A selection of resources to help you find primary source material (for a more comprehensive list, see the History Subject Guide):
Pamphlets from collections in 7 universities in the UK covering the key political, social, technological, and environmental issues of 19th-century Britain.
Access to millions of pages of primary source content from AM. Use the search bar to begin exploring, or browse individual primary source collections.
African Newspapers: The British Library Collection features nearly 60 newspapers from across the African continent, all published before 1900. Originally archived by the British Library, these rare historical documents are now available for the first time in a fully searchable online collection.
Archives Unbound provides access to rare primary source documents topically focused into digital collections covering US foreign policy, civil rights, global affairs, colonial studies, British history, Holocaust studies, LGBT studies, Latin America and Caribbean studies, Middle East studies, political science, religious studies, and women’s studies. Includes over 340 collections.
Explore the growth of the human rights movement during the second half of the twentieth century through the International Secretariat records of Amnesty International. The material within this collection is vital for studying the history of key political events, global social change and the development of a global movement for human rights covering themes including state violence, political prisoners, minority rights and more.
Offering exclusive digital access to Bloomsbury’s Cultural Histories series alongside an extensive eBook collection and primary sources from leading global institutions, Bloomsbury Cultural History offers students and scholars a unique approach to this diverse field of study.
The British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS) was founded in 1831. The Association was created to promote the advancement of science in all its aspects. Its main aim was to improve the perception of science and scientists in the UK. The BAAS collection documents the efforts of the British scientific community to establish science as a professional activity and make Britain into a globally competitive centre for science. Many of the prominent names of British science since the early 19th century are associated with the BAAS. These include past Presidents such as William Ramsay; Norman Lockyer; John Scott Burden Sanderson; Albert, Prince Consort; Charles Lyell; William Fairbairn; Thomas Henry Huxley; and Oliver Lodge. The BAAS collection contains a broad collection of document types: reports, manuscript materials, newspaper clippings, photographs, brochures and catalogues; field reports and minutes; annual reports.
Platform allowing cross searching of primary source databases provided by Gale, covering newspapers, historic journals and other material.
The Royal Geographical Society (with Institute of British Geographers) promotes the advancement of geographical science in all its aspects. The Society’s archive contains vast collections of documents, maps, photographs, expedition reports, manuscript materials and books, and span 500 years of geography, travel and exploration. The RGS holds one of the largest private map collections in the world. It includes one million sheets of maps and charts, 3000 atlases, 40 globes (as gores or mounted on stands) and 1000 gazetteers. The earliest printed cartographic item dates back to 1485.
Please send any feedback to: Subject-Librarians@bristol.ac.uk
Covering an extensive time period between 1490 and 2007, this collection brings together documents from libraries and archives across the UK and North America. From a largely colonial and thus Western and Eurocentric perspective, the material included focuses on the varieties of slavery, the legacies of slavery, the social justice perspective and the continued existence of slavery in the twentieth century.
World Heritage Sites: Africa links visual, contextual, and spatial documentation of African heritage sites. The materials in World Heritage Sites: Africa serve researchers in African studies, anthropology, archaeology, architecture, art history, Diaspora studies, folklore and literature, geography, and history, as well as those focused on geomatics, advanced visual and spatial technologies, historic preservation, and urban planning.
