Sources and Archives
This list brings together a wide range of primary source databases to support you as you develop and carry out your research project. Spanning the early modern period to the present and covering a broad geographical scope, the collection includes archival records, printed texts, visual and material sources, and oral histories. Use this list to identify relevant sources, explore different types of evidence, and build a strong foundation for your research. Whether you're just starting to shape your topic or looking for material to support your argument, this is a great place to begin.
Archives
General
Early Modern
Modern Britain and Europe
- (French Revolution Digital Archive)
Wider World
Medical
Further reading
- Bastian Jeannette, 鈥淩eading Colonial Records Through an Archival Lens: The Provenance of Place, Space and Creation,鈥�Archival Science, 6 (2006)
- Beal, Peter, In Praise of Scribes: Manuscripts and Their Makers in Seventeenth-Century England (1998)
- Brett, Michael, Approaching African History (Rochester, Boydell & Brewer, 2013), see 鈥淭he Written Dimension鈥� and 鈥淭he Scriptural Dimension鈥�
- Burton, Antoinette, 鈥業ntroduction: Archive Fever, Archive Stories鈥�, in Antoinette Burton (ed.), Archive Stories: Facts, Fictions, and the Writing of History (Durham and London, 2005)
- Burton, Antoinette, Dwelling in the Archive: Women Writing House, Home, and History in Late Colonial India (Oxford, 2003)
- Cook, Terry,鈥�The Archive(s) is a Foreign Country: Historians, Archivists and the Changing Archival Landscape鈥�, American Archivist, 74, no. 2 (2011), pp. 600-632
- Crick, Julia and Alexandra Walsham ed, The Uses of Script and Print, 1300-1700( 2004), introduction
- Derrida, Jacques, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression (University of Chicago Press, 1996)
- Hamilton, Carolyn, Refiguring the Archive (Springer, 2002)
- Love, Harold, 鈥極ral and Scribal Texts in Early Modern England鈥�, in The Cambridge History of the Book, ed. by John Barnard and D. F. McKenzie (2002).
- Millstone, Noah, Manuscript Circulation and the Invention of Politics in Early Stuart England (2016)
- Peters, Kate, Alexandra Walsham, and Liesbeth Corens, Archives and Information in the Early Modern World (2018), Introduction also chapter 7 by Heather Wolfe and Peter Stallybrass
- Pollmann, Judith, 鈥楢rchiving the Present and Chronicling for the Future in Early Modern Europe鈥� Past & Present,230, (2016), pp. 231-252.
- Sangha, Laura and Jonathan Willis, Understanding Early Modern Primary Sources (London: Routledge, 2016)
- Steedman, Carolyn, Dust: The Archive and Cultural History (Rutgers University Press, 2002)
- Stoler, Ann Laura, 鈥淐olonial Archives and the Arts of Governance,鈥�Archival Science 2 (2002)
- Stoler, Ann Laura, Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (Princeton, 2010)
- Wagner, Kim and Ricardo Roque, Engaging Colonial Knowledge: Reading European Archives in World History (Palgrave, 2011)
- Walsham, Alexandra, 鈥楾he Social History of the Archive: Record-Keeping in Early Modern Europe鈥�, Past & Present, Volume 230, Issue Supplement 11 (November, 2016), pp. 9-48.
- Zemon Davies, Natalie, Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and Their Tellers in Sixteenth-Century France (1987), introduction.
Printed Sources
General
Early Modern
Modern Britain and Europe
Wider World
Further Reading
- Barnard, John, D. F. McKenzie, David McKitterick and, I. R.Willison, The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain (Cambridge, 2011-2019), 7 vols.
- Bates, Denise, Historical Research Using British Newspapers (Pen and Sword, 2016)
- Darnton, Robert, 鈥淲hat Is the History of Books?鈥�, Daedalus, 111 (1982)
- Davies, C. S.L, 'Representation, Repute, Reality', English Historical Review124 (2009)
- Dobson, Miriam and Benjamin Ziemann, eds, Reading Primary Sources: The Interpretation of Texts from Nineteenth and Twentieth Century History (Routledge, 2008)
- Eisenstein, Elizabeth, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (Cambridge, 1980)
- Gaskell, Philip, A New Introduction to Bibliography (Oxford, 1972)
- Gough, Hugh,The Newspaper Press in the French Revolution (Chicago, 1988)
- Heyd, Uriel, Reading Newspapers: Press and Public in Eighteenth-Century Britain and America (Oxford, 2012)
- Howsam, Leslie,The Cambridge Companion to the History of the Book (Cambridge, 2015)
- Johns, Adrian, The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (Chicago, 2009)
- Martin, Shannon, and Kathleen Hansen, eds, Newspapers of Record in a Digital Age: From Hot Type to Hot Link( Greenwood, 1998)
- Sangha, Laura and Jonathan Willis, Understanding Early Modern Primary Sources (London: Routledge, 2016), chapter 4 鈥楶rint鈥�.
