Research Guides: History : Global/World

Recommended Primary and Secondary Source Databases

General
World Wars

Empire Online This link opens in a new window
Manuscript, printed, and visual primary source materials for the study of "Empire" and its theories, practices, and consequences.
Migration to New Worlds This link opens in a new window
Charts the emigration experience of millions during the nineteenth and early twentieth century, including information about the New Zealand Company and British, European, and Asian migration. Includes primary source personal accounts, shipping logs, printed literature, and organizational papers.
History Reference Source This link opens in a new window
This database features full text for thousands of primary source documents and informational texts.
Gale In Context: Global Issues This link opens in a new window
Exploring issues within government, law, health, science and technology, society and culture, this collection provides 250 country pages and more than 400 issue pages integrating news, global viewpoints, reference materials, country information, primary source documents, videos, statistics, and more, as well as more than 6,000 viewpoint commentaries providing background and guidance on significant topics like Food Security, Genocide, Human Rights, Extreme Weather, and more. Updated daily,

Note: Cross-searchable with Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints
World's Fairs: A Global History of Expositions This link opens in a new window
Official records, books, publicity, artwork and artifacts -- tickets, guidebooks, visitor first-hand accounts, and more -- documenting the World's Fairs that attracted millions of tourists from the 19th to the 21st centuries.
Gale In Context: World History This link opens in a new window
Primary sources, reference, and multimedia content are aligned to curriculum to deliver a chronicle of the people, cultures, events, and societies that have formed the history of the human race. A range of topics such as Aztecs, Industrial Revolution, Silk Road, the Buddha, Space Race, and more provide a wide perspective across the globe.
Cross-searchable with Gale In Context: U.S. History.
Gale OneFile: World History This link opens in a new window
Provides access to scholarly journals and magazines offering balanced coverage of events in world history and scholarly work being established in the field useful to both novice historians as well as advanced academic researchers.
Travel Writing, Spectacle and World History This link opens in a new window
Includes hundreds of accounts by women of their travels across the globe from the early nineteenth century to the late twentieth century. Topics covered include architecture, art, the British Empire, climate, customs, exploration, family life, housing, industry, language, monuments, mountains, natural history, politics and diplomacy, race, religion, science, shopping, and war.
Keesing's World News Archive
Comprehensive, accurate, and concise reporting of major world events since 1931 selected and summarized from various news reports from around the world
World News Connection Archive
Online news service offering an extensive array of translated and English-language news and information. Particularly effective in its coverage of local media sources, WNC provides the power to identify what really is happening in a specific country or region. Compiled from thousands of non-U.S. media sources, the information in WNC covers significant socioeconomic, political, scientific, technical, and environmental issues and events.Contains information compiled by the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) which was part of the CIA and is now part of the U.S. Government's Open Source Center.

Coverage 1995-2013.
JSTOR
Full-text digital archive of over 2600 scholarly journals, especially strong in Social Sciences, Humanities, Economics, and Mathematics.
Archives Unbound
Archives Unbound presents topically-focused digital collections of historical documents that support the research and study needs of scholars and students at the university level.

Collections included:
American Indian Movement and Native American Radicalism
Black Economic Empowerment: The National Negro Business League
Chinese Civil War and U.S.-China Relations: Records of the U.S. State Department’s Office of Chinese Affairs, 1945-1955
Civil Rights and Social Activism in the South - James A. Dombrowski and the Southern Conference Educational Fund
Conditions and Politics in Occupied Western Europe, 1940-1945
Country Intelligence Reports on China
Country Intelligence Reports on Japan
Country Intelligence Reports on Korea
County and Regional Histories and Atlases: Indiana
Economy and War in the Third Reich, 1933-1944
Electing the President: Proceedings of the Democratic National Conventions, 1832-1988
Electing the President: Proceedings of the Republican National Conventions, 1856-1988
International Women's Periodicals, 1786-1933: Social and Political Issues
Middle East Online: Iraq, 1914-1974
Overland Journeys: Travels in the West, 1800-1880
Post-War Europe: Refugees, Exile and Resettlement, 1945-1950
Ralph J. Bunche Oral Histories Collection on the Civil Rights Movement
SUR, 1931-1992
U.S. Military Activities and Civil Rights: The Military Response to the March on Washington, 1963
We Were Prepared for the Possibility of Death: Freedom Riders in the South, 1961
Women’s Issues and Their Advocacy Within the White House, 1974-1977
Women, War and Society, 1914-1918
Wiley Digital Archives This link opens in a new window
Wiley Digital Archives is a continuous program of new databases comprised of unique or rare historical primary sources, digitized from leading societies, libraries, and archives around the world, and made accessible in ways that tie directly to research outcomes and educational goals. All Archives are cross-searchable, and contain tools for searching, browsing, analyzing and visualizing primary source content.

Current archives available: New York Academy of Sciences and the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland

First World War This link opens in a new window
Includes primary sources for the study of World War I, brought together in four thematic modules: Personal Experiences; Propaganda and Recruitment: Visual Perspectives and Narratives; and A Global Conflict.
America in World War Two: Oral Histories and Personal Accounts This link opens in a new window
Oral histories, correspondence, diaries, photographs, artifacts, and military records of United States military personnel and civilians during World War II.
Service Newspapers of World War Two This link opens in a new window
Reveals the story of war as told by the newspapers that brought information, entertainment and camaraderie to the forces at home and overseas. Explore over three hundred titles from key nations across the globe that took part in the world-changing conflict.
Refugees, Relief, and Resettlement: Forced Migration and World War II This link opens in a new window
Includes information about the plight of refugees and displaced persons across Europe, North Africa, and Asia from 1935 to 1950, bringing together several hundred thousand 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.

Selected Open Source Databases

Slave Voyages
The SlaveVoyages website is a collaborative digital initiative that compiles and makes publicly accessible records of the largest slave trades in history. Search these records to learn about the broad origins and forced relocations of more than 12 million African people who were sent across the Atlantic in slave ships, and hundreds of thousands more who were trafficked within the Americas. Explore where they were taken, the numerous rebellions that occurred, the horrific loss of life during the voyages, the identities and nationalities of the perpetrators, and much more.
Internet Archive
Internet Archive is a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more.
Combined Armed Forces Library Digital Library
During WW II the Command and General Staff Colleges primary mission was to train large numbers of captains and majors to be staff officers in battalions, brigades, divisions, and corps. To that end, the Army provided copies of documents produced by field units to the College. Operations orders, after action reports, intelligence analyses, logistics appraisals, and similar documents are in the CARL documents collection. The primary focus is on documenting operations at the tactical and operational levels of warfare.
US Army Center for Military History
Books and periodicals regarding US Army involvement in World War II.
Foreign Relations of the United States
The Foreign Relations of the United States series is the official documentary historical record of major U.S. foreign policy decisions that have been declassified and edited for publication. The series is produced by the State Department's Office of the Historian and printed volumes are available from the Government Printing Office.
Donovan Nuremberg Trials Collection
The Donovan Nuremberg Trials Collection consists of nearly 150 bound volumes of Nuremberg trial transcripts and documents from the personal archives of General William J. Donovan (1883-1959). The Donovan papers contain both original statements from the defendants in German and typed translations in English prepared by the Allies.