European History: Primary Sources
Major Collections
- Artstor This link opens in a new window
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Image library of nearly one million images in the areas of art, architecture, the humanities, and social sciences. - Electronic Enlightenment This link opens in a new window
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Online collection of letters and correspondence linking people across Europe, the Americas, and Asia from the early 17th to the mid-19th century. - Empire Online This link opens in a new window
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Full text database covering the rise and fall of empires and colonialism around the world. Includes primary source materials.
- EuropeanaOver 500 institutions have contributed to Europeana, creating an enormous collection of images, texts, sounds, and videos.
- Global Commodities This link opens in a new window
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History and development of 15 major commodities through manuscripts, printed and visual primary source materials.
Northern Europe
- 17th-18th Century Burney Collection Newspapers This link opens in a new window
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Largest collection of digitized early English news media.
- Britain and Ireland LibGuide (UW Seattle)Guide to primary sources related to British and Irish history, created by UW Libraries History Librarian Teresa Mudrock.
- British History OnlineContains some of the core printed primary and secondary sources for the medieval and modern history of the British Isles.
- British Library Images OnlineThousands of high quality images from the British Library's extensive collections.
- British Library Online GalleryA collection of tens of thousands of digital images from the British Library.
- British Periodicals This link opens in a new window
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Full-text collection of 18th, 19th and some early 20th century British magazines
- The Cabinet PapersThe National Archives collection of British cabinet meetings.
- Colonial State Papers This link opens in a new window
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British documents covering North America & the West Indies from 1574-1739.
- Digital BodleianOver a million images of rare books, manuscripts, and other sources from the Bodleian Libraries and Oxford college libraries.
- Early English Books Online (EEBO) This link opens in a new window
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Facsimile page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473-1700. - Eighteenth Century Collections Online This link opens in a new window
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Archive of books, pamphlets and broadsides in all subjects printed between 1701 and 1800, published or printed in Britain, Ireland, territories under British colonial rule, and the United States.
- The Guardian and The Observer: 1791-2003Historical archive of the newspaper The Guardian and its Sunday partner, The Observer.
- House of Commons Hansard ArchivesDebates from the Commons Chamber and Westminster Hall, Public Bill and General Committees, from November 1988 to March 2016. Published by the UK Parliament.
- Imperial War MuseumDigital collections of over a million items; including films, photographs, sound recordings, books, and documents; that cover the causes, course and consequences of British war, from the First World War through to present-day conflict.
- The Times Digital Archive, 1785 - 2014Full digitized collection of London newspaper The Times.
Western Europe
- The ARTFL ProjectThe Project for American and French Research on the Treasury of the French Language (ARTFL) is a collection of digitized resources on the French language.
- Beethoven-Haus Digital ArchivesDigitized inventory of the contents of the Beethoven-Haus, documenting the composer's life and oeuvre in a multimedia way through linked image, text and audio data.
- Digital Library of Dutch LiteratureDigital collection of texts from Dutch literature, linguistics and cultural history, from the earliest times to the present.
- French Political PamphletsMore than 2,400 pamphlets published between 1547 and 1626, held by Brigham Young University.
- French Revolution PamphletsCollection of pamphlets documenting the time leading up to the French Revolution through the Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815).
- GallicaA massive collection of images, texts, videos, and other resources from French history and culture.
- The German Digital LibraryBooks, music, works of art, films, photographs, files, manuscripts and more representing German cultural and scientific heritage.
- Key Documents of German-Jewish HistoryCollection of sources thematically highlighting central aspects in Hamburg’s Jewish history from the early modern age to the present.
- The MemoryDatabase containing paintings, drawings, photographs, sculptures, ceramics, stamps, posters and newspaper clippings from more than a hundred Dutch museums, archives and libraries.
- Napoleonic SatiresScanned images of political cartoons from the Napoleanic era.
- Napoleonica: Napoleonic Primary SourcesGathers together Napoleonic primary sources from all over the web.
- Paris: Capital of the 19th CenturyPictorial works and texts providing a window into the cultural, political and social context of 19th century Parisian culture.
- Vincent Van Gogh: The LettersEnglish translations of the surviving letters written and received by Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890).
Southern Europe
- HispanaBrings together the digital collections of archives, libraries of Spanish digital repositories.
- Portal de Archivos EspañolesAccess to archival descriptions and digitized collections throughout Spain.
Eastern Europe
- Americans in the Land of Lenin: Documentary Photographs of Early Soviet Russia, 1919-1930Photographs of daily life in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, drawn from the personal papers of Robert L. Eichelberger and Frank Whitson Fetter.
- Canada's Siberian Expedition2,200 documents and photographs, as well as an overview, telling the history of the Canadian Expeditionary Force (Siberia), which saw 4,200 soldiers travel from Canada's West Coast to Vladivostok, Russia, in the wake of the Bolshevik Revolution.
- CIA Analytic Reports on the Former Soviet UnionAnalytic reports on the former Soviet Union, produced by CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence during 1951-1991, that were declassified and released for use at a March 2001 conference at Princeton University.
- The Empire That Was Russia: Prokudin-Gorskii CollectionFeatures the work of a pioneering Russian photographer who photographically surveyed the Russian Empire.
- The Harvard Project on the Soviet Social SystemProvides access to digitized materials selected from the Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System.
- Images of Russia and Caucasus Region 1929-1933Over 700 images of Russia and the Caucasus region, particularly of rural areas in Georgia and Dagestan.
- National Security Archive: Sources on EuropeA collection of declassified U.S. government documents relating to activities in Eastern Europe.
- Parallel History ProjectLarge number of online documentaries and publications on security-related issues of the Cold War.
- Polar Bear Expedition Digital CollectionsA guide to archival materials relating to the Polar Bear Expedition in Northern Russian in 1918 and 1919.
- The Soviet Estimate: U.S. Analysis of the Soviet Union, 1947-1991Pulls together more than 600 U.S. intelligence estimates and assessments concerning the Soviet Union during the entire period of the Cold War.