Subject and Course Guides: History: Digitized Primary Sources

Sources by Region

Accessible Archives
Accessible Archives offers access to primary source material from prior to 1900 that has been fully digitized and is full-text searchable. To view the collections UIC subscribes to, see more .
UIC's subscription includes access to the following:

African American Newspapers, Parts 1-12S
The Christian Recorder
The Colored American/Weekly Advocate
Frederick Douglass’ Paper
Freedom’s Journal
The National Era
The North Star
Provincial Freeman
Civil War, Parts 1-4
Part I: A Newspaper Perspective
Part II: The Soldiers’ Perspective
Part III: The Generals’ Perspective
Part IV: A Midwestern Perspective
Part V. Iowa's Perspective
Part VI. Northeast Regimental Histories
Frank Leslie’s Weekly, Parts 1-14
Godey’s Lady’s Book, Parts 1-9
The Virginia Gazette, Parts 1-5
Women’s Suffrage (free)
Part I: The Lily
Part II: National Citizen and Ballot Box
Part III: The Revolution
African American Communities
Focusing predominantly on Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis, New York, and towns and cities in North Carolina this resource presents multiple aspects of the African American community through pamphlets, newspapers and periodicals, correspondence, official records, reports and in-depth oral histories, revealing the prevalent challenges of racism, discrimination and integration, and a unique African American culture and identity.

American Archive of Public Broadcasting
The Library of Congress and GBH in Boston have embarked on a project to preserve for posterity the most significant public television and radio programs of the past 60 years: The American Archive of Public Broadcasting. Approximately 40,000 hours of programs selected by more than 100 public broadcasting stations throughout the nation. Dating from the 1940s to the 21st century and emanating from all regions of the nation, these programs will be available to scholars, researchers, educators, students, and the general public at the Library’s audiovisual research centers and at GBH.
American Historical Periodicals (AAS)
comprehensive digital access to the American Antiquarian Society's (AAS) collection of American periodicals published between 1684 and 1912, documenting the life of America's people from the Colonial Era through the Civil War and Reconstruction.
American Memory
American Memory provides written and spoken words, sound recordings, still and moving images, prints, maps, and sheet music that document the American experience. Clicking on the 'browse' link points you to collections on war, military, and women.

American Periodicals (1740-1940)
American periodicals originating between 1740-1940, covering two centuries of American history and culture. Full images with searchable text.
Subject: U.S. history and culture
Content: American periodicals originating between 1741-1941, covering two centuries of Americana
Format: ASCII background searchable text, full image
Why it’s Unique:
• 200 years of American history
• Now complete! 7 million page images, over 1,100 periodicals
• Major events and everyday life in full image
• Interface customized for searching historical content
Black Thought and Culture
Non-fiction published works of leading African Americans, as well as interviews, speeches, essays, pamphlets, letters, etc. Includes the Black Panther Party newspaper.
Black Thought & Culture covers the non-fiction published works of leading African Americans, as well as interviews, journal articles, speeches, essays, pamplets, letters and other fugitive material. BT&C includes the only complete run of the Black Panther Party newspaper available in digital format.

Bracero History Archive
Thousands of oral histories and artifacts pertaining to the Bracero program, a guest worker initiative that spanned the years 1942-1964.
Chicago Foreign Language Press Survery (Newberry)
120,000 typewritten pages translated from newspapers of 22 different foreign language communities of Chicago from 1855 to 1938 by the Works Progress Administration of Illinois.

Civil War: Parts I-IV
Primary sources on the Civil War from a variety of perspectives. Produced by Accessible Archives. This resource was acquired with funding from the Library/IT Assessment.
Part I: A Newspaper Perspective.
Contains major articles gleaned from over 2,500 issues of The New York Herald, The Charleston Mercury and the Richmond Enquirer, published between November 1, 1860 and April 15, 1865.
Part II: The Soldiers’ Perspective.
Provides an in-depth look at the day-to-day actions of the troops themselves primarily in the form of regimental histories
Part III: The Generals’ Perspective.
These volumes allow a look into the way the battles within the war were fought.
Part IV: A Midwestern Perspective.
This collection consists of seven newspapers published in Indiana between 1855 and 1869.

Disability in the Modern World: History of a Social Movement
A collection of primary and secondary resources, with texts and videos, pertaining to the history and contributions of the disability community.
Early American Imprints
Series I (and Supplement) 1639-1800 contains virtually every book, pamphlet and broadside published in America from 1639-1800. Series II (and Supplement) provides a comprehensive set of American books, pamphlets and broadsides published between 1801-1819. Select which series to search (and exclude newspapers) by clicking the "Searching 9 of 9 databases" button.

Ebony Magazine Archive
Ebony Magazine Archive covers civil rights, education, entrepreneurship and other social topics with an African-American focus. It includes more than 800 issues providing a broad view of African-American culture from its first issue in 1945 through 2014.

Enslaved.org
open-source architecture to discover and explore nearly a half million people records and 5 million data points. From archival fragments and spreadsheet entries, we see the lives of the enslaved in richer detail. Yet there’s much more work to do, and with the help of scholars, educators, and family historians, Enslaved.org will be rapidly expanding

European Views of the Americas: 1493 to 1750
In cooperation with the John Carter Brown Library, EBSCO Publishing created a comprehensive guide to printed records about the Americas written in Europe before 1750 from European Americana: A Chronological Guide to Works Printed In Europe Relating to the Americas, 1493-1750.
The database contains more than 32,000 records, and covers the history of European exploration as well as portrayals of native American peoples.

