This page lists the many databases that contain primary sources related to non-US history. Most require IU authentication (see the guide below for resources that are freely available online).
Note that newspapers, magazines, and newsmedia are left off this list and are listed elsewhere in the guide.
As always, feel free to contact me with any questions. You are also encouraged to contact our Area Studies Libraries, particularly if it relates to research or documents in local languages.
For research on African history, feel free to contact me or IU's African Studies Librarian, Mireille Djenno. See Mireille's African Studies guide below.
Licensed content (i.e. requires IU authentication):
Covers the migrations, communities, and ideologies of the African Diaspora. Focus is on communities in the Caribbean, Brazil, India, United Kingdom, and France.
The collection includes primary source documents, including personal papers, organizational papers, journals, newsletters, court documents, letters, and ephemera.
This collection includes more than 1,300 fully cataloged and searchable books, pamphlets, almanacs, broadsides and ephemera covering the history, peoples, and social and economic development of the African continent from the 16th century to the early 20th century. All areas of Africa and important adjacent regions are covered.
Major subject areas covered include Africana Studies, Atlantic Studies, Ethnic Studies, Gender Studies, Economic Studies, Slavery and Diaspora Studies. Based on the Library Company collection that itself was an attempt to gather all printed information about this area and its history. Includes historical narratives, social histories, maps, navigational logs, military reports, government documents, demographic studies, anthropological studies, natural histories, personal and personal memoirs. Many items published prior to 1800 are included, but the majority were published in the 19th century.
Primary source documents related to the Portuguese colonial government and its policies and activities in Africa, 1910-1929.
This collection includes correspondence, studies and reports, cables, maps, and other kinds of documents related to U.S. consular activities. U.S. Consulates were listening posts reporting on the activities of the Portuguese colonial government and the activities of the native peoples. Highlights include the beginning of an anti-colonial movement and the industrialization and economic exploitation of Portugal’s African colonies.
Freely available:
For research on East Asian history, feel free to contact me or IU's Librarian for East Asian and Tibetan Studies, Wen-ling Liu.
Licensed content (i.e. requires IU authentication):
British Foreign Office files dealing with China, Hong Kong and Taiwan between 1919 and 1980.
The six parts of this collection make available all British Foreign Office files dealing with China, Hong Kong and Taiwan between 1919 and 1980:
1919-1929: Kuomintang, CCP and the Third International
1930-1937: The Long March, civil war in China and the Manchurian Crisis
1938-1948: Open Door, Japanese war and the seeds of communist victory
1949-1956: The Communist revolution
1957-1966: The Great Leap Forward
1967-1980: The Cultural Revolution
Primary source materials documenting the shifting nature of Anglo-Japanese relations in the first half of the twentieth century.
Includes access to three modules:
Japan, 1931-1945: Japanese Imperialism and the War in the Pacific:
Section one begins in 1931, as Japan invades Manchuria. This incident, and continued Japanese activities in the region, would lead to their dramatic withdrawal from the League of Nations and further alienation from the western powers they had allied with during the First World War. The files in this section document the decline in relations, through war in the Pacific, up until Japanese surrender on board the US Missouri in 1945.
Japan, 1946-1952: Occupation of Japan:
From 1946-1952 Japan was occupied by Allied Powers. The files for this period offer a British perspective on the creation of a democratic state in Japan and the enforcement of a new constitution. They include key British communications and reports covering topics such as war crime trials, reparations, and Japan’s economic recovery. They conclude in 1952, the year the Treaty of San Francisco normalized Anglo-Japanese relations and the first post-war British Ambassador to Japan, Esler Dening, was appointed.
Japan and Great Power Status, 1919-1930:
In 1919, as a vital member of the Allied Powers, Japan found itself occupying a new position of international power within a reorganized world order. The files in this section trace the development of this power and Japan’s relationship with the West during a decade of turbulent economic, political and social change in the wake of the First World War. Beginning with the Paris Peace Conference and the ‘Shantung Question’, the files offer insight into the events of the 1920s, from the termination of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, the devastation of the Kantō Earthquake, and the end of the Taishō democracy, to the beginning of the Shōwa period, financial crisis and Japan’s increasingly imperialist policies in Manchuria.
