Research Guides: HIST 226 Revolutions in European History: Primary Source Collections

Primary Sources

General:

Europeana
Use Europeana to search through millions of digitized books, art, newspapers, and other sources from European museums, galleries and national libraries.

Library of Congress - European Reading Room - Vast European history collections. Pamphlets, newspapers, and government documents

Gallica Library - Digital library of French and francophone culture maintained by the Bibliothque Nationale de France. Contains numerous electronic texts, images, maps, animation, and sound files of French and other publications in history, literature, science, philosophy, law, economics, and political science.

Hoover Institution Archives - (Stanford University) - The Hoover Institution Library & Archives holds more than one million volumes and over 6,000 archival collections that document war, revolution, and peace and social, political, and economic change that shaped our world in the 20th and 21st centuries.

CVCE Digital Library (Centre Virtuel de la Connaissance sur l'Europe) - European integration, oral histories.

Revolution-Specific:

French Revolution Digital Archive (Stanford University) - Images, texts, maps from the French Revolution

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity: Exploring the French Revolution (George Mason University) - Primary sources with contextual essays

Russian Revolution Collections (Library of Congress) - Posters, photographs, pamphlets. Materials on women's battalions and workers' movements

Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI) - Records on communist and socialist movements. Russian Revolution materials and its European impact

Socialist, Labor and Social Movement Archives:

International Institute of Social History (IISH) (Amsterdam) - Extensive collections on socialist/communist movements, anarchism, labor history, and social movements. Revolutionary movements across Europe

Cold War, Eastern European Opposition Movements:

KARTA Center (Poland)- Opposition movements in communist Poland. Oral history collections from dissidents and workers

Open Society Archives (OSA) - Central European University, Budapest Extensive collections on Eastern European dissent and opposition movements

Memorial International (Russia) - Soviet political repression documentation. Dissident movement materials

Wilson Center Digital Archive - Cold War International History Project Declassified documents from former communist countries. Materials on 1956 Hungarian Revolution, 1968 Prague Spring, 1980s Solidarity. Translations of Eastern European documents

Making the History of 1989 (Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media)

National Archives:

The National Archives (UK) - British foreign policy and intelligence records. Documents on European revolutions and political movements

Archives Nationales (France) French revolutionary connections and influences

German Federal Archives (Bundesarchiv) - Critical for German revolutions and movements. Materials on German political thought's influence

Women and Gender Studies Collections:

Schlesinger Library (Harvard Radcliffe Institute) - Women's activism and social movements. International women's suffrage materials

Women's Library at The London School of Economic and Political Science - British and European women's movements. Suffrage, labor, and peace activism

Women & Social Movements International: 1840 to present
"Through the writings of women activists, their personal letters and diaries, and the proceedings of conferences at which pivotal decisions were made, this collection lets you see how women’s social movements shaped much of the events and attitudes that have defined modern life. This digital archive offers 150,000 pages of conference proceedings, reports of international women's organizations, publications and web pages of women's non-governmental organizations, and letters, diaries, and memoirs of women active internationally since the mid-nineteenth century."
Gender: Identity and Social Change
Find primary sources documenting the changing representations and lived experiences of gender roles and relations, and the struggle for women's rights. Includes sources from the 19th-21st centuries, focusing on the United States, Great Britain, Canada, and Australia
Includes digitized archival documents, images, and video content.

Colonial and Antislavery Collections:

Empire Online
Offers images of original documents taken from libraries and archives around the world including correspondence, diaries, literature and illustrations. Includes essays by leading scholars in the field of Empire Studies. Covers a range of topics and includes Africa, the Americans, Australasia, Oceania and South Asia. Includes documents published between 1492-1969.
Slavery, Abolition and Social Justice
This digital collection documents key aspects of the history of slavery worldwide over six centuries, with 16 key areas of focus: slavery in the early Americas; African coast; the Middle Passage; slavery and agriculture; urban and domestic slavery; slave testimony; spiritualism and religion in slave communities; resistance and revolts; the Underground Railroad; the abolition movement and the slavery debate; legislation and politics; freed slaves, freedmen and free black settlements; education; slavery and the Islamic world; varieties of slave experience; slavery today and the legacy of slavery. The collection also includes case studies from America, the Caribbean, Brazil, and Cuba.