Explore Chicago Collections
The Chicago Collections Consortium aspires to increase public and scholarly interest in and study of the Chicago region's diverse history and culture. On this website, you can search and browse hundreds of collections from 20 different Chicago-area libraries, including UIC!

Hathi Trust Digital Library
The HathiTrust Digital Library catalog provides access to the immense collections of the over 50 partner institutions who have contributed their works to be accessible in digital form. Logging in is optional, but it allows for full text downloading.
The HathiTrust Digital Library catalog provides bibliographic access to approximately 8 million scanned volumes from libraries around the world. The full text for older titles out of copyright can accessed through the HathiTrust Interface.

Herman Baca Collection (UCSD)
The papers of Herman Baca, a National City, California, Chicano rights activist and prominent member of the Mexican-American community

HistoryMakers
The HistoryMakers is the largest African American video oral history archive in the world. Currently, it offers access to more than 2,800 full-length oral-history video interviews, with more than 9000 hours with African Americans in a variety of fields including business, medicine, the arts, education, entertainment, politics, sports, and more. Includes captions and transcripts.
The HistoryMakers, founded in 1999, is a non-profit educational institution committed to preserving and making widely accessible the untold personal stories of both well-known and unsung African Americans. The archive is searchable by names, gender, birth year, job type, as well as themes, subjects, and historical context. Transcripts for the interviews are also available and searchable.
ProQuest History Vault
Trial access for three years (October 2019 - September 2022) to over 300 primary source products including archival collections, government documents, periodicals, newspapers, video and more! Includes NAACP, SCLC, SNCC, and CORE records; Bureau of Indian Affairs records; INS records to 1930; ACLU papers; National Women's Party, League of Women Voters, and Women's Action Alliance records; Children's Bureau records; U.S. Army, State Dept., and OSS files; FDR and New Deal Agency records; Pinkerton, Socialist Party, and AFL-CIO records; and much more!

Huntington Digital Library
Online collections from the Huntington Library, an independent research library specializing in the fields of British and American history, literature and the history of science spanning the 11th century to the present.

Illinois Digital Archives
The Illinois Digital Archives was created in 2000, as a repository for the digital collections of the Illinois State Library as well as other libraries and cultural institutions in the State of Illinois.
Content in the Illinois Digital Archives includes photographs, oral histories, manuscripts, Illinois government documents, federal government documents, postcards, posters, videos, newspapers, maps, and more. All content is freely accessible.

Illinois Digital Heritage Hub
photographs, manuscripts, books, audio recordings, and videos. Established in 2015 by four institutions, the Chicago Public Library, the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois, the Illinois State Library, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library
In the Vicinity of Maxwell and Halsted Streets: Chicago 1890-1930 – A Human Documentary
Investigates and evaluates comprehensively and in depth the complexities of the Progressive era in U.S. History from the unique perspective of Chicago. Developed by Prof. Burton J. Bledstein and funded with a special grant from the Offices of the Provost, the Illinois Humanities Council, and many other organizations at UIC and beyond.
Internet Colonial North American History Sourcebook
Open-access primary sources on Colonial North American history, maintained by Fordham University.

Migration to New Worlds
From the century of immigration, through to the modern era, Migration to New Worlds charts the emigration experience of millions across 200 years of turbulent history.
Nineteenth Century Collections Online
Nineteenth Century Collections Online is a multi-year global digitization and publishing program focusing on primary source collections of the nineteenth century, with archives releasing incrementally beginning in spring 2012. May not be compatible with Chrome.
It consists of monographs, newspapers, pamphlets, manuscripts, ephemera, maps, photographs, statistics, and other kinds of documents in both Western and non-Western languages.

Schomburg Syllabus
Archives Black-authored and Black-related online educational resources to document Black studies, movements, and experiences in the 21st century. In connecting these web-archived resources to the Schomburg Center’s own unique materials, the project honors and recognizes the source and strength of Black self-education practices, collective study, and librarianship

The Sixties: Primary Documents and Personal Narratives 1960–1974
Primary documents and scholarly commentary for research into American culture, history and politics during the years 1960 to 1974. Includes captions and transcripts.
Primary documents, books, photos, diaries, letters, autobiographies and other memoirs, written and oral histories, manifestos, government documents, memorabilia, and scholarly commentary for research into American culture, history and politics during the years 1960 to 1974.

Strachwitz Frontera Collection of Mexican and Mexican American Recordings
Over 125,000 songs celebrating North America’s Spanish-language musical heritage
Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database
Comprises 36,000 individual slaving expeditions between 1514 and 1866. Records of the voyages have been found in archives and libraries throughout the Atlantic world. They provide information about vessels, routes, and the people associated with them, both enslaved and enslavers. Sources are cited for every voyage included.
Vasa Order of American National Archives
Swedish-American Fraternal organization, in Bishop Hill, IL. Online collections contain several oral history interviews conducted by Lennart Setterdahl here. Lennart traveled across the US interviewing Swedish-Americans and their descendants.

Women and Social Movements in the U.S. 1600-2000 - Scholars' edition
Collection combining primary documents with historical and scholarly analysis and teaching tools, all documenting women’s activism in public life. Includes captions and transcripts.
Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000 is a collection of primary documents, books, images, scholarly essays, book reviews, Web site reviews, and teaching tools, all documenting women’s activism in public life.

