History: Modern History
Guide to Resources in History
Primary Sources
- Confidential Print, Middle East, 1839-1969 This link opens in a new windowaccess to the Confidential Print series issues by the British Government covering the Levant and the Arabian peninsula, Iran, Turkey, Egypt and Sudan.
- Defining Gender 1450-1910 This link opens in a new windowDefining Gender provides access to a vast body of original British source material that will enrich the teaching and research experience of those studying history, literature, sociology and education from a gendered perspective.
- Electronic Enlightenment This link opens in a new windowcollection of edited correspondence linking people across Europe, the Americas and Asia from the early 17th to the mid-19th century
- Foreign Office files for China, 1919-1980 This link opens in a new windowall British Foreign Office files dealing with China, Hong Kong and Taiwan between 1919 and 1980
- Foreign Office files for Japan, 1919-1952 This link opens in a new windowaccess to formerly restricted top level discussions and correspondence from the British Embassy and consulate in Japan. Includes detailed assessments of key events, speeches, maps, and topics of special interest.
- Gender: Identity and Social Change This link opens in a new windowprimary sources documenting the changing representations and lived experiences of gender roles and relations from the nineteenth century to the present.
- The John Johnson Collection: an archive of printed ephemera This link opens in a new windowfully searchable colour images of 65,000 items from the Bodleian Library's John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera, offering unique insights into the changing nature of everyday life in the 18th, 19th and early 20th Centuries
- The Making of the Modern World This link opens in a new windowcontains over 61,000 primary source documents and books essential to the understanding of the social, political and economic development of the western world, from the mid-15th to the mid-19th century
- Mass Observation Online This link opens in a new windowThe Mass Observation Archive is a huge database of diaries, directives, surveys, photographs and reports collected in the UK from 1937-1992
- Meiji Japan: the Edward Sylvester Morse collection from the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum This link opens in a new windowmanuscripts for the study of Meiji society, culture, ethnology and education covering the period 1856-1925
- Nineteenth Century Collections Online This link opens in a new windowNCCO is a scholarly digitisation project providing a wide range of searchable full-text primary sources for the 'long' 19th century (1789-1914); a sequel to Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) Sections include: British Politics and Society, European Literature, 1790-1840: The Corvey Collection; Asia and the West: Diplomacy and Cultural Exchange; and British Theatre, Music,and Literature: High and Popular Culture
- Queen Victoria's Journals This link opens in a new window
Express crossing Forth Bridge
“Express crossing Forth Bridge” by J. Valentine & Co., 1908 (St Andrews JV-60283)
General Resources
- Archive Catalogue This link opens in a new windowsearch the records in the manuscripts and muniments database of the University Library's Special Collections.
- Bibliography of British and Irish History This link opens in a new windowauthoritative guide to articles on British and Irish history, from the Roman period to the present day, from over 600 journals and essay collections. Covers British and Irish relations with the rest of the world, including the British empire and Commonwealth
55 BC - to present; updated 3 times yearly - British History Online This link opens in a new windowA collection of freely available database containing British primary and secondary sources, and Premium sunscription content including Calendar of State Papers 1537-1714; Calendar of State Papers for Scotland and Ireland; Parliamentary Roles of Medieval England; and Calendar of Close Rolls
- Economist Historical Archive 1843-2014 This link opens in a new windowfacsimile of the weekly paper covering 1843 - 2014
- Oxford Dictionary of National Biography This link opens in a new windowa database of men and women who have shaped British history and culture, worldwide, from the Romans to the 21st century. Over 58,500 people included
- Who's Who and Who Was Who This link opens in a new windowa directory of the noteworthy and influential in every area of public life, published worldwide. Who Was Who includes 100,000 people, now deceased, who were included in previous editions of Who's Who creating the definitive roll-call of British history.
Books & Pamplets
- 19th Century British Pamphlets Online This link opens in a new windowaccess to full-text of over 23,000 digitised 19th century pamphlets held in UK research libraries that focus on the political, economic, and social issues that fuelled the Parliamentary debates and controversies of the 19th century
- Historical Texts This link opens in a new windowformerly known as Jisc Historic books, full-text; contains the full text or page images of over 350,000 books published in Britain from 1475 to 1900. The service draws together content from two of the best-known and long established early book collections: Early English Books Online (EEBO) and Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) plus 65,000 19th century books from the British Library collection
Newspapers & Periodicals
- 19th Century British Library Newspapers This link opens in a new windowa collection of 48 newspapers specially selected by the British Library to represent nineteenth century Britain
- 19th Century UK Periodicals This link opens in a new windowOver 100 19th century full text periodicals. Subscription covers part 1: New Readerships.
- British Library Newspapers This link opens in a new windownewspaper collections from the British Library which span from 1732 - 1950 and include both regional and local titles reflecting social, political and cultural events of the times
- British Periodicals This link opens in a new windowThis 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.
