Research Guides: Primary Source Collections: Primary sources by region

Quick Links

Primary sources by region

AAS Historical Periodicals Thematic Subset Collection (Ebsco) This link opens in a new window
The AAS Historical Publications Thematic subset includes 50 series of primary source titles across nine major areas from Agriculture to Women's Studies. Basic searching is across all titles in the collection and Individual collection links are available.
American Civil War- Letters and Diaries (Proquest) This link opens in a new window
This collection contains 2,009 authors and approximately 100,000 pages of diaries, letters and memoirs.The product includes 4,000 pages of previously unpublished manuscripts such as the letters of Amos Wood and his wife and the diary of Maryland Planter William Claytor.
American Periodicals (Proquest) This link opens in a new window
Includes digitized images of the pages of American magazines and journals published from 1740-1941. Titles include 89 journals published between 1740 and 1800; 118 periodicals published during the Civil War (1861-1865) and Reconstruction (1865-1877) eras; general interest magazines, children's publications, and more than 20 journals for women.
American Prison Newspapers, 1800-2020 This link opens in a new window
American Prison Newspapers brings together hundreds of newspapers published within prisons by incarcerated people over the past 200 years. When complete, the collection will contain newspapers from prisons in every state, representing penal institutions of all kinds, including women-only institutions.
Asian American Drama (Proquest) This link opens in a new window
Asian American Drama contains 252 plays by 42 playwrights, together with detailed, fielded information on related productions, theaters, production companies, and more. Some 50% of these plays have never been published before.
Black Freedom Struggle in the United States (Proquest) This link opens in a new window
Proquest's new Black Freedom Struggle website, features selected open access primary source documents including historical newspaper articles, pamphlets, diaries, correspondence and more from specific time periods in U.S. history marked by the opposition African Americans have faced on the road to freedom.
Colonial State Papers‎ 1574 - 1757 (Proquest) This link opens in a new window
The Colonial State Papers offers access to over 7,000 hand-written documents and more than 40,000 bibliographic records with this incredible resource on Colonial History. In addition to Britain's colonial relations with the Americas and other European rivals for power, this collection also covers the Caribbean and Atlantic world
Early Enccounters in North America - Peoples, Cultures, and the Environment (Proquest) This link opens in a new window
Early Encounters in North America: Peoples, Cultures, and the Environment documents the relationships among peoples in North America from 1534 to 1850. The collection focuses on personal accounts and provides unique perspectives from all of the protagonists, including traders, slaves, missionaries, explorers, soldiers, native peoples, and officials, both men and women
Independent and Revolutionary Mexican Newspapers (CRL) This link opens in a new window
The collection includes 839 publications documenting events in Mexico's pre-independence, independence and revolutionary periods (1807-1929).

Mayis Indigenous Records: Maryland State Archives
"Mayis is a web resource created as a path to guide researchers to records in the Maryland State Archives (MSA) about the Indigenous peoples of the Chesapeake Bay region. Our team designed this site to help to shine a light on this significant and complicated history of colonization and conflict. It is our hope that American Indians of the twenty-first century and their allies will use this tool to better educate all of us about the first people living in the region (before the Europeans arrived)."

Mexican Intelligence Digital Archives 1940-1985 (CRL) This link opens in a new window
MIDAS, the Mexican Intelligence Digital Archives (los Archivos del Autoritarismo Mexicano), is a 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.
North American Immigrant Letters, Diaries, and Oral Histories (Proquest) This link opens in a new window
This collection includes 2,162 authors providing a personal view of what it meant to immigrate to America and Canada between 1800 and 1950. Composed of contemporaneous letters and diaries, oral histories, interviews, and other personal narratives, the series provides a rich source for scholars in a wide range of disciplines.
North American Indian Drama: Second Edition (Proquest) This link opens in a new window
North American Indian Drama contains 244 plays by 48 playwrights representing the stories and creative energies of American Indian and First Nation playwrights of the twentieth century. Groups represented include Cherokee, Métis, Creek, Choctaw, Pembina Chippewa, Ojibway, Lenape, Comanche, Cree, Navajo, Rappahannock, Hawaiian/Samoan, and others. Together, the plays demonstrate Native theater’s diversity of tribal traditions and approaches to drama
North American Women's Drama: Second Edition (Proquest) This link opens in a new window
North American Women's Drama contains 1,517 plays by 330 playwrights and brings these writings the attention they deserve, by publishing the full text of plays written from Colonial times to the present by more than 100 women from the United States and Canada.
The Sixties: Primary Sources and Personal Narratives 1960-1974 (Proquest) This link opens in a new window
The Sixties brings the 1960s alive through diaries, letters, autobiographies and other memoirs, written and oral histories, manifestos, government documents, memorabilia, and scholarly commentary.
Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000 This link opens in a new window
Coverage: 1600-2000
Database of books, documents, images, scholarly essays, commentaries and bibliographies of all aspects of American Women's public lives and political activities.