The database is organized around document projects, each posing a new interpretative question and then providing 20 to 50 primary documents that address the question, together with an interpretive introduction and headnotes, bibliography, and related links. Examples of topics are:

How Did the Ladies Association of Philadelphia Shape New Forms of Women’s Activism During the American Revolution, 1780-1781?
How Did Black and White Southern Women Campaign to End Lynching, 1890-1942?
How and Why Did the Guerrilla Girls Alter the Art Establishment in New York City, 1985-1995?

Archivo Nacional de Chile
Objects, photographs, documents and digitized books; research related to different areas related to heritage, such as: history, archeology, art, anthropology, literature, education, gender and natural sciences; and materials of a unique or local nature, such as local artisanal expressions, oral traditions and materials of indigenous peoples, works of artists and relevant intellectuals on the national scene, unpublished historical documentation, among others.
Biblioteca Digital Hispánica (BNE)
Biblioteca Digital Hispánica is the digital library of the National Library of Spain. It provides free and free access to thousands of scanned documents, including books printed between the 15th and 19th centuries, manuscripts, drawings, prints, brochures, posters, photographs, maps, atlas, sheet music, historical press and sound recordings--many of which concern early Latin American history (most material is from 1800-1920)
Biblioteca Nacional de Mexico
The National Digital Library of Mexico (BNDM), in line with the mission that the National Library has accomplished since 1867 and which consists in compiling, preserving, disseminating and safeguarding Mexico's bibliographic memory, now makes part of its collections available to the world , archival and documentary funds, which give a true account of the richness of the cultural heritage of our country and whose digitalization process will increase.
Brazilian Government Documents (CRL)
Digitized executive branch serial documents issued by Brazil’s national government between 1821 and 1993, and by its provincial governments from the earliest available for each province to the end of the first Republic in 1930.
CIA Human Rights in Latin America
Documents dating from 1964 to 1995 mostly concerning El Salvador and Guatemala,including some released to the United Nations Truth Commission for El Salvador, which sought information on 32 alleged human rights violations in El Salvador between 1980 and 1991. These records reveal that U.S. citizens, other foreigners, and indigenous people on both the left and right in El Salvador and Guatemala were victims of these kidnappings, murders, and other human rights abuses.
Civil War, Society and Political Transition in Guatemala : the Guatemala News and Information Bureau Archive (1963-2000)
The Guatemala News and Information Bureau (GNIB) was an activist and solidarity group based in San Francisco, California, created in 1978 to support and inform the public about Guatemalan movements for peace and justice, indigenous rights, and labor rights. To support its activities, the GNIB systematically collected a wide variety of materials documenting all aspects related to the civil war in that country, including human rights abuses and the social and political responses to state sponsored violence. Also documented were the negotiations and the implementation of the Peace Accords signed in the mid 1990s.
Digital Collection of Mexican and Argentine Presidential Messages
digital images of Mexican and Argentine presidential speeches from the 19th century represent the second phase of the Latin Americanist Research Resources Project.
Digital Library of the Caribbean
cooperative digital library for resources from and about the Caribbean and circum-Caribbean.
Enslaved.org
open-source architecture to discover and explore nearly a half million people records and 5 million data points. From archival fragments and spreadsheet entries, we see the lives of the enslaved in richer detail. Yet there’s much more work to do, and with the help of scholars, educators, and family historians, Enslaved.org will be rapidly expanding
Fidel Castro Speech Database
speeches, interviews, etc., by Fidel Castro from 1959 to 1996. All texts are in English but include a link to the Spanish original.
Florentine Codex
16th-century ethnographic research study in Mesoamerica by the Spanish Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún.
Guaman Poma Website
A Digital Research Center of the Royal Library, Copenhagen, Denmark. Guamán Poma or Wamán Poma, was a Quechua nobleman known for chronicling and denouncing the ill treatment of the natives of the Andes by the Spanish after their conquest in his 1615 Nueva corónica y buen gobierno

Latin American Newspapers
Growing collection of Latin American and Caribbean historical newspapers in a partnership between Center for Research Libraries and Newsbank to preserve and provide persistent access to historical newspapers from around the globe.
Hathi Trust Digital Library
The HathiTrust Digital Library catalog provides access to the immense collections of the over 50 partner institutions who have contributed their works to be accessible in digital form. Logging in is optional, but it allows for full text downloading.
The HathiTrust Digital Library catalog provides bibliographic access to approximately 8 million scanned volumes from libraries around the world. The full text for older titles out of copyright can accessed through the HathiTrust Interface.

Hemerotica Nacional Digital de Mexico
672 publicly available digitized newspapers and periodicals from 1722 to the present
Historic Mexican & Mexican American Press
The Historic Mexican and Mexican American Press collection documents and showcases historic Mexican and Mexican American publications published in Tucson, El Paso, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Sonora, Mexico from the mid-1800s to the 1970s.

Independent and Revolutionary Mexican Newspapers
Over 1,000 titles from Mexico's pre-independence, independence and revolutionary periods (1807-1929), the newspapers include coverage of Mexican partisan politics, yellow press, political and social satire, as well as local, regional, national and international news.

