Databases: Primary Source Collections: Primary Source Collections Databases

This resource features 64 fully searchable newspapers published in Africa before 1900 and originally archived by the British Library. Students and researchers will find news and analysis covering the European exploration of Africa, colonial exploitation, economics, Atlantic trade, the mapping of the continent, early moves towards self-governance, the growth of South Africa and much more. This database along with Readex sister databases African Newspapers, Series 1 and 2 can be searched concurrently via a single interface for access to nearly every newspaper published on the African continent in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

This resource features over 60 searchable African newspapers published in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Content includes English and foreign-language titles from Angola, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Sao Tome and Principe, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. This database along with Readex sister databases African Newspapers, British Library Collection can be searched concurrently via a single interface for access to nearly every newspaper published on the African continent in the 19th and early 20th centuries. See: Africa's Historical Newspapers

Page-images from more than 1,100 historic American magazines, journals, and newspapers illuminating the development of American culture, politics, and society across 150 years. Articles can be searched by author, source, or words in the complete text.

The largest and broadest online collection of genealogical records. Each record collection includes detailed information about the source, and many collections include images of primary source documents and/or transcriptions, in addition to unique name indexes. New content and updates are added weekly.

A searchable collection of Associated Press (A.P.) news content, including top news stories, photos, audio clips and print graphics.

On 22 March 1945 the Pact of the Arab League States was signed in Cairo by Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Transjordan and Saudi Arabia. Its objectives were closer unity between members, the safeguarding of their sovereignty and coordinated political action. Here now in facsimile are the authentic documents of that time, and the following 20 years, following the aims and the progress of the main organ of Arab unity this century.

Includes Parts l & ll. Part I brings together primary source content on the social, political, health, and legal issues impacting LGBTQ communities around the world. Includes the gay rights movement, activism, the HIV/AIDS crisis, and more. Part ll highlights marginalized groups—even within the LGBTQ community—and enables users to draw new connections across the development of LGBTQ culture and activism through access to key publications.

A varied array of records of traders, travellers, missionaries and diplomats, from the mid-seventeenth century to the late twentieth century, offering Western perspectives on all aspects of Chinese culture and society and Western interactions with China and Southeast Asia.

A wide range of sources, by writers, diplomats, tourists, businessmen, missionaries and others, documenting the political, cultural and social history of Japan from 1400 to the 20th century.

Covering 1830-1865, Black Abolitionist Papers presents the international impact of African American activism against slavery, in the writings of the activists themselves.

The link takes you to the History Vault main page; select "Civil Rights and the Black Freedom Struggle." This database provides access to primary sources that document both well-known and unheralded events in the Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century from the perspective of the people who waged it; including federal government and organizational records, and the archives of the NAACP. 

Brockelmann in English Online consists of both original volumes Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur (GAL) by Carl Brockelmann (1868-1956), as well as the three supplement volumes, including the indexes. Brockelmann’s Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur offers bio-bibliographic information about works written in Arabic and their authors, with an emphasis on the classical period.

This database is the largest online collection of 18th- and 19th-century newspapers published in the Caribbean. Featuring over 140 newspapers from 22 islands, this unique resource is a comprehensive primary resource for researching colonial history, the Atlantic slave trade, international commerce, New World slavery and U.S. relations with the region as far back as the early 18th century. The database chronicles the region’s evolution across two centuries through eyewitness reporting, editorials, legislative information, letters, poetry, advertisements, obituaries and other news items.

Digital access to official British government records relating to the region, from the decline of the Silk Road, through the diplomatic confrontation between the British and Russian Empires known as the “Great Game”, to the influence of the emergent Soviet Union in the 20th century.

This is an important primary source for scholars of twentieth-century China. The Chinese Literature and History database 中国文史资料集粹 contains full texts of more than 20,000 volumes (650,000 articles) of publications arranged by regions and provinces. The articles are mostly first-person narratives on history, culture, politics, economy, literature and ethnicity among other themes.

Sourced from The National Archives, U.K., this database offers access to 16,691 files from the political departments of the U.K. Foreign Office responsible for reporting on the Soviet Union and the former communist states of Eastern Europe from 1953-1982. Documents are primarily in English, with high-resolution, full-text searchable images. Issues covered include state leadership, party politics, protest movements, agricultural output, international trade agreements, scientific progress, minority populations, religion, sporting events, state-run media and popular culture.

Colonial State Papers provides access to thousands of papers concerning English activities in the American, Canadian, and West Indian colonies between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Also included is a digitized version of The Calendar of State Papers, Colonial: North America and the West Indies 1574-1739, which contains bibliographic records and extracts for thousands of additional documents.