- Suarez, Michael and H. R. Woudhuysen (eds), The Book: A Global History (Oxford University Press, 2013)
- Walton, Charles, ed., Into Print: Limits and Legacies of the Enlightenment (Penn State, 2011)
- Williams, Kevin, Read All About It!: A History of the British Newspaper (Routledge, 2010)
- Withers, Charles W. J and Miles Ogborn (eds), Geographies of the Book (London, 2010)
Visual sources
General
Early Modern
Modern Britain and Europe
Wider World
Further reading
- Armstrong, Catherine,Using Non-Textual Sources: A Historian鈥檚 Guide (Bloomsbury, 2015)
- Auslander, Leora, 鈥淏eyond Words鈥�,American Historical Review 110 (2005): 1015-45.
- Barber, Sarah, and Corinna Peniston-Bird, eds, History Beyond the Text: A Student鈥檚 Guide to Approaching Alternative Sources (Routledge, 2009)
- Berger, John, Ways of Seeing (Viking, 1973)
- Bordwell, David and Kristin Thompson, Film Art: An Introduction (New York: Knopf, 1979)
- Burke, Peter, Eyewitnessing: The Uses of Images as Historical Evidence (London, 2001)
- De Jongh, Eddy, 'Realism and Seeming-Realism in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Painting', in: Wayne E. Franits (ed.), (Cambridge: University Press, 1997)
- Gaskell, Ivan, 鈥淰isual History鈥�, in Peter Burke (ed.), New Perspectives on Historical Writing (Cambridge, 1991)
- Harley, J.B. et al, eds, The History of Cartography (1987 - ), 6 vols.
- Harley, J.B., 鈥淒econstructing the Map,鈥� Cartographica 26 (1989)
- Harley, J.B.,The New Nature of Maps (Johns Hopkins, 2001)
- Haskell, Francis, History and its Images: Art and the Interpretation of the Past (London, 1995)
- Hunter, Michael, Printed Images in Early Modern Britain: Essays in Interpretation (Routledge, 2016)
- Jordanova, Ludmilla, 鈥淎pproaching Visual Materials鈥�, in Simon Gunn and Lucy Faire, eds, Research Methods for History (Edinburgh, 2011)
- Jordanova, Ludmilla, The Look of the Past: Visual and Material Evidence in Historical Practice (Cambridge, 2012)
- Rose, Gillian, Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to Researching with Visual Materials (Sage, 2016)
- Rosenstone, Robert, 鈥淗istory in Images/History in Words: Reflections on the Possibility of Really Putting History onto Film鈥�, American Historical Review 93 (1988)
- Rosenstone, Robert, History on Film/Film on History (Routledge, 2006)
- Sangha, Laura and Jonathan Willis, Understanding Early Modern Primary Sources (London: Routledge, 2016), chapter 7 鈥榁isual and material sources鈥�.
- Slide, Antonthy, Nitrate Won't Wait: A History of Film Preservation in the United States (Jefferson, MacFarland and Co, 1992)
- White, Hayden, 鈥淗istoriography and Historiophoty鈥�, American Historical Review93 (1988)
Material Culture Collections
Further reading
- Appadurai, Arjun, The Social Life of Things (Cambridge, 1988)
- Armstrong, Catherine, Using Non-Textual Sources: A Historian鈥檚 Guide (Bloomsbury, 2015)
- Auslander, Leora, 鈥淏eyond Words鈥�, American Historical Review 110 (2005)
- Brett, Michael, Approaching African History (Rochester, Boydell & Brewer, 2013), see 鈥淭he Archaeological Dimension鈥�
- Craciun, Adriana, and Simon Schaffer, eds, The Material Cultures of Enlightenment Arts and Sciences (Palgrave, 2016)
- Findlen, Paula, ed., Early Modern Things: Objects and Their Histories, 1500–1800 (New York, 2013)
- Hannan, Leonie and Sarah Longair, eds, History Through Material Culture (Manchester University Press, 2017)
- Hansen, Valerie,The Silk Road: A New History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012)
- Hicks, Dan and Mary C. Beaudry, eds, The Oxford Handbook of Material Culture Studies (Oxford University Press, 2010)
- Hood, Adrienne, 鈥淢aterial Culture鈥�, in Barber, Sarah, and Corinna Peniston-Bird, History Beyond the Text: A Student鈥檚 Guide to Approaching Alternative Sources (Routledge, 2009)
- Jordanova, Ludmilla, The Look of the Past: Visual and Material Evidence in Historical Practice (Cambridge, 2012)
- Riello, Giorgio and Anne Gerritsen, eds, The Global Lives of Things: The Material Culture of Connections in the First Global Age (London: Routledge, 2015)
- Riello, Giorgio and Anne Gerritsen, eds, Writing Material Culture History (London: Bloomsbury, 2014)
- Sangha, Laura and Jonathan Willis, Understanding Early Modern Primary Sources(London: Routledge, 2016), chapter 7 鈥榁isual and material sources鈥�.
