History e-resources and databases
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- Establishing the Post-War International Order, 1944-1961
This collection, curated in association with the National Archives (UK), provides an unparalleled insight into the political, economic, and military foundations of the post-war international order. The materials, which are diverse in nature, cover a wide range of subject matter, shedding light on the perspectives of various state and non-state actors during periods of both cooperation and conflict. The United Nations (UN), Marshall Plan, World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), and European Economic Community (EEC), to name but a few examples, are all accounted for.
In addition to diplomatic files relating to key organisations, agreements, and events, records of global commodity prices, including gold, oil, and food, feature heavily. Most of the documents are derived from the annals of the British Board of Trade (i.e. BT 64), Cabinet Office (i.e. CAB 128), Foreign Office (i.e. FO 371), and Treasury (i.e. T 274). Brought together here for the first time, these files are intended for use by academics working across the humanities and social sciences, from History and International Relations to Economics and International Law.
- Ethnographic video online
Ethnographic Video Online is the most comprehensive resource for visual anthropology in the world, from raw field footage to crafted ethnographies and documentaries. This collection brings irreplaceable primary source films, which depict the richness of human culture, behavior and diversity around the world, together in one place. It is also a resource for a study of the discipline itself: By placing examples of traditional ethnographic methodologies alongside indigenous-made films representing previously overlooked perspectives, scholars, teachers and students of anthropology can gain a sense of the discipline’s history and of its future direction.
- Evangelism in Thailand: Correspondence of the Board of Foreign Mission, 1840-1910
Archive of correspondence of the American Presbyterian Church's Board of Foreign Missions relating to their Thailand Mission (formerly Siam) during the period of 1840 to 1910. The records offer primary source material of incoming correspondence from the mission field and outgoing correspondence from the Board headquarters. This collection provides invaluable information on efforts to spread the gospel during the nineteenth century documenting the church's educational, evangelical, and medical work.
- Everyday Life & Women in America, c1800-1920
Reflects 19th - 20th century political, social and gender issues in the United States, including religion, race, education, employment, marriage, sexuality, home and family life, health, and pastimes. The collection is rich in conduct of life and domestic management literature, offering insights into the daily lives of women and men, and emphasising contrasts in regional, urban and rural cultures.
Authorised for ANU alumni access - First World War
This resource showcases primary source material for the study of the First World War, from personal narratives and printed books to military files, propaganda pamphlets and strong visual documents. A range of contextual secondary material including scholarly essays, case studies, and interactive maps complements the material.
- Personal Experiences
- Propaganda and Recruitment
- Visual perspectives and Narratives
- A Global Conflict
Authorised for ANU alumni access - Food History: Printed and Manuscript Recipe Books, 1669-1990
Over 330 cookbooks range in publication date from Charles Carter’s The Complete Practical Cook, published in London in 1730, to Susan Anna Brown’s Mrs. Gilpin's frugalities: remnants, and 200 ways of using them, published New York in 1883, to Ruth Ellen Church’s Mary Meade's magic recipes for the electric blender, published in Indianapolis in 1952. This is a delectable collection comprising centuries of recipes for the kitchen, medicinal formulas for the home, advice for the housekeeper, practical ways to cook on a budget, tips on serving and table etiquette, guidance concerning household management, how to grow one’s own food, how to select and buy food, and much more. Food History shows the types of foods that were being eaten, different cultural cuisines, and the diversity of foodways.
- Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) daily report
The Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) is a United States government agency that translates the text of daily radio and television broadcasts; newspapers and periodicals; government statements; books, and other sources of unrestricted information such as databases and gray literature from non-English sources around the world. FBIS covers such topics as military affairs; politics; the environment; societal issues; economics, and science and technology. Reports are available from 1941 to 1996. Daily reports with translations are issued for Africa; Asia; Australia/Oceania; Caribbean; Europe; Middle East/Near East; North and South America.
- Foreign Office files for China, 1919-1980
The collection makes available all British Foreign Office files dealing with China, Hong Kong and Taiwan between 1919 and 1980, including:
- 1919-1929: Kuomintang, CCP and the Third International
- 1930-1937: The Long March, civil war in China and the Manchurian Crisis
- 1938-1948: Open Door, Japanese war and the seeds of communist victory
- 1949-1956: The Communist revolution
- 1957-1966: The Great Leap Forward
- 1967-1980: The Cultural Revolution
Authorised for ANU alumni access - Foreign Office files for India, Pakistan and Afghanistan,1947-1980 (I, II and III)
This collection of files from the Foreign Office (later the Foreign and Commonwealth Office) and Dominions Office focuse on the political and social history of India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, covering events of independence and partition, war between India and Pakistan, tensions and war between India and China, the turbulent independence of Bangladesh, and more.
