This page lists many databases for modern history. You'll also find databases for modern history on the pages for key databases for history, African history, Latin American history and US history and Newspapers.
From zines, newspapers and ephemera, to oral histories, films and photographs, 1980s Culture and Society is an eclectic and multi-faceted resource compiled from archival collections housed across the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada. Capturing diverse perspectives, materials produced by grassroots organizations and under-represented groups are presented alongside government records and mainstream media to showcase the key social, cultural, and political concerns of the decade.
19th Century British Pamphlets Online
A growing collection of digitised text and catalogue records of pamphlet collections in the United Kingdom. The more than 26,000 pamphlets provides a rich and coherent corpus of primary sources with which to study the socio-political and economic landscape of 19th century Britain. The pamphlets are being delivered on the JSTOR platform.
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A full-text multi-part collection which covers the events, lives, values and themes that shaped the 19th century world. Subjects range from art to business, and from children to politics. The periodicals are presented in their original published context.
Includes sources like censuses, vital records, immigration records, family histories, military records, court and legal documents, directories, photos, maps, and more. UK collections offer censuses for England, Wales, Isle of Man, Channel Islands, and Scotland, including Births and Baptisms (1834-1906), Marriage Licenses (1521-1869), Deaths and Burials (1834-1934), and Poor Law Records (1840-1938) in London.
Arab-Israeli Relations 1917-1970 : The Middle East Online Series 1
Primary source documents from the British National Archives that chronicle the politics, wars, administration, and diplomacy surrounding the Palestine Mandate and the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Archives of Sexuality & Gender
Contains primary sources on political, social and legal issues impacting LGBTQ communities around the world. The collection covers LGBTQ History & Culture since 1600. Content includes newsletters, organizational papers, government documents, manuscripts and pamphlets.
British Non-Parliamentary Publications
A selection of digitised documents from the University of Southampton Hartley Library's Ford Collection of British Official Publications. The term 'non-Parliamentary papers' is used to describe official publications which are not issued as part of the Parliamentary process. Earliest ones date back to the 19th century.
British Parliamentary Publications
A selection of digitised documents from the University of Southampton Hartley Library's Ford Collection of British Official Publications. This selection incorporates material from the following two earlier digitisation projects (1) BOPCRIS, and, (2) EPPI (Enhanced British Parliamentary Papers on Ireland, 1801-1922).
Searchable full text database of British periodicals from their origin in the 1680s through to the 1930s, comprising millions of high-resolution facsimile page images. Subjects covered include archaeology, architecture, art, the fine arts, drama, history, literature, music, philosophy, science and the social sciences.
Conditions & Politics in Occupied Western Europe, 1940-1945
British Foreign Office documents representing Britain's information flow from occupied territories in Europe. Resistance, economic and social conditions and intelligence operations are all reported. Also includes cine film footage and newly commissioned essays on life under German occupation in France, the Low Countries and Norway.
Connected Histories - British history sources 1500-1900
Cross-search a range of digital resources relating to British history in the period 1500 - 1900.
Explore gender through British source material from the fifteenth to early twentieth century. Through correspondence, advice literature, periodicals, ephemera and government documents, traditional models of gender and contemporary perceptions of these can be explored.
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Eighteenth Century Collections Online
An extensive digital library of over 180,000 eighteenth-century printed books published in the United Kingdom and the colonies between 1701 and 1800. Includes books, pamphlets and broadsides in all subjects —with works by many well-known and lesser-known authors.
English Historical Documents Online
Contains over 5,500 expertly indexed and fully searchable primary documents for British (not just English) history from 500-1914. The sources cover a wide spectrum of topics, from political and constitutional issues to social, economic, religious as well as cultural history.
A range of food and drink history stories from the evolution of food within everyday life to haute cuisine, charting key issues around agriculture and food production, and looking into advertising histories of key food and drink brands. The materials in this collection illustrate the deep links between food and identity, politics, power, gender, race, and socio-economic status.
Histpop : Online Historical Population Reports
The Online Historical Population Reports collection provides online access to the complete British population reports for Britain and Ireland from 1801 to 1937. The collection provides direct access to textual material and statistics on how people lived during a period of massive social change.
John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera
Access to thousands of items selected from the collection, offering unique insights into the changing nature of everyday life in Britain in the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Covers five subject areas: crimes, murders, and executions; advertising; booktrade; nineteenth-century entertainment; and popular prints.
