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Primary Sources: Britain and Europe

Let's start at the very beginning. A very good place to start.

Britain and Europe

-Archives Portal Europe

The Archives Portal Europe provides access to information on archival material from different European countries. Currently the site has information relating to more than 6,000 archival institutions throughout the continent.

-British History Online (BHO)

British History Online is a digital library of printed primary and secondary sources for the history of Britain and Ireland, with a primary focus on the period between 1300 and 1800. 

-The British Library

The British Library website contains an extensive amount of digital content including newspapers, manuscripts, theses, multimedia, festival books, etc.

-Euro Docs

Euro Docs offer a number of electronic open access primary sources. The collection contains text, sound recordings, moving images, maps, and photographs.

-The European Library

The European Library connects users to the collections of the 48 National Libraries of Europe and leading European Research Libraries, including historic newspapers, manuscripts and prints, and various other records. Disciplines include the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and mathematics, biomedical sciences, and technological sciences.

-The First World War Primary Source Collection

This collection features a rich variety of primary source material, split into three modules:
Personal Experiences, Propaganda and Recruitment, and
Visual Perspectives & Narratives.

-French Revolution Digital Archive

A digital version of the key research sources of the French Revolution.

-German History in Documents and Images

A comprehensive collection of original historical materials documenting German history from the beginning of the early modern period to the present.

-German Propaganda Archive

This archive collects propaganda created in Nazi Germany during WWII. 

-The Hoover Institution: European Collections

The collections contain materials associated with Europe during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. There is a focus on topics relating to war, commerce, international relations, revolution, and peace. A small portion of the collections have been digitized and are available on the website

-The Hoover Institution: Russian and Eurasian Collections

This collection is one of the most comprehensive assemblages of materials examining Russian and Eurasian history in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The records geographically cover Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, the Russian Federation, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan. Subject areas include twentieth-century history, politics, government, economics, military affairs, and political and social movements, especially the Russian Revolution and communism. A small selection of the collections are digitized and available online.

-The National Archives, United Kingdom

The National Archives is committed to preserving government records of the United Kingdom. The collection is one of the largest in the world, containing over 11 million historical government and public records.

-The National Archives, United Kingdom: The First World War 100

Holds the official UK government records of the First World War, including a vast collection of letters, diaries, maps and photographs.

-Seventeen Moments in Soviet History

A collection of texts, images, maps and audio and video materials from the Soviet era (1917-1991). 

-The Siege and Commune of Paris, 1870-1871

Links to over 1200 digitized photographs and images recorded during the Siege and Commune of Paris (1870-1871).

-Spanish Civil War Collection

Selections documenting Spain's Second Republic (1931-1936), the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), and the post-War years of the 1940s.

-The United States Memorial Holocaust Museum

The United States Memorial Holocaust Museum was established by an act of Congress that mandated the creation of a “permanent living memorial to the victims of the Holocaust.” The Museum’s digital collections offers over 200,000 documents, image, moving images, music, and oral histories relating to the Holocaust and its dark legacy.

-World Digital Library: Europe 

A collection of print and visual resources related to European history.