Internet Colonial Latin American History Sourcebook
Open-access primary Sources on Colonial and Pre-Columbian Latin American history maintained by Fordham University Libraries. The Internet History Sourcebooks Project is located at the History Department of Fordham University, New York.
Internet 19th Century Latin American History Soiurcebook
Open-access primary sources on 19th Century Latin American History maintained by Fordham University Libraries.
Internet 20th Century Latin American History Sourcebook
Open-access primary sources on 20th Century Latin American History maintained by Fordham University Libraries.
Latin American Studies.Org
Free website hosting transcriptions or links to thousands of primary and secondary sources, mostly in English, about Latin America, organized by topic or by country
Legislación Mexicana
16,890 numbered depositions, arranged chronologically from 1687 to 1902, three volumes of Codes, Ordinances and Regulations of the Army and Navy of the Mexican Republic, and a collection of laws, decrees, sides, regulations, circulars and orders of the supreme powers and other authorities of the Mexican Republic compiled by Basilio José Arrillaga, and the Mexican archive; one of the most fruitful efforts to summarize Mexican legislation of the nineteenth century.
Mexican Intelligence Digital Archives (CRL)
Crowd-sourced, public access digital archive of historical documents from Mexican intelligence agencies. The collection is drawn from Mexico’s two principal security services, the Dirección Federal de Seguridad (DFS) and the Dirección General de Investigaciones Políticas y Sociales (DGIPS) and covers the period c.1940 to c.1985.
National Security Archive (GWU)
Founded in 1985 by journalists and scholars to check rising government secrecy, the National Security Archive is (among other things) a library and archive of declassified U.S. documents ("the world's largest nongovernmental collection" according to the Los Angeles Times), and indexer and publisher of former secrets.
Strachwitz Frontera Collection of Mexican and Mexican American Recordings
Over 125,000 songs celebrating North America’s Spanish-language musical heritage
Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database
Comprises 36,000 individual slaving expeditions between 1514 and 1866. Records of the voyages have been found in archives and libraries throughout the Atlantic world. They provide information about vessels, routes, and the people associated with them, both enslaved and enslavers. Sources are cited for every voyage included.
World Digital Library (LOC)
Project of the U.S. Library of Congress, carried out with the support of the United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (UNESCO), and in cooperation with libraries, archives, museums, educational institutions, and international organizations from around the world to make significant primary materials from all countries and cultures available digitally.

Cult of Saints of Late Antiquity
Early evidence for the cult of Christian saints (up to around AD 700), with key texts presented in their original language, all with English translation and brief contextual commentary
Digital Library of Late-Antique Latin Texts
Secular prose texts written in Latin in late antiquity (from the second to the seventh century AD). The texts are annotated according to the XML-TEI standards and are offered free of charge to the public for reading and research.
***NEW!*** Disability in the Modern World: History of a Social Movement
A collection of primary and secondary resources, with texts and videos, pertaining to the history and contributions of the disability community.
Early Church Texts
Electronic Encyclopedia of the first five centuries of Church History, with extensive links to information on around 800 people and themes, and around 230 Church Councils. There are carefully indexed links to authors and their works, including an index of links to commentaries, homilies etc. by biblical book.
more...less...
225+ carefully prepared on-site texts (original language with English translation alongside) from the first five centuries of the life of the Church. Extracts and cover a range of significant themes and represent several authors. Easy access to complete Greek and Latin texts which are in the public domain and translations (where found available) from the first five centuries.
Eurodocs
Western European primary historical documents.

Early English Books Online : EEBO
Early English Books Online is now available on ProQuest platform. Over 100,000 early books published in English between 1475 and 1700. (To continue into the 18th century, see below: ECCO: Eighteenth Century Collections Online).
From the first book published in English through the age of Spenser and Shakespeare, this collection now contains about 100,000 of over 125,000 titles published in England between 1475 and 1700. Titles are drawn from Pollard & Redgrave's Short-Title Catalogue (1475-1640) and Wing's Short-Title Catalogue (1641-1700), the Thomason Tracts (1640-1661) collection and the Early English Books Tract Supplement. Eighteenth-century English & American books (1700-1800) are continued in the ECCO collection, which is cross-searchable with EEBO.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO I & II)
Every significant English and foreign-language title printed in Great Britain, along with thousands of important works from the Americas (1700-1800). This database may not be compatible with Mozilla Firefox.
This is a digitization project published by Gale Cengage that delivers every significant English-language and foreign-language title printed in Great Britain during the eighteenth century, along with thousands of important works from the Americas with full-text search across more than 26 million pages.
Empire Online
Historic British colonial and postcolonial primary documents and books, with extensive curatorial notes. From 1492-1969.
Over 70,000 searchable page images of British colonial and postcolonial historic documents and printed material from 1492-1969, taken from archives and libraries around the world. Geographic coverage includes the Americas, Australasia, Africa, Oceania and South Asia.

Enslaved.org
open-source architecture to discover and explore nearly a half million people records and 5 million data points. From archival fragments and spreadsheet entries, we see the lives of the enslaved in richer detail. Yet there’s much more work to do, and with the help of scholars, educators, and family historians, Enslaved.org will be rapidly expanding
Gallica (BNF)
Gallica is the digital library of the National Library of France and its partners. Online since 1997, it is enriched every week by thousands of new products and now offers access to several million documents.
Internet Ancient History Sourcebook (Fordham Universty)
Collection of public domain and copy-permitted historical texts presented cleanly (without advertising or excessive layout) for educational use. Primary sources are available here primarily for use in high-school and university/college courses. Covers Human Origins, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Persia, Israel, Greece, Hellenistic World, Rome, Late Antiquity, Christian Origins.