Freely available:
For research on East European/Russian history, feel free to contact me or IU's Slavic and East European Studies Librarian, Wookjin Cheun. See Wookjin's guides below.
Licensed content (i.e. requires IU authentication):
Freely available:
For research on African history, feel free to contact me or IU's Librarian for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies and Central Eurasian Studies, Akram Habibulla.
Licensed content (i.e. requires IU authentication):
This collection includes State Department Central Classified Files and materials on Afghanistan, relating to internal and foreign affairs, 1945-1963.
Afghanistan's history, internal political development, foreign relations, and very existence as an independent state have largely been determined by its geographic location at the crossroads of Central, West, and South Asia. In modern times, as well as in antiquity, vast armies of the world passed through Afghanistan, temporarily establishing local control and often dominating Iran and northern India. Islam has played a key role in the formation of Afghanistan as well. Although it was the scene of great empires and flourishing trade for over two millennia, Afghanistan did not become a truly independent nation until the twentieth century. In much of the twentieth century, Afghanistan remained neutral. It was not a participant in World War II, nor aligned with either power bloc in the Cold War. However, it was a beneficiary of the latter rivalry as both the Soviet Union and the U.S. vied for influence by building such infrastructure works as roads, airports, water and sewer systems, and hospitals. The U.S. State Department Central Classified Files are the definitive source of American diplomatic reporting on political, military, social, and economic developments throughout the world in the twentieth century.
This collection of files from the Foreign Office (later the Foreign and Commonwealth Office) and Dominions Office focuses on the political and social history of India, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Consists of the complete run of documents in the series DO 133, DO 134 and FCO 37, as well as all documents covering the Indian subcontinent in the FO 371 series. Events covered include independence and partition, the Indian annexation of Hyderabad and Goa, war between India and Pakistan, tensions and war between India and China, the consolidation of power of the Congress Party in India, military rule in Pakistan, the turbulent independence of Bangladesh and the development of nuclear weapons in the region.
The files address these events from the standpoint of British officialdom. In addition to high politics, they deal with such issues as economic and industrial development, trade, migration, visits to South Asia by British politicians and by South Asian politicians to Britain and elsewhere, education, administrative reorganisation, conflict over language, aid, political parties, agriculture and irrigation, and television and the press. Together they form a resource of fundamental value to scholars and students of modern South Asia.
Freely available:
For research on Latin American & Caribbean history, feel free to contact me or IU's Librarian for Latin American and Caribbean, Spanish and Portuguese, Chicano-Riqueño, Latino Studies, and European Studies, Luis A. González.
Licensed content (i.e. requires IU authentication):
Covers the migrations, communities, and ideologies of the African Diaspora. Focus is on communities in the Caribbean, Brazil, India, United Kingdom, and France.
The collection includes primary source documents, including personal papers, organizational papers, journals, newsletters, court documents, letters, and ephemera.
The collection contains texts, personal letters, journal essays, radio broadcasts, and memoirs from women congresses from Cuban independence to the end of the Batista regime.
The collections, mostly in Spanish, include works by feminists about feminists and their causes, works by men on the status of women, and literary works by feminist writers that illustrate or discuss the condition of women. Among the journals in the collection are items from Aspiraciones, a feminist journal published by the Partido Feminista Aspiraciones, La Mujer Moderno, the journal for the Club Femenino de Cuba, and La Mujer, the journal of the Partido Demócrata Sufragista.
There are also assessments by politicians, jurists, and legislators about the condition of women in the cities and countryside and excerpts from novels, essays and poetry written by women about women. Also included are literary anthologies of Cuban women writers in general as well as literary analysis of these women's works.
Source Library: Personal collection Dr. K. Lynn Stoner
Freely available:
For research on South and Southeast Asian history, feel free to contact me or IU's South Asian and Southeast Asian Studies Librarian, Karen Farrell. See Karen's related guides below.
Licensed content (i.e. requires IU authentication):
Covers the migrations, communities, and ideologies of the African Diaspora. Focus is on communities in the Caribbean, Brazil, India, United Kingdom, and France.
The collection includes primary source documents, including personal papers, organizational papers, journals, newsletters, court documents, letters, and ephemera.