Making of the Modern World Parts I-III
The Making of the Modern World covers the history of Western trade, industries, banking and finance, and the emergence of the modern corporation, covering 1450-1945. It is also strong in the rise of the modern labor movement, the evolving status of slavery, the condition and making of the working class, colonization, the Atlantic world, Latin American/Caribbean studies, social history, gender, and the economic theories that championed and challenged capitalism in the nineteenth century.
Mass Observation Online 1937-1972
Mass Observation Online provides integrated access to almost 400,000 digital images of material from the Mass Observation Archive (MOA). In addition, it functions as a finding aid for all material held on Adam Matthew Publications microfilm, and in the Mass Observation Archive.
Mass Observation Project I - III 1981-2009
Mass Observation Project consists of all the directives (questionnaires) sent out by Mass Observation and the responses to them from the hundreds of Mass Observers.
Addressing topics such as the Falklands War, clothing, attitudes to the USA, reading and television habits, morality and religion, and Britain's relations with Europe, the directives and responses are an essential resource for anyone interested in late-twentieth and early twenty-first-century British social history.
Broad themes covered include current events, friends and family, the home, leisure, politics, society, culture and the media, work, finance and the economy and new technology.
Political Extremism and Radicalism in the Twentieth Century
Warwick has access to Political Extremism and Radicalism: Far-Right and Left Political Groups in the U.S., Europe, and Australia in the Twentieth Century. This covers a broad assortment of both far-right and radical left political groups. It offers a diverse mixture of materials, including periodicals, campaign propaganda, government records, oral histories, and various ephemera from 1900s to 2010s.
Popular Culture in Britain and America, 1950-1975
A collection of original archival materials about popular culture in the U.S. and U.K. from 1950-1975. The resource offers thousands of colour images of manuscript and rare printed material as well as photographs, ephemera and memorabilia from this exciting period. Access is available to collections I-II.
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Post War Europe: Refugees, Exile & Resettlement 1945-1950
This online archive provides access to primary sources for the study and understanding of the challenges facing the European peoples in the aftermath of World War II. The archive covers the politics and administration of the refugee crisis in Europe after World War II as well as the day-to-day survival of the refugees themselves.
An online library of popular music journalism, updated weekly and sourced from freelance contributions to the music and mainstream press from the 1950s to the present day. The articles are full text and fully searchable.
An educational & cultural research resource of primary sources exploring 100 years of youth culture through the scenes, styles, and sounds that forged them. From Rave, Punk, Rockabilly to Grime. From the world’s leading collection of youth culture history.
Collection of primary source documents including 1,200 eyewitness accounts, 4,000 rare photographs, c.450 books, Nazi propaganda material including Nazi calendars, Hitler youth materials, anti-Semitic encyclopedia, songbooks and more.
Trench Journals and Unit Magazines of the First World War
A vast collection of rare magazines by and for servicemen and women of all nations during the First World War.
Includes House of Commons sessional papers from 1715 to the present, with supplementary material back to 1688. Includes debates, proceedings and reports of their committees and outside bodies on public affairs, and more. Also includes House of Lords (1800-1910), Public Petitions to Parliament (1833-1918) and the full text from Hansard, the Official Report of debates in Parliament, from both the House of Commons and House of Lords, from 1803 to 2005.
Victorian Popular Culture is a portal comprised of four modules, inviting users into the darkened halls, small backrooms, big tops and travelling venues that hosted everything from spectacular shows and bawdy burlesque, to the world of magic, spiritualist séances, optical entertainments and the first moving pictures.
Women in the National Archives
This collection consists of two distinct elements:
Women, War and Society, 1914-1918
A fully searchable database of approximately 126,000 images. The collection covers nearly every aspect of women’s war effort and will be of interest to those working on women’s, military, social, cultural, economic, local and family history.
Databases for History provide access to a huge range of primary source archives online. They allow you to search and access material without having to travel to archives and can bring material from across different archives together under a theme. They can also provide character recognition, full-text search, transcripts along with supporting contextual analysis, accompanying essays or tools such as timelines to help you make sense of the material you are working with.
19th Century UK Periodicals
Ancestry Library Edition
British Periodicals
Defining Gender 1450-1910
Rock's backpages