Authorised for ANU alumni access - Foreign Office Files for Japan, 1919-1952
This collection makes available extensive coverage of British Foreign Office files dealing with Japan between 1919 and 1952. It includes three parts:
- Japanese Imperialism and the War in the Pacific, 1931-1945
- Occupation of Japan, 1946-1952
- Japan and Great Power Status, 1919-1930
Authorised for ANU alumni access - Frontier Life: Borderlands, Settlement & Colonial Encounters
This digital collection of primary source documents helps us to understand existence on the edges of the Anglophone world from 1650-1920. Discover the various European and colonial frontier regions of North America, Africa and Australasia through documents that reveal the lives of settlers and indigenous peoples in these areas.
Authorised for ANU alumni access - Gale Financial Times Historical Archive
Financial Times Historical Archive 1888-2021 is the complete searchable facsimile run of the world's most authoritative daily business newspaper. Every article and advertisement ever printed in the paper, since it was first published in 1888, can be searched and browsed individually and page by page. This is an essential, comprehensive and unbiased research tool for everyone studying public affairs, and economic and financial history of the last 120 years.
- Gale Primary Sources
Gale Primary Sources allows users to search selected Gale digital archives from a single interface. The selected digital archives include, but are not limited to:
- Archives Unbound - topically-focused digital collections of historical documents
- British Library Newspapers - national and regional newspapers representing different political and cultural segments of British society
- Decolonization: Politics and Independence in Former Colonial and Commonwealth Territories - presents political ephemera and organizational material produced in over 70 countries and territories around the world throughout the twentieth century
- Nineteenth Century Collections Online - primary source collections of the long nineteenth century
- Nineteenth Century U.S. Newspapers - newspaper content from the nineteenth century, featuring a range of urban and rural regions throughout the United States
- The Telegraph Historical Archive - daily and Sunday editions of The Telegraph from 1855 to 2016
- The Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive - comprehensive coverage of writings and influential criticism of the twentieth century's most important writers and thinkers contributed to the Times Literary Supplement (TLS).
- Gale Research Complete
Gale Research Complete (GRC) provides access to a large number of databases and covers covers a broad range of disciplines. GRC includes access to a wide range of primary sources, e-reference and periodical content, and combines proprietary e-reference content from Gale, Journal Citation Report (JCR)—quality periodicals, literary criticism, and full-text literary works as well as rare primary source content from the vaults of the world’s great libraries.
- Global Commodities: Trade, Exploration and Cultural Exchange
This resource brings together manuscript, and printed and visual primary source materials for the study of global commodities in world history. The commodities featured in this resource have been transported, exchanged and consumed around the world for hundreds of years. They helped transform societies, global trading operations, habits of consumption and social practices.
Authorised for ANU alumni access - Gordon W. Prange collection - 20th Century Media index
An index to censored Japanese material recovered after WWWII and kept at the University of Maryland Library. It includes galley proofs of books, newspaper and magazine articles, and published books that were either suppressed or partially censored. Registration required at the website.
- Grand Tour
Covering the period 1550-1850, this collection of manuscript, visual and printed works allows scholars to compare a range of sources on the history of travel for the first time, including many from private or neglected collections, with letters; diaries and journals; account books; printed guidebooks; published travel writing; paintings and sketches; architectural drawings and maps. The Grand Tour includes the travel writings and works of some of Britain’s greatest artists, writers and thinkers, revealing how interaction with European culture shaped their creative and intellectual sensibilities. It also includes many writings by forgotten or anonymous travellers, including many women, whose daily experiences offer a vivid insight into the experience and practicalities of travel across the centuries.
Authorised for ANU alumni access - Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union, 1941-1945
Published originally as Istoriia Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voiny Sovetskogo Soiuza 1941–1945 in Moscow in 1960 by the USSR Ministry of Defense, this collection includes over 9,000 pages of the official Soviet history of World War II. The work was translated by the U.S. Army Center of Military History and the Foreign Technology Division, Air Force Systems Command, providing scholars with an opportunity to study what is considered one of the most significant historical documents produced in the Soviet Union. In addition to its importance in the war's historiography, the collection is a valuable exposition of the development of a widely influential military doctrine.
- Historical Abstracts
This abstracting and indexing databse of literature covers world history (excluding the United States and Canada) from the 15th century to the present. It also includes full-text linking to open access (OA) journals.
- Historical Statistics of the United States : Colonial Times to 1970
This resources contains annual, time-series data on United States' economics, population or infrastructure from 1610 to 1970.
Part 1 covers: Population. Vital statistics and health and medical care. Migration. Labor. Prices and price indexes. National income and wealth. Consumer income and expenditures. Social statistics. Land, water, and climate. Agriculture. Forestry and fisheries. Minerals. Part 2 covers: Construction and housing. Manufactures. Transportation. Communications. Energy. Distribution and services. International transactions and foreign commerce. Business enterprise. Productivity and technological development. Financial markets and institutions.