This collection of files from the Foreign Office (later the Foreign and Commonwealth Office) and Dominions Office focuses on the political and social history of India, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Consists of the complete run of documents in the series DO 133, DO 134 and FCO 37, as well as all documents covering the Indian subcontinent in the FO 371 series. Events covered include independence and partition, the Indian annexation of Hyderabad and Goa, war between India and Pakistan, tensions and war between India and China, the consolidation of power of the Congress Party in India, military rule in Pakistan, the turbulent independence of Bangladesh and the development of nuclear weapons in the region.
The files address these events from the standpoint of British officialdom. In addition to high politics, they deal with such issues as economic and industrial development, trade, migration, visits to South Asia by British politicians and by South Asian politicians to Britain and elsewhere, education, administrative reorganisation, conflict over language, aid, political parties, agriculture and irrigation, and television and the press. Together they form a resource of fundamental value to scholars and students of modern South Asia.
Collection of primary source documents tracing the end of British India and the emergence of modern Pakistan.
A companion archive to India from Crown Rule to Republic, 1945-1949. The collection is sourced from the Central Files of the General Records of the Department of State. The records are under the jurisdiction of the Legislative and Diplomatic Branch of the Civil Archives, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C.
Freely available:
Given the size of this section, it is subdivided into the following chronological categories: Ancient, Medieval, Early Modern and Modern (through approx. World War I), and 20th c. (since World War I).
N.B. Because so many ancient and medieval sources are available to everyone without IU authentication, they are intermixed with sites that require IU authentication. Sites that require IU authentication have a lock icon () next to them; sites that are freely available have a globe icon () next to them.
Ancient:
Electronic version of the first edition of Jacques-Paul Migne's Patrologia Latina, published between 1844 and 1855, and the four volumes of indexes published between 1862 and 1865. Covers the works of the Latin Fathers from Tertullian in 200 A.D. to Pope Innocent III in 1216. Includes the complete Patrologia Latina, including all prefatory material, original texts, critical apparatus and indexes. Migne's column numbers, essential references for scholars, are also included.
Medieval:
Abbreviationes identifies abbreviations used in medieval Latin manuscripts (Latin paleography). It includes large collections such as the manuscripts held by the Vatican Library, the libraries at Oxford and Paris, the Morgan Library, the Huntington Library , as well as many smaller collections. The entries in the database cover the period from the 8th century up to and including the 15th century.
Electronic version of the Acta Sanctorum, a collection of documents examining the lives of saints, organized according to each saint's feast day.
Contains the text of the sixty-eight printed volumes of Acta Sanctorum published in Antwerp and Brussels by the Société des Bollandistes, from the two January volumes published in 1643 to the Propylaeum to December published in 1940. All prefatory material, original texts, critical apparatus and indices, Bibliotheca Hagiographica Latina (BHL) reference numbers, are also included.
Full text and translation of the meetings of the English parliaments from Edward I (1272 - 1307) to the reign of Henry VII (1485 - 1509).
The rolls of parliament were first edited in the eighteenth century and published in 1783 in six folio volumes entitled Rotuli Parliamentorum ( RP ) under the general editorship of the Reverend John Strachey. They were later superseded by the journals of the lords and, somewhat later, of the commons. This new edition reproduces the rolls edited in RP in their entirety, plus those subsequently published by Cole, Maitland, and Richardson and Sayles as well as a substantial amount of material never previously published, together with a full translation of all the texts from the three languages used by the medieval clerks (Latin, Anglo-Norman and Middle English). It also includes an introduction to every parliament known to have been held by an English king (or in his name) between 1275 and 1504, whether or not the roll for that parliament survives.
The Rolls of Parliament set includes:
Introductions to Individual Parliaments:
Historical background for the time, sometimes quite long and in considerable detail.
Text/Translation, original text:
The original text is in Latin or Anglo-Norman or Middle English.
Translations are side-by-side with the original text
Appendix:
The appendix usually contains lists of bills, petitions, grants, letters, complaints, commissions, appointments, orders and other similar matters
Images:
The images section reproduces the original manuscript as written by the clerk
The general introduction to the Rolls of Parliament describes the editorial approach to the set and provides historical information concerning the rolls themselves.