The Confidential Print series, issued by the British Government between c. 1820 and 1970, is a fundamental building block for political, social and economic research. This collection consists of the Confidential Print for the countries of the Levant and the Arabian peninsula, Iran, Turkey, Egypt and Sudan. Beginning with the Egyptian reforms of Muhammad Ali Pasha in the 1830s, the documents trace the events of the following 150 years, including 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.

This series consists of reports, studies, and surveys on various topics of interest to the Department of State. The reports vary from short memorandums to detailed, documented studies. The topics range from individual commodities or countries to the economic and political characteristics of whole regions. This collection consists of research and intelligence reports prepared during 1941-1947 on Korea.

Presently contains 32 annual volumes of primary sources, each volume with approximately 100 documents covering the most significant events of the year. Documents range from presidential speeches, international agreements, and Supreme Court decisions, to U.S. governmental reports, scientific findings, and cultural discussions.

Declassified Documents Reference System, now U.S. Declassified Documents Online, provides access to declassified U.S. government documents drawn from Presidential libraries.

Provides full-text and full-page-image access to books, pamphlets and broadsides printed in America from 1639-1800. Based on the renowned American Bibliography by Charles Evans (14 vols., 1903-34, 1955-59); and subsequent bibliographic works by Roger Bristol, James Mooney and Clifford Shipton. Includes more than 36,000 printed works and 2.3 million pages.

Provides full-text and full-page-image access to books, pamphlets, and broadsides published in America in the early part of the 19th century. Based on the noted American Bibliography, 1801-1819 by Ralph R. Shaw and Richard H. Shoemaker, offers more than four million pages from over 36,000 items. Complements Early American Imprints, Series I: Evans, 1639-1800.

This database features images and full-text from newspapers across the country. While assembling the original collection, Readex focused its publishing efforts on Clarence Brigham's History and Bibliography of American Newspapers, 1690-1820, concentrating primarily on those papers that began publication before 1820.

Unique 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 from 1599 to 1947.

Database will contain, when complete, over 60,000 images of original manuscripts and printed documents, enabling researchers to explore colonial history, politics, culture and society. Section I (now available) examines cultural contacts throughout five centuries of Empire, from Columbus to decolonization. It draws upon sources such as diaries and eyewitness accounts of European travelers, correspondence and periodical literature.

Provides access to approximately 2,000 hours of previously unpublished historic audio recordings from field expeditions around the world, and their supporting field materials. The collection is primarily from the 1960s through the 1980s—the dawn of ethnomusicology as a codified discipline.

Covers the internal organization, personnel, and activities of some of the most prominent American radical groups and their movements to change American government and society during the 1960s. Includes the FBI files on the Black Panther Party, Students for a Democratic Society, the Counterintelligence Program of the FBI and more.

Hundreds of captivating personal collections, including diaries, scrapbooks, journals, albums, personal items, and more, that reveal the voices of men and women during the Great War.

Formerly restricted British Foreign Office files dealing with China, Hong Kong and Taiwan between 1919 and 1980. Features diplomatic dispatches, letters, newspaper cuttings, political pamphlets, reports of court cases and other materials that provide insight into a turbulent period in Chinese history. The documents allow students and researchers intimate access to eye-witness accounts, weekly and monthly summaries, annual reviews, reports and analyses, economic assessments, synopses on Chinese personalities, and more.

Digital collection of British Foreign Office documents from the National Archives of the UK. Material types include: Diplomatic dispatches, Telegrams, Newspaper cuttings and transcripts, Maps, Photographs, Political and economic reports, Accounts of visits and tours, Minutes of meetings, Conference proceedings, Letters, leaflets and other ephemera. Content covers: 1947-1964, Independence, Partition and the Nehru Era; 1965-1971, South Asian Convicts and Independence for Bangladesh; 1972-1980, Afghanistan and the Cold War, Emergency Rule in India, and the Resumption of Civilian Rule in Pakistan.

This collection of British Foreign Office documents provides significant insight into the events between the end of WWI and the end of World War II, crucial to understanding Japan politics during this period. Topics covered include ultra-nationalism and the Japanese agenda of imperial dominance in the Far East, employment and social conditions in a time of global economic instability, and the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. These documents record relations with Axis Powers in the context of changing alliances, the deterioration of relations with the Allies as World War II reached the Pacific, and American post-war occupation of Japan.

Offers a significant collection of British diplomatic correspondence, minutes, reports, political summaries and personality profiles addressing the policies, economies, political relationships and significant events of every major Middle East power. Conflicts such as the Arab-Israeli War, the Lebanese Civil War and the Iranian Revolution are examined in detail, as are the military interventions and peace negotiations carried out by regional and foreign powers like the United States and Russia. Commercial interests are also scrutinized, with in-depth analyses of Middle East nations economic stability and reviews of international arm sales policies. The activities of oil producing nations such as Saudi Arabia are closely monitored, with particular reference to the Gulf States and members of OPEC.

