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: https://infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/readex/welcome?p=HN-AFRICA

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.

A photographic archive of high quality images from the Associated Press news wire covering 1820s to the present. Includes news, entertainment, and fashion photography; maps; timelines; graphics and logos; graphs; AP news stories; and audio clips.

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.

The link goes to the History Vault main page; then look for Black Freedom Struggle under Browse Collections. This database gives allows researchers to study both well-known and unheralded events in the Black Freedom Struggle in the 20th Century from the perspective of men and women who waged it. Consists of two modules: "Federal Government Records," and "Organizational Records and Personal Papers."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Contains two sets of polling information: the Gallup Poll Social Series,
public opinion surveys on social, economic, and political topics accessible
to all users, and the U.S. Tracker and World Poll providing, respectively,
U.S. public opinion datasets at the country, state and U.S. city respondent
levels, and international public opinion datasets. Note: Dataset access is
restricted to GW students, faculty, and staff. Interested users should
contact either Megan Pottersbusch, mpotterbusch@gwu.edu, or David Ettinger,
dettingr@gwu.edu.

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 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.

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 politicaldespatches, correspondence and reports composed by British diplomats. Theevidence 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 thedifferent faiths existing in Jerusalem. The 2400 pages contain documents exploring the treatment and position of the diverse religious minoritieswithin Jerusalem and more generally in Israel after 1948.

Declassified documents regarding critical U.S. foreign policy decisions organized into 24 thematic 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. Search the database from the History Vault platform by choosing Advanced Search (grey bar at the top) and then limiting by the name of the database (checkbox below).

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 particularthe 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.

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.

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.

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.

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