- Smith, Pamela, 鈥淗istorians in the Laboratory: Reconstruction of Renaissance Art and Technology in the Making and Knowing Project鈥�, Art History39 (2016)
- Thomas, Nicholas, ed., Entangled Objects: Exchange, Material Culture, and Colonialism in the Pacific (Harvard, 1994)
- Tilley, Christopher, Susanne Kuechler-Fogden, Mike Rowlands, and Patricia Spyer, eds, Handbook of Material Culture (Sage, 2017)
Oral and sound archives
Further reading
- Abrams, Lynn, Oral History Theory (Routledge, 2016), 2nd ed.
- Lummis, Trevor, Listening to History: The Authenticity of Oral Evidence (Barnes and Noble, 1987)
- Perks Robert and Alistair Thomson, eds, The Oral History Reader (Routledge, 2006)
- Ritchie, Donald, ed.,The Oxford Handbook of Oral History (Oxford, 2011)
- Tonkin, Elizabeth, Narrating Our Pasts: The Social Construction of Oral History( Cambridge, 1992)
- Thompson, Paul, Voices of the Past: Oral History (Oxford, 2000)
- Vansina, Jan, Oral Tradition as History (Oxford, 1985)
- White, L, S. F. Miescher and D. W. Cohen, eds, African Words, African Voices: Critical Practices in Oral History (Bloomington IN, 2001)
Sources in foreign languages
- Bary, Theodore de, Wing-tsit Chan, and Burton Watson, eds., Sources of Chinese Tradition (Columbia University Press, 1999), 2 vols.
- Bidlack, Richard, and Nikita Lomagin, The Leningrad Blockade, 1941-1944: A New Documentary History from the Soviet Archives, Annals of Communism (Yale University Press, 2012)
- Corley, Felix, ed., Religion in the Soviet Union: An Archival Reader (New York: New York University Press, 1996)
- Dmytryshyn, Basil, ed., Imperial Russia: A Source Book, 1700-1917 (Dryden Press, 1974)
- Ebrey, Patricia Buckley, ed.,Chinese Civilization: A Sourcebook (Free Press, 1993)
- Engel, Barbara Alpern, and Anastasia Posadskaya-Vanderbeck, eds., A Revolution of Their Own: Voices of Women in Soviet History (Westview Press, 1997)
- Eudin, Xenia Joukoff, and Robert C. North,Soviet Russia and the East, 1920-1927: A Documentary Survey (Hoover Library on War, Revolution, and Peace), no. 25 (Stanford, Calif.鈥�; London: Stanford University Press鈥�: Oxford University Press, 1957)
- Fitzpatrick, Sheila, and Yuri Slezkine, eds., In the Shadow of Revolution: Life Stories of Russian Women from 1917 to the Second World War (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000)
- Freeze, Gregory L., From Supplication to Revolution: A Documentary Social History of Imperial Russia (New York: OUP USA, 1988)
- Frierson, Cathy A., Silence Was Salvation: Child Survivors of Stalin鈥檚 Terror and World War II in the Soviet Union, Annals of Communism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015)
- Hillenbrand, Carole, The Crusades: Islamic Perspectives (Routledge, 2000)
- Garros, V茅ronique, Natalia Korenevskaya, and Thomas Lahusen, eds., Intimacy and Terror: Soviet Diaries of the 1930鈥檚 (New York: New Press, 1995)
- Geldern, James Von, and Richard Stites, Mass Culture in Soviet Russia: Tales, Poems, Songs, Movies, Plays, and Folklore, 1917-1953 (Indiana University Press, 1995)
- Jansen, K. L., J. Drell, and F. Andrews (eds), Medieval Italy: Texts in Translation (Philadelphia, 2009).
- Levi, Scott C. and Ron Sela, eds., Islamic Central Asia: An Anthology of Historical Sources (Indiana University Press, 2010)
- Siegelbaum, Lewis H., A. K. Sokolov, L. Kosheleva, and Sergei Zhuravlev, eds., Stalinism as a Way of Life: A Narrative in Documents, Annals of Communism Series (Yale University Press, 2000)
- Vernadsky, George, and S. G. Pushkarev, eds., A Source Book for Russian History from Early Times to 1917 (Yale University Press, 1972)