Hathi Trust Digital Library
The HathiTrust Digital Library catalog provides access to the immense collections of the over 50 partner institutions who have contributed their works to be accessible in digital form. Logging in is optional, but it allows for full text downloading.
The HathiTrust Digital Library catalog provides bibliographic access to approximately 8 million scanned volumes from libraries around the world. The full text for older titles out of copyright can accessed through the HathiTrust Interface.

House of Commons Parliamentary Papers
House of Lords Parliamentary Papers
Internet Medieval History Sourcebook
Collection of public domain and copy-permitted historical texts presented cleanly (without advertising or excessive layout) for educational use

Migration to New Worlds
From the century of immigration, through to the modern era, Migration to New Worlds charts the emigration experience of millions across 200 years of turbulent history.

Münchener Digitalisierungs Zentrum (MDZ)
1.2 million pages are available in digiPress, the newspaper portal of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek. The historic newspaper portal now includes more than 7.8 million digitized pages.
National Digital Library of Poland
literature and scientific materials, historical documents, journals, graphics, photography, and maps. The main aim is to present Polish cultural heritage with its age-old tradition and achievements, as well as showing the abundance of the National Library's collections.

Nineteenth Century Collections Online
Nineteenth Century Collections Online is a multi-year global digitization and publishing program focusing on primary source collections of the nineteenth century, with archives releasing incrementally beginning in spring 2012. May not be compatible with Chrome.
It consists of monographs, newspapers, pamphlets, manuscripts, ephemera, maps, photographs, statistics, and other kinds of documents in both Western and non-Western languages.
Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (RAI)
The Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (RAI) is the world's longest-established scholarly association dedicated to the furtherance of anthropology (the study of humankind) in its broadest and most inclusive sense. This database contains committee minutes and other documents from the late 19th century to the present. It also contains manuscripts, photos and maps from the Institute.

Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database
Comprises 36,000 individual slaving expeditions between 1514 and 1866. Records of the voyages have been found in archives and libraries throughout the Atlantic world. They provide information about vessels, routes, and the people associated with them, both enslaved and enslavers. Sources are cited for every voyage included.

Victorian Popular Culture
Digitized, searchable collection of rare printed sources describing popular entertainment in America, Britain and Europe from 1779 to 1930.
Victorian Popular Culture: Spiritualism, Sensation and Magic is a digitized, searchable collection of rare printed sources describing popular entertainment in America, Britain and Europe from 1779 to 1930. Collections include the Harry Price Library of Magical Literature; the Houdini Collection; and the Harry Hansom Humanities Research Center.

World Digital Library (LOC)
Project of the U.S. Library of Congress, carried out with the support of the United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (UNESCO), and in cooperation with libraries, archives, museums, educational institutions, and international organizations from around the world to make significant primary materials from all countries and cultures available digitally.

African Online Digital Library
Cultural heritage materials from and about African countries and communities including tens of thousands of digitized photographs, videos, archival documents, maps, interviews and oral histories in numerous African languages, many of which are contained in curated thematic galleries and teaching resources.
Black Past Primary Documents in Global African History
Documents which have contributed to the shaping of Global African history.
British Documents on the End of Empire Project: Ghana
This collection of documents is intended to illuminate some of the processes which led to the end of British colonial rule in the Gold Coast on 6 March 1957. Whilst South Africa and then the Sudan had paved the way to independent status for African dependencies and protectorates, Ghana, as the Gold Coast was to be renamed by its government at independence, was the first tropical African state to achieve full nation-statehood after a colonial period which in the case of the littoral of the Gold Coast had lasted for just over a century.
British Documents on the End of Empire Project: Nigeria
With a population of some 31 million in the early 1950s, Nigeria was, following the independence of India and Pakistan, Britain’s largest dependency. One in three of the inhabitants of the British empire in this period lived in Nigeria; each of the Nigerian regions created in 1951 had a population larger than any other British overseas possession, with the exception of Tanganyika.
British Documents on the End of Empire Project: Sudan
This collection of documents illustrates an anomaly in decolonisation. Before Britain fully accepted the twin principles of self-government and self-determination for her own colonial empire, here she became the main international advocate for granting independence to the colony of another country, Egypt, then in the process of disentangling itself from Britain’s informal empire in the Middle East.
Colonial Film
Over 6000 films showing images of life in the British colonies. Over 150 films are available for viewing online. You can search or browse for films by country, date, topic, or keyword. Over 350 of the most important films in the catalogue are presented with extensive critical notes written by our academic research team.

Empire Online
Historic British colonial and postcolonial primary documents and books, with extensive curatorial notes. From 1492-1969.
Over 70,000 searchable page images of British colonial and postcolonial historic documents and printed material from 1492-1969, taken from archives and libraries around the world. Geographic coverage includes the Americas, Australasia, Africa, Oceania and South Asia.