Integrated research environment that allows users to search across all of Gale primary source collections.

Gallup Analytics houses more than a decade of international public opinion
data from more than 160 countries and areas and nearly a century of U.S.
national data.

HathiTrust is a partnership of academic and research institutions, offering a collection of millions of titles digitized from libraries around the world. To log in, select The George Washington University as your institution, then log in with your UserID and regular GW password.

The Parliamentary Papers are the most detailed primary source for Nineteenth Century Britain, its colonies, and the wider world. They are the working documents of government for all areas of social, political, economic, and foreign policy. This comprehensive digital collection includes all 79,000 papers issued by the House of Commons between 1801-1900. Simultaneous Users: unlimited

This resource opens research into a range of subjects from an indigenous perspective. It has been developed with the permission and contribution of the newspaper publishers and Tribal Councils concerned. It presents the publications of a range of communities, with an extensive list of periodicals produced in the United States and Canada, including Alaska, Arizona, British Columbia, California, Nevada and Oklahoma, from 1828 to 2016, with a strong concentration from 1970 forward.

This Cambridge Archive Editions title is a comprehensive series of British administration reports for Mesopotamia (Iraq) from the outset of World War I up to the independence of Iraq.

These are the collected British government political and economic reports on the State of Israel from its creation in May 1948 to the end of the first Premiership of David Ben Gurion during the first 5 years of the Israeli State, throughout the War of Independence, the first wave of immigration, the implementation of mass settlement, development projects and the signing of a reparations agreement with Germany.

This collection provides insights into President Kennedy's views on foreign affairs, U.S. leadership of the "West," and various worldwide crises. There are documents on the Bay of Pigs and Cuba, Berlin, American efforts to support Third World countries, balance of payments and foreign trade, Alliance for Progress and Latin American relations, nuclear weapons and testing, NATO and the Multilateral Force in Europe, Southeast Asia and regional security, and much more.

This comprehensive collection of facsimile documents contains all available diplomatic reports regarding Korea that are housed in the British National Archives. The period covered by the collection begins with the Korean monarchy, and includes the time spent under Japanese rule, the split into north and south Korea, and the Korean War.

One of the oldest English-language newspaper in Korea, with coverage back to the 1950s. The Korea Times is known for its coverage of international business, economic and financial news. It also provides a window into historical and modern politics, society, economy, and culture in Korea and is a good source for researching local, regional and international news from the Korean perspective.

Latin American Newspapers offer significant coverage of the people, issues and events that shaped this vital region during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Featuring titles from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru, Venezuela and a dozen other countries, these resources provide a wide range of viewpoints from diverse Latin American cultures. The newspapers chronicle the evolution of Latin America over two centuries through eyewitness reporting, editorials, legislative information, letters, poetry, advertisements, obituaries and other items.

This series consists of correspondence and telegrams received and sent by the United States' diplomatic post in Liberia. The topics covered by these records include all aspects of relations with Liberia, and interactions of American citizens with the Liberian government and people.

This six-volume Cambridge Archive Editions set covers the arrangements and conditions for Jewish communities living under Islam, throughout the Arab world, from 1840 to 1974. Although they cover more than 100 years the papers do not form a continuous record of events but rather provide a series of snapshots of history.

These Cambridge Archive Editions volumes of original dispatches, correspondence and reports chart the modern history of the Kurds in theMiddle East, starting with the aspirations of the Kurds before the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 and ending with the plans for Kurdish autonomyannounced in 1974 by the Revolutionary Command Council in Iraq.

These Cambridge Archive Editions volumes, concerning Muslim minority communities from 1843 to 1973, consist of contemporary political despatches, correspondence and reports composed by British diplomats. The evidence found in these volumes provides a series of glimpses of conditions within different Arab states over more than a century.

In these Cambridge Archive Editions volumes, the selection of documents combines to give an overview of the interplay within and between the different faiths existing in Jerusalem. The 2400 pages contain documents exploring the treatment and position of the diverse religious minorities within Jerusalem and more generally in Israel after 1948.

Declassified documents regarding critical U.S. foreign policy decisions organized into 62 collections.

Offers a unique and personal view of what it meant to immigrate to America and Canada. Provides more than 100,000 pages of personal narratives including letters, diaries, pamphlets, autobiographies, and oral histories. Much of the material is previously unpublished.