- Illustrated London News: Historical Archive 1842-2003 This link opens in a new windowpresents a vivid picture of British and world events - including news of war, disasters, royalty, social affairs, the arts and science. Over 260,000 full colour pages, fully searchable and browseable
- Japan Chronicle Weekly This link opens in a new windowThe English Language Japan Chronicle Weekly (1902-1940) is the newspaper of record for Japan’s engagement with modernity and its emergence, through war, political and social upheaval and seismic social change in East Asia, onto the world stage in the first half of the twentieth century.
- Gale Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new windowFormerly known as Newsvault, Gale Historical Newspapers is a search engine that allows simultaneous search across a number of Gale newspaper: Burney Collection (17th and 18th Century Newspapers); Economist Historical Archive 1843-2006; Illustrated London News Historical Archive 1842-2003; Nineteenth Century British Library Newspapers, Parts I and II; Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals; Times Digital Archive 1785-1985; Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive 1902-2005
- Proquest Historical Newspapers: The Guardian (1821-2003) and The Observer (1791-2003) This link opens in a new windowFulltext coverage of The Guardian (1821-2003), The Manchester Guardian (1828-1959), and The Observer (1791-2003)
- The Scotsman Digital Archive, 1817-1950, Proquest Historical Newspapers This link opens in a new windowdigital newspaper archive containing every issue of The Scotsman between 1817 and 1950.
- The Times Digital Archive 1785-2009 This link opens in a new windowcomplete digital edition of The Times (London). Scanned original pages.
- The Times of India This link opens in a new windowcomplete browsable digital version of the Times of India covering the period 1838-2003.
- Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals 1824-1900 This link opens in a new windowIdentifies the authors of articles within 45 major Victorian periodicals, and provides a bibliography for each contributor.
Parliamentary, Legal & Government Sources
- The Cabinet Papers 1915-1988 This link opens in a new windowA collection of digitised papers from the National Archives
- HeinOnline This link opens in a new windowprovides comprehensive coverage of legal history from inception. It includes more than 1,800 law and law-related periodicals
- UK Parliamentary Papers This link opens in a new windowPDFs of over 200,000 House of Commons Sessional Papers. Covers 18th Century (1688-1834); 19th Century (1801-1900); 20th Century (1901-2004), and Current (2004 session onwards). Also includes the full-text of Hansard (1803-2005).
- Medieval and Early Modern Sources Online (MEMSO) This link opens in a new windowdigitised full-text historical sources for Medieval and Early Modern Britain. Published by Tanner Ritchie with some material from the University of St Andrews Library's Special Collections
- Statistical Accounts of Scotland This link opens in a new windowthe Statistical Accounts of Scotland cover the 1790s and the 1830s. They provide a record of a variety of topics including wealth, class and poverty, climate and education.
AudioVisual Resources
- BFI Player This link opens in a new windowOver 11,000 archive films from the British Film Institute's national and regional archives.
- British Cartoon Archive This link opens in a new windownational collection of over 150,000 British social and political cartoons, the work of over 250 British cartoonists, held at the University of Kent; includes 15,000 cartoons from the Carl Giles Archive, which includes rare seaside postcards as well as political cartoons
- British Library Sounds This link opens in a new windowPLEASE NOTE that content can only be accessed and played using FIREFOX browser.
Over 50,000 unique sound recordings from all over the world, covering the entire range of recorded sound - music, drama and literature, oral history, accents and dialects, sound recording history, wildlife and environmental sounds. Smaller subset of sounds is available without logging in at http://sounds.bl.uk - Chronicle: BBC Northern Ireland's television news from the Sixties and the Seventies This link opens in a new windowregistration required - please click on the i icon for more information. Over 4,000 videos are currently available, ranging from 1963-1971 of content from BBC Northern Ireland's archives covering Northern Ireland and The Troubles
- The First World War Poetry Digital Archive This link opens in a new windowfreely available online repository of over 7,000 text, image, audio, and video items for studying the First World War and the literature it inspired. Includes important primary material from major poets of the period, including Wilfred Owen, Robert Graves, Vera Brittain, and Edward Thomas
- Photographic Collection (University of St Andrews Library) This link opens in a new windowextensive collection of photography held within the Special Collections Department of the University of St Andrews Library
- Picture Post Historical Archive This link opens in a new windowunique archive of the complete Picture Post, the pioneering illustrated newspaper published in Britain between 1938-1957, and containing thousands of images
- Rock's backpages This link opens in a new windowRock and Roll library. Provides over 22,000 searchable, full-text articles, interviews and reviews from the world's best music writers and critics, from the late 1950s to the present day. Also includes MP3 audio files of original artist interviews. Updated weekly
- Roundabout This link opens in a new window600 Technicolor films from the cinemagazine Roundabout (1962-1974)
It was designed to promote British values, manufacturing and the ethos of the Commonwealth to audiences. - SCRAN (Scottish Cultural Resources Access Network) This link opens in a new windowScottish learning resource base with over 360,000 images & media from museums, galleries, archives and the media
- Visualising China This link opens in a new windowmore than 8,000 rare photographs of Chinese life, between 1850-1950