Electronic version of the first edition of Jacques-Paul Migne's Patrologia Latina, published between 1844 and 1855, and the four volumes of indexes published between 1862 and 1865. Covers the works of the Latin Fathers from Tertullian in 200 A.D. to Pope Innocent III in 1216. Includes the complete Patrologia Latina, including all prefatory material, original texts, critical apparatus and indexes. Migne's column numbers, essential references for scholars, are also included.
Early Modern and Modern (through World War I):
Covers the migrations, communities, and ideologies of the African Diaspora. Focus is on communities in the Caribbean, Brazil, India, United Kingdom, and France.
The collection includes primary source documents, including personal papers, organizational papers, journals, newsletters, court documents, letters, and ephemera.
Primary source documents covering five centuries of exploration and colonization. Subjects include: journeys, scientific discoveries, the expansion of European colonialism, conflict over territories and trade routes, and decades-long search and rescue attempts.
Includes rare manuscript and early printed material, illustrated maps and documents, diaries and ships' logs. Covers the earliest voyages of Vasco da Gama, the opening of trade with the Spice Islands, the colonization of the Americas and Australasia, the search for the Northwest and Northeast Passages, and finally the race for the Poles.
Primary source documents related to the First World War, covering personal experiences of men and women, recruitment, the development and dissemination of various forms of propaganda, women's war work, the Home Front and international perspectives.
Document types include: personal narratives, diaries, newspapers, posters, postcards, photographs, printed books, military and government files, ephemera, artwork, personal artifacts and film. Also includes secondary source materials such as interactive maps, and chronologies.
Modules include: Personal Experiences; Propaganda and Recruitment; Visual Perspectives and Narratives; A Global Conflict
Digital access to primary source material covering the evolution of food and drink within everyday life and the public sphere. Includes printed and manuscript cookbooks, advertising ephemera, government reports, films, and illustrated content.
Includes access to Modules 1 and 2. The bulk of the material ranges from the sixteenth century to the early twenty-first century. Module 2 includes six rare Apicius cookbooks, the earliest of which dates from the ninth century.
Collection of primary source full-text electronic editions in philosophy. Includes full corpora of figures in the history of the human sciences, including published and unpublished works, articles, essays, reviews, and correspondence. Works are in the original languages, with some translations included.
Provides digital access to manuscripts written or compiled by women in the British Isles during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, sourced from archives and libraries across the United Kingdom and the USA.
This resource is produced in association with the Perdita Project based at the University of Warwick and Nottingham Trent University. “Perdita” means “lost woman” and the quest of the Perdita Project has been to find early modern women authors who were “lost” because their writing exists only in manuscript form.
Primary source documents related to the Portuguese colonial government and its policies and activities in Africa, 1910-1929.
This collection includes correspondence, studies and reports, cables, maps, and other kinds of documents related to U.S. consular activities. U.S. Consulates were listening posts reporting on the activities of the Portuguese colonial government and the activities of the native peoples. Highlights include the beginning of an anti-colonial movement and the industrialization and economic exploitation of Portugal’s African colonies.
Primary source materials documenting the interactions between government policy and public philanthropy in Victorian and early twentieth-century society. Covers a shift in welfare reform and the social tensions surrounding poverty and public welfare.
Covers the complex social climate of nineteenth and early twentieth-century Britain between the introduction of the New Poor Law in 1834 and the eventual abolition of the workhouse system in 1930. Includes materials covering the conditions of workhouses and the administration of the new poor relief system through the official government correspondence of the Poor Law Office, documenting conditions and providing reports of healthcare, diet, sanitation and employment within the institutions.
Post World War I:
Covers the migrations, communities, and ideologies of the African Diaspora. Focus is on communities in the Caribbean, Brazil, India, United Kingdom, and France.
The collection includes primary source documents, including personal papers, organizational papers, journals, newsletters, court documents, letters, and ephemera.
Digital access to primary source material covering the evolution of food and drink within everyday life and the public sphere. Includes printed and manuscript cookbooks, advertising ephemera, government reports, films, and illustrated content.
Includes access to Modules 1 and 2. The bulk of the material ranges from the sixteenth century to the early twenty-first century. Module 2 includes six rare Apicius cookbooks, the earliest of which dates from the ninth century.