- History Vault: CIA Cold War Research Reports and Records on Communism in China and Eastern Europe
This module consists of two major series of records: CIA Research Reports from 1946-1976 and records collected by Raymond Murphy on Communism in China and Eastern Europe from 1917-1958. Beginning in 1946 with reports of the CIA’s predecessor, the Central Intelligence Group, CIA Research Reports reproduces over 1,500 reports on eight areas: Middle East; Soviet Union; Vietnam and Southeast Asia; China; Japan, Korea, and Asian security; Europe; Africa; and Latin America. This series deals with international questions and biographical reports, offering profiles of relatively unknown leaders. The Murphy Collection provides information on war recovery efforts, international aid, and the formation of countries and substantial information on the Chinese Communist Party.
- History Vault: Confidential U.S. State Department Central Files 1960-1969: Asia
The U.S. State Department Central Files are an important source of American diplomatic reporting on political, military, social, and economic developments throughout the world in the 20th century. Concentrating exclusively on those U.S. State Department Central Files that have not been microfilmed by the National Archives or distributed by other publishers, the U.S. State Department Central Files in History Vault contain a wide range of materials from U.S. diplomats in foreign countries: special reports on political and military affairs; studies and statistics on socioeconomic matters; interviews and minutes of meetings with foreign government officials; court proceedings and other legal documents; full texts of important letters, instructions, and cables sent and received by U.S. diplomatic personnel; reports and translations from foreign journals and newspapers; and countless translations of high-level foreign government documents. The Countries covered in this module are: China, Far East (general), Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Philippine Republic, and Vietnam. The files on China, Japan, and Vietnam make up the largest portion of this module. Major topics covered in the China files include the tensions between the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China, the U.S.'s Two Chinas policy, and the Cultural Revolution in China. In Japan, State Department personnel reported on student demonstrations, the activities of Japanese political parties, the 1964 Olympics, negotiations regarding Japanese import and export restrictions, issues pertaining to the Japanese Self Defense Force, relations with South Korea, the possible reversion of Okinawa to Japan, diplomatic meetings, and the Japanese fishing industry. In the Vietnam files, documentation on agricultural commodities shipped to Vietnam as part of the Food for Peace program will give researchers a sense of agricultural prices, currency rates, and the food supply in Vietnam during the war. State Department records on Vietnam also cover relations between Buddhists and the government, and U.S. military intervention and military assistance in Vietnam. The records on Laos in this module focus on the political instability in Laos.
- History Vault: NAACP Papers
The digitised archive of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP):
- NAACP Papers: Board Of Directors, Annual Conferences, Major Speeches, And National Staff Files: ProQuest’s digitisation of the NAACP Papers begins with the central organizational records: thousands of pages documenting important meetings, monthly reports to the board of directors, and the association’s annual conferences. This module also collects special reports by NAACP officers and committees on issues including the Ku Klux Klan, discrimination in public employment, the depiction of Blacks in motion pictures, economic equality, the church and civil rights and the changing attitudes of Black youth.
- NAACP Papers: The NAACP’s Major Campaigns— Education, Voting, Housing, Employment, Armed Forces: The Education files in this module document the systematic assault on segregated education that culminated in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954. Fighting for voting rights was one of the NAACP’s earliest major campaigns; the 1916-1950 files document the NAACP’s campaign against the “white primary,” discriminatory registration practices and the “grandfather clause.” The armed forces portion of this module is an exceptionally rich documentary source on African American military service between 1918 and the early 1950s.
- History Vault: U.S. Diplomatic Post Records, 1914-1945
The State Department Diplomatic Post Records consist of correspondence and reports from American diplomats stationed around the world. Diplomatic post records are those kept at the embassies or legations rather than those kept in Washington. Diplomatic post records contain the incoming messages from Washington, retained copies of outgoing dispatches, locally gathered information, and background material on decision making. The following countries or cities are represented in this module: Japan; Cuba; El Salvador; Honduras; Nicaragua; Iran; Iraq; Beirut; Jerusalem; Aden; Lebanon; Russia and the Soviet Union.
- History Vault: U.S. Military Intelligence Reports, 1911-1944
U.S. Military Intelligence Reports offer comprehensive documentation of developments and events in the key nations of the world during the period from World War I to the final campaigns of World War II. After World War I, the U.S. military developed a sophisticated intelligence gathering capability. Concerned with much more than strictly military intelligence, American military attaches and their staffs reported on a wide range of topics, including the internal politics, social and economic conditions, and foreign affairs of the countries in which they were stationed. This module contains the U.S. Military Intelligence reports for China, Japan, France, Germany, Italy, Argentina, Mexico, Soviet Union, Biweekly Intelligence Summaries, and Combat Estimates.
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