is one of the most storied and sought-after private case collections of forbidden books. Enfer is made up of more than 2,400 literary works, manuscripts, engravings, lithographs, and photographs. The books in Enfer span from the 1530s to the 2010s, providing a wide perspective throughout time and in different societies on what were considered to be erotic and/or pornographic works. Readers will find documents mainly in French.

Archive includes the full-text of almost 10,000 English, French and German titles. The collection is sourced from the library of Victor Amadeus, whose Castle Corvey collection was discovered in the late 1970s. It comprises one of the most important archives of Romantic era writing in existence anywhere - including fiction, short prose, dramatic works, poetry and more - with a focus on especially difficult-to-find works by lesser-known, historically neglected writers. The collection provides a wealth of fully searchable content with digital research tools that enable scholars to uncover new relationships among authors and works.

Drawn from The National Archives (UK) and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, this collection contains a wealth of information regarding the British government's efforts to investigate and prosecute Nazi crimes during the period 1944-1949. The evidence gathered sheds light on almost every aspect of the Holocaust, from the concentration camp system to the mass murder of the “incurably sick” in psychiatric hospitals. More importantly, it gives a voice to the victims of these atrocities, many of whom testified about their experiences immediately after the war.

Socialism on Film is a comprehensive collection of documentaries, newsreels and features that reveals the world as seen by Soviet, Chinese, Vietnamese, East European, British and Latin American filmmakers. It ranges from the early twentieth century to the 1980s. Sourced from the archives of the British Film Institute (BFI), the collection consists of films produced almost exclusively in the communist world and later versioned into English for distribution in the West. The films have been conserved, digitised from the original reels, and are fully transcribed and searchable. The three modules are: 1. Wars and revolutions. 2. Newsreels and magazines. 3. Culture and society.

This collection comprises 170 German-language titles of books and pamphlets. The collection presents anti-Semitism as an issue in politics, economics, religion, and education. Most of the writings date from the 1920s and 1930s and many are directly connected with Nazi groups. The works are principally anti-Semitic, but include writings on other groups as well, including Jehovahs Witnesses, the Jesuits, and the Freemasons. Also included are history, pseudo-history, and fiction.

This collection provides unique documents on the investigation and prosecution of war crimes committed by Nazi concentration camp commandants and camp personnel. Documents include: correspondence; trial records and transcripts; investigatory material, such as interrogation reports and trial exhibits; clemency petitions and reviews; photographs of atrocities; newspaper clippings; and pamphlets ...