Enslaved.org
open-source architecture to discover and explore nearly a half million people records and 5 million data points. From archival fragments and spreadsheet entries, we see the lives of the enslaved in richer detail. Yet there’s much more work to do, and with the help of scholars, educators, and family historians, Enslaved.org will be rapidly expanding
Genocide Archive of Rwanda
Digital collection of items related to the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, pre-genocide history and post-genocide reconstruction processes.
Historical Papers of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
Digital materials on South African history from over 100 archival collections held at the William Cullen Library
Internet African History Sourcebook
Major historical documents on African history from Ancient to contemporary times. Secondary sources and web sites are distinguished from primary documents. Some links are broken
Internet Library for Sub-Saharan Africa
ilissAfrica allows simultaneous searching ("General search") in Africana collections from Namibia, Germany, The Netherlands, and Sweden.
Select "Full-texts" to exclude physical materials possibly only accessible in Europe.
Livingstone Online
15,000 high-resolution manuscript images and 780 critically-edited transcriptions from David Livingstone's papers, journals, correspondence, and collected materials
Memórias de África e do Oriente
Project of the Fundação Portugal-África developed and maintained by the Universidade de Aveiro and the Centro de Estudos sobre África e do Desenvolvimento since 1997 aims to preserve historical memory of the ties that unite Portugal and Lusofonia, thus being a bridge with our common past in the construction of a collective identity to the peoples of all these countries.

Middle Eastern and North African Newspapers
Nineteenth century to present. Key topics include colonialism, the Ottoman Empire, Suez Crisis, Cold War, petroleum industry, twentieth century pan-Arab movements, World Wars, state of Israel, Iran-Iraq War, and Arab Spring. NOTE: registration is required to download PDFs.

Patrice Lumumba Archive (Marxists.org)
28 texts by and about the first Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo
Primary Documents from Global African History (BlackPast)
Important texts and speeches in the shaping of Global African history. These documents are a starting point for additional research and discussions that help further our understanding the history of people of African ancestry

Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (RAI)
The Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (RAI) is the world's longest-established scholarly association dedicated to the furtherance of anthropology (the study of humankind) in its broadest and most inclusive sense. This database contains committee minutes and other documents from the late 19th century to the present. It also contains manuscripts, photos and maps from the Institute.

Sudan Open Archive
Expanding, word-searchable, full-text database of historical and contemporary books and documents. The current version, SOA 4.0, includes two new special collections: the first thirty-two volumes of Sudan Notes and Records, Sudan’s flagship scholarly journal, and the collected papers of the late Sudan scholar, Richard Gray. This collection contains 1,307 documents comprising 40,668 pages.

The Times (London) Digital Archive
Complete digital archives of The Times (1785-1985). May not be compatible with Mozilla Firefox.
UIC users can search through the complete digital archives of The Times (London), using keyword searching and hit-term highlighting to retrieve full facsimile images of either a specific article or a complete page. The entire newspaper is captured, with all articles, advertisements and illustrations/photos divided into categories to facilitate searching.

Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database
Comprises 36,000 individual slaving expeditions between 1514 and 1866. Records of the voyages have been found in archives and libraries throughout the Atlantic world. They provide information about vessels, routes, and the people associated with them, both enslaved and enslavers. Sources are cited for every voyage included.
World Digital Library (LOC)
Project of the U.S. Library of Congress, carried out with the support of the United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (UNESCO), and in cooperation with libraries, archives, museums, educational institutions, and international organizations from around the world to make significant primary materials from all countries and cultures available digitally.

Afghanistan Digital Collections (UofA / ACKU)
documents related to Afghanistan history, culture, and its development. ACKU’s permanent collection is the most extensive in the region covering a time of war and social upheaval in the country, with most of the documents in English or the principal languages of Pashto and Dari. Includes late-20th-century runs of the Afghani newspapers Anis and Kabul Times
Al-ĀdĀb (AUB)
Al-ĀdĀb was a literary and cultural magazine covering political thought, poetry, short stories, movies criticism, theater, and general culture mainly in the Arab World from 1953-2012. Digital collection maintained by the American University of Beirut.
Arabic Collections Online (AUB)
Over 2000 digitized Arabic texts from the American University of Beirut from the early 20th century
Early Church Texts
Electronic Encyclopedia of the first five centuries of Church History, with extensive links to information on around 800 people and themes, and around 230 Church Councils. There are carefully indexed links to authors and their works, including an index of links to commentaries, homilies etc. by biblical book.
more...less...
225+ carefully prepared on-site texts (original language with English translation alongside) from the first five centuries of the life of the Church. Extracts and cover a range of significant themes and represent several authors. Easy access to complete Greek and Latin texts which are in the public domain and translations (where found available) from the first five centuries.
Internet Ancient History Sourcebook (Fordham Universty)
Collection of public domain and copy-permitted historical texts presented cleanly (without advertising or excessive layout) for educational use. Primary sources are available here primarily for use in high-school and university/college courses. Covers Human Origins, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Persia, Israel, Greece, Hellenistic World, Rome, Late Antiquity, Christian Origins.
Internet Islamic History Sourcebook
Major historical documents from the Middle East and the wider Islamic World from Ancient to contemporary times. Secondary sources and web sites are distinguished from primary documents. Some links are broken
Iranian Oral History Project (Harvard)
Personal accounts of 134 individuals who played major roles in or were eyewitnesses to important political events in Iran from the 1920s to the 1980s.
Iraqi Mukharabat Archive of Jewish Materials
Published books (more than 2,700) as well as unpublished archival materials (tens of thousands), including handwritten books, correspondence, booklets, school records, financial records, telegrams, and more.
MENAdoc (MLU)
Over 15,000 digitized works (mostly published books) from or about the Middle East and North Africa digitized by the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg Landesbibliothek
The Middle East in Early Prints and Photographs (NYPL)
Classics of illustrated travel and regional archaeology, as well as the New York Public Library's earliest works of photography in the Middle East region (primarily donated by travellers and family members)

Middle Eastern and North African Newspapers
Nineteenth century to present. Key topics include colonialism, the Ottoman Empire, Suez Crisis, Cold War, petroleum industry, twentieth century pan-Arab movements, World Wars, state of Israel, Iran-Iraq War, and Arab Spring. NOTE: registration is required to download PDFs.