Brazilian Government Documents 1821 -1993 (CRL) This link opens in a new window
The Latin American Materials Project (LAMP) at the Center for Research Libraries (CRL) has 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.
Contemporary World Drama (Proquest) This link opens in a new window
Contemporary World Drama brings together new work from our existing playwright partners alongside work from up-and-coming playwrights from around the world, including recently produced world premieres, previously unpublished works, etc. from every continent.
Human Rights Studies Online (Proquest) This link opens in a new window
Human Rights Studies Online provides comparative documentation, analysis, and interpretation of major human rights violations and atrocity crimes worldwide from 1900 to 2010. The collection includes primary and secondary materials across multiple media formats and content types for each selected event.
Latin American Drama (Proquest) This link opens in a new window
Latin American Drama is a database of plays written by Latin American playwrights in the 19th-21st centuries. Besides serving as a rich resource for literature scholars, the collection also supports the study of American history, ethnic diversity, immigrations issues, and political history.

British and Irish Women's Letters and Diaries (Proquest) This link opens in a new window
This collection includes the immediate experiences of approximately 500 women, as revealed in over 100,000 pages of diaries and letters. The collection now includes primary materials spanning more than 300 years.
British Periodicals‎ 1681 - 2005 (Proquest) This link opens in a new window
This database provides access to the searchable full text of hundreds of periodicals from the late seventeenth century to the early twentieth, comprising millions of high-resolution facsimile page images. Topics covered include literature, philosophy, history, science, the social sciences, music, art, drama, archaeology and architecture.
Title list
Cecil Papers‎ (Proquest) This link opens in a new window
The Cecil Papers is a major collection of early-modern historical documents from the reigns of Elizabethan I and James I/VI. More than 150,000 pages have been digitised in full colour to create a definitive online archive of almost 30,000 manuscript documents written by some of the most significant figures of Elizabethan and Jacobean history.
Early Modern Books (Proquest) This link opens in a new window
Early Modern Books covers material from the British Isles and Europe for the period 1450-1700. An integrated search across both Early English Books Online and Early European Books allows scholars to view materials from over 225 source libraries worldwide.
Human Rights Studies Online (Proquest) This link opens in a new window
Human Rights Studies Online provides comparative documentation, analysis, and interpretation of major human rights violations and atrocity crimes worldwide from 1900 to 2010. The collection includes primary and secondary materials across multiple media formats and content types for each selected event.
JSTOR: 19th Century British Pamphlets This link opens in a new window
Throughout the 19th century, pamphlets were an important means of public debate, covering the key political, social, technological, and environmental issues of their day. 19th Century British Pamphlets, created by Research Libraries UK (RLUK), contains the most significant British pamphlets from the 19th century held in research libraries in the United Kingdom.
Pamphlets and Periodicals of the French Revolution of 1848 (CRL) This link opens in a new window
An explosion of periodicals and other printed materials erupted out of the 1848 revolution in France. The major papers such as Le Nation and La Réforme were surrounded on all sides by newspapers, pamphlets, and other periodicals presenting opinions and hourly news on the developments of the provisional government. The spontaneity, variety, and abundance of these papers makes them an outstanding source for uncovering the cultural, political, social, and other aspects of the French revolution of 1848.
Royal Shakespeare Company Collection (Proquest) This link opens in a new window
These high-definition, surround-sound recordings of William Shakespeare’s plays featuring the world’s best Shakespearean actors, like David Tennant, Sir Antony Sher, Paapa Essiedu, and Simon Russell Beale, and directors like Robin Lough and Dewi Humphrey.
Women and Social Movements in Modern Empires Since 1820 (Proquest) This link opens in a new window
This collection explores prominent themes in world history since 1820: conquest, colonization, settlement, resistance, and post-coloniality, as told through women’s voices. With a focus on bringing the voices of the colonized to the forefront, this archive and database includes documents related to the Habsburg Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the British, French, Italian, Dutch, Russian, Japanese, and United States Empires, and settler societies in the United States, New Zealand and Australia.