Contains 3,500 World War II and Cold War era special, classified reports about Asia, Europe, the Soviet Union, the Middle East, Latin America, and Africa commissioned by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and the U.S. State Department and written by the days’ leading scholars. At the time, the reports helped to shape U.S. foreign policy decisions. Choose George Washington University from the drop down box.

The various different types of report gathered together in this Cambridge Archive Editions collection, ranging from 1920-1965, capture in great detail the convulsions wrought within the old land area of Palestine by the agreements at the end of the World War I, in particular the Balfour Declaration of 2 November 1917; the Anglo-French Declaration of 7 November 1918 and the recommendations of the King-Crane Commission of 28 August 1919.

This Cambridge Archive Edition is a comprehensive collection oforiginal British government documents detailing the history of Bahrain between 1966 and 1971. The years 1966-71 are of particular interest toresearchers because of the intense political and diplomatic activity engendered by the announcement of the British, in 1968, of their intention to withdraw from the Gulf States by 1971.

Full-text, full image of Renmin Ribao (????, Peoples Daily), the official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, and the central newspaper of record for the modern Chinese state. The database features full page-level digitization, complete original graphics, and 100% searchable text. The interface is in Simplified Chinese and content before 1955 is in Traditional Chinese. Coverage: 1946-5/2012. For off-campus access, please use the GW VPN.

Slavery and the Law features petitions on race, slavery, and free blacks that were submitted to state legislatures and county courthouses between 1775 and 1867. These petitions were from hundreds of courthouses and historical societies in 10 states and the District of Columbia. This database also includes the State Slavery Statutes collection, a comprehensive record of the laws governing American slavery from 1789-1865.

In tracing the massive effort made to stop the sea trade, this collection of documents also conveys the scale of the diaspora out of East Africa. It includes naval reports and diplomatic records to convey both the actions that took place and the background political guidance on which this was based; interviews with captured slave dealers, informants and freed slaves as well as correspondence between British officials and their counterparts; and documentary evidence of the efforts made to monitor and deter the slave trade.

A collection of documentaries, features and newsreels produced primarily in the communist world and later re-edited for British and Western audiences. Originating from nations throughout the USSR, Asia, Europe and Latin America, these films have been digitized from the original 16mm and 35mm reels.

Taiwan Academic Classics offers classic works from China/Taiwan and contemporary scholarly thought from academic societies in Taiwan and around the world. The federated search platform of Taiwan Academic Classics incorporates full text searchable Web access to core journals in the humanities and social sciences from 1928 to the present with ancient compilations from China's earliest Dynasties. Taiwan Academic Classics includes authoritative archives and historic documents from the era of the Chinese Republic. Taiwan Academic Classics integrates a total of 2 billion characters, 300 different journals, 6,630 ancient works and more than 100,000 dissertations, with contributions from 35,000 authors.

Since 1945, the U.S. intelligence community has had to cover a half dozen major wars and several dozen smaller but equally bloody armed conflicts in the Middle East, as well as innumerable civil wars, border clashes, armed insurgencies, and terrorist attacks. This comprehensive document set sheds light on the U.S. intelligence community's spying and analytic efforts in the Arab world, including the Middle East, the Near East, and North Africa. It covers the time period from the end of World War II to the present day, up until the 2002-2003 Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) assessments, the Global War on Terror, the Iraq War, and Iran's nuclear program.

The Vogue Archive contains the entire run of Vogue magazine (US edition) from 1892 to the present day, reproduced in high-resolution color page images. More than 400,000 pages are included, constituting a treasure trove of the work from the greatest designers, photographers, stylists, and illustrators of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Vogue is a unique record of American and international popular culture that extends beyond fashion.

This database provides a searchable facsimile of every page of every issue of the Washington Evening Star from its founding on December 16, 1852 to the day it ceased publishing on August 7, 1981. Considered the “paper of record” for national political coverage, the Star was one of the highest profile publications in the nation. The paper covers nearly 130 years of American history, offering significant new research opportunities from the Antebellum Period to World War I to the Post-Vietnam Era.

Contains retrospective coverage of 19th and 20th-century consumer magazines aimed at a female readership: Better Homes and Gardens, Chatelaine, Cosmopolitan, Essence, Good Housekeeping, Ladies' Home Journal, Parents, Redbook, Seventeen, Town & Country, WIN News, and Woman's Day.

This collection traces the path of women’s issues through the nineteen and twentieth centuries—pulling primary sources from manuscripts, newspapers, periodicals, and more.

A comprehensive backfile of Womens Wear Daily from its inception in 1910 forward, this database provides a wealth of information to researchers and students of fashion, marketing, and the retail business as well as supporting inquiry into womens studies and 20th century material culture.