Nakba Archive
The Nakba Archive is a grassroots oral history collective founded in 2002 to record and commemorate the experiences of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon who lived through the 1948 Nakba, ‘catastrophe.’ Over the course of 1947-48, during the creation of the Israeli state, close to one million Palestinians were forcibly expelled and dispossessed of their homes and lands by European Jewish settlers, and around 530 Palestinian villages were destroyed. This collection of over 500 video interviews, with first-generation Palestinian refugees from more than 150 Palestinian villages and towns, documents this violent history of mass displacement in vivid detail.
Nashriyah: Digital Iranian History
digital versions of Iranian newspapers and periodicals capturing the premiership of Mohammad Mossadegh and the August 1953 coup d'état against his government (1950-53), the 1979 Revolution; and the late 1990s/early 2000s ‘reform era’ of former President Mohammad Khatami
National Library of Israel Digital Library
Includes over 215 digitized Jewish newspapers, as well as historic maps, manuscripts, and ephemera
National Security Archive (GWU)
Founded in 1985 by journalists and scholars to check rising government secrecy, the National Security Archive is (among other things) a library and archive of declassified U.S. documents ("the world's largest nongovernmental collection" according to the Los Angeles Times), and indexer and publisher of former secrets.
Palestinian Oral History Archive (American University of Beirut)
1,000 hours of testimonies with first generation Palestinians and other Palestinian communities in Lebanon. POHA documents the life stories of Palestinians residing in refugee camps and different communities in Lebanon. The Archive's main focus is personal accounts surrounding the Nakba, a defining moment in Palestinian history and collective experience. Furthermore, the collection contains life narratives of the pre-Nakba period in pre-1948 Palestine, folktales and songs, as well as stories of the women in Ein el-Helwe camp after its destruction in 1982.
Palestine Poster Project Archives
5,000 Palestine posters from myriad sources
Qatar Digital Library
This growing archive of over 17,000 manuscripts, books, files, and images covers modern history and culture of the Gulf and wider region, available online for the first time.
UNRWA Photo & Film Archive for Palestinian Refugees
images and films taken by UNRWA photographers (and their predecessors) throughout the tumultuous second half of the twentieth century and start of the twenty-first. It includes iconic images of Palestinians having to leave their homes, in 1948; the establishment of refugee camps, in the 1950s; the second flight, in 1967; the hostilities in Lebanon; and the unrest from the second half of the 1980s to the early twenty-first century.
World Digital Library (Middle East and North Africa)
Over 2000 digitized historical documents, maps, and images from the Iraqi National Library and Archive and the Library of Congress

Afghanistan Digital Collections (UofA / ACKU)
documents related to Afghanistan history, culture, and its development. ACKU’s permanent collection is the most extensive in the region covering a time of war and social upheaval in the country, with most of the documents in English or the principal languages of Pashto and Dari. Includes late-20th-century runs of the Afghani newspapers Anis and Kabul Times
Colonial Film
Over 6000 films showing images of life in the British colonies. Over 150 films are available for viewing online. You can search or browse for films by country, date, topic, or keyword. Over 350 of the most important films in the catalogue are presented with extensive critical notes written by our academic research team.
Digital South Asia Library
Includes Imperial Gazetteer of India (1908-1931), statistical resources, maps, and images

Empire Online
Historic British colonial and postcolonial primary documents and books, with extensive curatorial notes. From 1492-1969.
Over 70,000 searchable page images of British colonial and postcolonial historic documents and printed material from 1492-1969, taken from archives and libraries around the world. Geographic coverage includes the Americas, Australasia, Africa, Oceania and South Asia.
Hathi Trust Digital Library
The HathiTrust Digital Library catalog provides access to the immense collections of the over 50 partner institutions who have contributed their works to be accessible in digital form. Logging in is optional, but it allows for full text downloading.
The HathiTrust Digital Library catalog provides bibliographic access to approximately 8 million scanned volumes from libraries around the world. The full text for older titles out of copyright can accessed through the HathiTrust Interface.

Internet Indian History Sourcebook
Major historical documents on Indian and South Asian history from Ancient to contemporary times. Secondary sources and web sites are distinguished from primary documents. Some links are broken

Nineteenth Century Collections Online
Nineteenth Century Collections Online is a multi-year global digitization and publishing program focusing on primary source collections of the nineteenth century, with archives releasing incrementally beginning in spring 2012. May not be compatible with Chrome.
It consists of monographs, newspapers, pamphlets, manuscripts, ephemera, maps, photographs, statistics, and other kinds of documents in both Western and non-Western languages.
Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (RAI)
The Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland (RAI) is the world's longest-established scholarly association dedicated to the furtherance of anthropology (the study of humankind) in its broadest and most inclusive sense. This database contains committee minutes and other documents from the late 19th century to the present. It also contains manuscripts, photos and maps from the Institute.
The Times (London) Digital Archive
Complete digital archives of The Times (1785-1985). May not be compatible with Mozilla Firefox.
UIC users can search through the complete digital archives of The Times (London), using keyword searching and hit-term highlighting to retrieve full facsimile images of either a specific article or a complete page. The entire newspaper is captured, with all articles, advertisements and illustrations/photos divided into categories to facilitate searching.