Asian Cultural Collections- Library of Congress
The Library of Congress's Asian Cultural digital collections feature cultural artifacts and images from Asia, including rare books from China, Japan, Korea, web archives, and oral histories.

Asian American Drama (Proquest) This link opens in a new window
Asian American Drama contains 252 plays by 42 playwrights, together with detailed, fielded information on related productions, theaters, production companies, and more. Some 50% of these plays have never been published before.
Chinese Newspapers Collection (Proquest) This link opens in a new window
Provides historical access to a collection of Chinese newspapers, including The Canton Times, The China Critic, The China Press, China Monthly Review, Millard's Review of the Far East, The Weekly Review, The Chinese Recorder, and The Chinese Repository. Coverage dates vary by title, but ranger from 1832- 1953.
Chinese Pamphlets: Political Communication & Mass Education 1947-1954 (CRL) This link opens in a new window
The Hunter Collection consists of mass education materials published in Hong Kong and in Mainland China, particularly Shanghai, in the years 1947-1954. These include approximately 200 cartoon books, pamphlets, postcards, and magazines, heavily pictorial in content, on such topics as foreign threats to Chinese security, Chinese relations with the Soviet Union, industrial and agricultural production, and marriage reform. T
Contemporary World Drama (Proquest) This link opens in a new window
Contemporary World Drama brings together new work from our existing playwright partners alongside work from up-and-coming playwrights from around the world, including recently produced world premieres, previously unpublished works, etc. from every continent.
Human Rights Studies Online (Proquest) This link opens in a new window
Human Rights Studies Online provides comparative documentation, analysis, and interpretation of major human rights violations and atrocity crimes worldwide from 1900 to 2010. The collection includes primary and secondary materials across multiple media formats and content types for each selected event.
JSTOR: World Heritage Sites: Africa This link opens in a new window
Provides 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.
JSTOR: Struggles for Freedom: Southern Africa This link opens in a new window
The liberation of Southern Africa and the dismantling of the Apartheid regime was one of the major political developments of the 20th century, with far-reaching consequences for people throughout Africa and around the globe. This collection focuses on the complex and varied liberation struggles in the region, with an emphasis on Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.
Late Qing and Republican-Era Chinese Newspapers (CRL) This link opens in a new window
The collection includes 292 publications from across China documenting the turbulent period between the end of the Qing dynasty and the creation of the People's Republic of China.
Middle Eastern and North African Newspapers (CRL) This link opens in a new window
The collection includes 84 publications documenting events from the fall of the Ottoman Empire to the demonstrations of the Arab Spring.
Slavery and Manumission Manuscripts of Timbuktu (CRL) This link opens in a new window
This is a collection of 19th century manuscripts relating to slavery and manumission in Timbuktu. The collection of 206 manuscripts from the Bibliothèque Commémorative Mama Haidara in Timbuktu, Mali, in Arabic, provide documentation on Africans in slavery in Muslim societies.
Southeast Asian Newspapers 1839-1976 (CRL) This link opens in a new window
The CRL Southeast Asian Newspapers collection chronicles the changes that took place throughout the region during the mid-19th to mid-20th c.. It covers countries from the region, including Myanmar (formerly Burma), Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam, and features multiple languages such as Dutch, English, French, Javanese, Spanish, and Vietnamese.

South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA)
SAADA is the largest publicly accessible archive of South Asian American history. Its growing collections include documents, photos/video, oral histories, original articles, and more.
World Digital Library (UNESCO)
Provides free online access to world cultural treasures. Includes manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, and architectural drawings from a variety of countries.

Primary Source Collections

Quick Links

Primary sources by region

Search & Find

Using the Library

Research Help

About AOK

Special Collections & Gallery