British Foreign Office files dealing with China, Hong Kong and Taiwan between 1919 and 1980.
The six parts of this collection make available all British Foreign Office files dealing with China, Hong Kong and Taiwan between 1919 and 1980:
1919-1929: Kuomintang, CCP and the Third International
1930-1937: The Long March, civil war in China and the Manchurian Crisis
1938-1948: Open Door, Japanese war and the seeds of communist victory
1949-1956: The Communist revolution
1957-1966: The Great Leap Forward
1967-1980: The Cultural Revolution
This collection of files from the Foreign Office (later the Foreign and Commonwealth Office) and Dominions Office focuses on the political and social history of India, Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Consists of the complete run of documents in the series DO 133, DO 134 and FCO 37, as well as all documents covering the Indian subcontinent in the FO 371 series. Events covered include independence and partition, the Indian annexation of Hyderabad and Goa, war between India and Pakistan, tensions and war between India and China, the consolidation of power of the Congress Party in India, military rule in Pakistan, the turbulent independence of Bangladesh and the development of nuclear weapons in the region.
The files address these events from the standpoint of British officialdom. In addition to high politics, they deal with such issues as economic and industrial development, trade, migration, visits to South Asia by British politicians and by South Asian politicians to Britain and elsewhere, education, administrative reorganisation, conflict over language, aid, political parties, agriculture and irrigation, and television and the press. Together they form a resource of fundamental value to scholars and students of modern South Asia.
Primary source materials documenting the shifting nature of Anglo-Japanese relations in the first half of the twentieth century.
Includes access to three modules:
Japan, 1931-1945: Japanese Imperialism and the War in the Pacific:
Section one begins in 1931, as Japan invades Manchuria. This incident, and continued Japanese activities in the region, would lead to their dramatic withdrawal from the League of Nations and further alienation from the western powers they had allied with during the First World War. The files in this section document the decline in relations, through war in the Pacific, up until Japanese surrender on board the US Missouri in 1945.
Japan, 1946-1952: Occupation of Japan:
From 1946-1952 Japan was occupied by Allied Powers. The files for this period offer a British perspective on the creation of a democratic state in Japan and the enforcement of a new constitution. They include key British communications and reports covering topics such as war crime trials, reparations, and Japan’s economic recovery. They conclude in 1952, the year the Treaty of San Francisco normalized Anglo-Japanese relations and the first post-war British Ambassador to Japan, Esler Dening, was appointed.
Japan and Great Power Status, 1919-1930:
In 1919, as a vital member of the Allied Powers, Japan found itself occupying a new position of international power within a reorganized world order. The files in this section trace the development of this power and Japan’s relationship with the West during a decade of turbulent economic, political and social change in the wake of the First World War. Beginning with the Paris Peace Conference and the ‘Shantung Question’, the files offer insight into the events of the 1920s, from the termination of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, the devastation of the Kantō Earthquake, and the end of the Taishō democracy, to the beginning of the Shōwa period, financial crisis and Japan’s increasingly imperialist policies in Manchuria.
Primary source documents related to the Portuguese colonial government and its policies and activities in Africa, 1910-1929.
This collection includes correspondence, studies and reports, cables, maps, and other kinds of documents related to U.S. consular activities. U.S. Consulates were listening posts reporting on the activities of the Portuguese colonial government and the activities of the native peoples. Highlights include the beginning of an anti-colonial movement and the industrialization and economic exploitation of Portugal’s African colonies.
Access to original archival materials related to popular culture in the U.S. and U.K. from 1950-1975. Includes color images of manuscript and rare printed material as well as photographs, ephemera and memorabilia.
An archive of primary source documents, covering the repatriation and emigration of the Displaced Persons and survivors of the Holocaust and World War II.
Files include original reports on orphans and Unaccompanied Children Under UNRRA Care, Voluntary Societies British Zone Monthly Reports, 1949-, Welfare Work Amongst Jewish Prison Inmates, DPs in Assembly Stations, 1950, Displaced persons and prisoners of war to and from Italy, Complaints about Russian refugees and displaced persons (DPs); allegations of mistreatment of Soviet nationals, and Repatriation and disposal of prisoners of war, surrendered personnel, displaced persons etc.