World Digital Library (LOC)
Project of the U.S. Library of Congress, carried out with the support of the United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (UNESCO), and in cooperation with libraries, archives, museums, educational institutions, and international organizations from around the world to make significant primary materials from all countries and cultures available digitally.

Aceh Books (UL)
Full-text access to more than 1200 publications on Aceh, the province located at the northern end of the island of Sumatra, Indonesia from the 17th-19th century in Indonesian, Acehnese, English and Dutch.
BookSG
A digital collection of Singapore and Southeast's Asia print heritage
CIA Vietnam Collection
Declassified estimative products is the first such release by the Central Intelligence Agency of documents exclusively on the Vietnam war.
National Archives of Thailand
The National Archives Office is responsible for collecting, storing, preserving and curating archival documents to remember important contributions to Thailand's history and serve as eyewitnesses and guides to understanding Thailand and formulating its policies.
National Security Archive (GWU)
Founded in 1985 by journalists and scholars to check rising government secrecy, the National Security Archive is (among other things) a library and archive of declassified U.S. documents ("the world's largest nongovernmental collection" according to the Los Angeles Times), and indexer and publisher of former secrets.
Southeast Asia Digital Library (NIU)
Digital facsimiles of books and manuscripts, as well as multimedia materials primarily from 20th century Brunei, Cambodia, East Timor, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.
Southeast Asia in the Ming Shi-lu
The Veritable Records of the Ming Dynasty contains a wide range of references to polities and societies which today we consider to be parts of "Southeast Asia" all searchable on this website in in English-language translation. Also includes references to many Yunnan Tai polities which have subsequently been incorporated within the Chinese state. The fact that many of these references predate European sources.
The United States and Its Territories 1870-1925: The Age of Imperialism (U of M)
full text of monographs and government documents published in the United States, Spain, and the Philippines between 1870 and 1925.
Thư viện Quốc gia Việt Nam
National Library of Viet Nam's full-text digital resources doctoral theses, 5,200 Nom books and hundreds from the 17th century to 1954. Some projects still in progress.
World Digital Library (LOC)
Project of the U.S. Library of Congress, carried out with the support of the United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (UNESCO), and in cooperation with libraries, archives, museums, educational institutions, and international organizations from around the world to make significant primary materials from all countries and cultures available digitally.

Annals of the Joseon Dynasty
These 1,893 digitized volumes and are thought to cover the longest continual period of a single dynasty in the world (1413-1865)
Biblioteca Sinica 2.0
Explores Sino-Western encounters by ways of texts and images published before 1939 (including more than 3,000 books) and is intended as an extension of the bibliography Western Books on China in Libraries in Vienna/Austria, 1477-1939.
Historical Laws of Hong Kong Online
Full-text image database of seven consolidations of the laws of Hong Kong: 1890, 1901, 1912, 1923, 1937, 1950, and 1964 (last updated to 1989).
International Dunhuang Project
IDP is a ground-breaking international collaboration to make information and images of all manuscripts, paintings, textiles and artefacts from Dunhuang and archaeological sites of the Eastern Silk Road freely available on the Internet and to encourage their use through educational and research programmes.
more...less...
Temporarily unavailable due to cyberattack in October 2023: https://www.bl.uk/cyber-incident/
Internet East Asia Sourcebook
Major historical documents on East Asia history from Ancient to contemporary times. Secondary sources and web sites are distinguished from primary documents. Some links are broken
Japan Center for Asian Historical Records
JACAR has built and operates an online database for releasing Asian historical records, that are historical documents of Japan concerning to the modern Japanese relations with other countries, particularly those in Asia. The documents of the archive are provided by the National Archives of Japan, the Diplomatic Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, and the National Institute for Defense Studies of the Ministry of Defense of Japan.
Kobe University Library Newspaper Clippings Collection
Japanese newspaper clippings from 1912-1944
Korean Periodicals Collection (USC)
The Korean Periodicals collection contains runs and individual issues of Korean-language serials -- newspapers and journals.
The quality of many of the earlier 20th-century titles is poor due to the source (microfilm) from which they were digitized.

Late Qing and Republican-Era Chinese Newspapers
Provides invaluable perspective on this critical period. The press of more than twenty cities is represented, spanning the Chinese mainland and the entire half century.

Ming Taizu
Romeyn Taylor's translation of the Basic Annals of the Ming Dynasty (1975), from Ming History Translation Project
National Archives of Japan Digital Archive
Government documents and important records and cultural products from throughout the history of Japan
National Library of Korea Digital Collections
Tens of thousands of digitized materials from Korean history. Requires installation of viewer software
Old Hong Kong Newspapers
The Old Hong Kong Newspapers Collection is a selective collection of major old Hong Kong Newspapers published from early Hong Kong to nowadays, aiming at preserving historical news reporting of Hong Kong for reference and research.
World Digital Library (LOC)
Project of the U.S. Library of Congress, carried out with the support of the United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (UNESCO), and in cooperation with libraries, archives, museums, educational institutions, and international organizations from around the world to make significant primary materials from all countries and cultures available digitally.

University of Illinois Chicago

University
Library

Search UIC Library Collections

Search UIC Library Website

History: Digitized Primary Sources

Sources by Region

Richard J. Daley Library

Library of the Health Sciences, Chicago

Library of the Health Sciences, Peoria

Crawford Library of the Health Sciences, Rockford

UIC Law Library