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Research Guides

Locating & Accessing Primary Documents: World Historical Documents

Find and Access primary resources from U.S. Government websites, Bush Library Databases and HamCAT.

Web Sites for World Historical Documents

Web Sites to Locate World Historical Documents

Internet Sites with Primary Sources for History https://libguides.bgsu.edu/HistoryInternet

Argentina Government Documents
Official Gazette https://www.boletinoficial.gob.ar/
Judicial Information http://www.infojus.gob.ar/

Home Pages for Australian Parliament's Documents:
http://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/search.w3p

British National Archives -  covers parliamentary legislation from 1267-present.
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/browse/uk​

Charles Darwin Letters - http://digitalcollections.library.ubc.ca/cdm/landingpage/collection/darwin
A collection of thousands of letters that Charles Darwin wrote during his lifetime, from various libraries around the world.

Children & Youth in History - http://chnm.gmu.edu/cyh/primary-sources
Primary sources are listed by world regions. Examples include: text from "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl", and photographs of sculptures, such as the small terra-cotta statue, "Ancient Greek Adolescent Girls at Play".

Eurodocs https://eudocs.lib.byu.edu/index.php/Main_Page
Western European Primary Historical Documents

Europeana https://www.europeana.eu/en
Explore millions of items from a range of Europe's leading galleries, libraries, archives and museums. Books and manuscripts, photos and paintings, television and video, sculpture and crafts, diaries and maps, sheet music and recordings, they’re all here.

Finding World History  http://chnm.gmu.edu/worldhistorysources/whmfinding.php
Links to sites with primary sources in world history, organized by region and time period.

German Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy  http://www.bmwi.de/EN/root.html

German Statistical Agency https://www.destatis.de/EN/Homepage.html

Upper House of Indian Parliament (Rajya Sabha):
http://rsdebate.nic.in/

Lower House of Indian Parliament (Lok Sabha):
https://loksabha.nic.in/

Internet Ancient History Sourcebook  https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/ancient/asbookfull.asp
The goal here is to provide and organize texts for use in classroom situations. Links to the larger online collections are provided for those who want to explore further. Areas covered are: Pre-History; Ancient Middle East; Egypt; Israel; Persia; Greece; Hellenistic World; Rome; and late Antiquity.

Irish Parliament's Historic Debates:
https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/find/

Nation Master - https://www.nationmaster.com/
comparing statistics between countries.

National Archives of Great Britain http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/

National Library of New Zealand (can access some older parliamentary documents from here):
http://atojs.natlib.govt.nz/cgi-bin/atojs?a=p&p=home&e=-------10--1------0--

People's Century  https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/peoplescentury/episodes/
The most valuable teaching resources are the transcripts of interviews conducted with people who witnessed or took part in major events of the century.

Spain's National Statistical Agency https://www.ine.es/en/welcome.shtml

United Kingdom Government Statistics  https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics

Vietnam War  https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/collection/87/vietnam-war
Readers will find various "once-secret" historical materials from archives around the world: telegrams, minutes, discussion notes that date from the mid 1950s to the late 1970s, and more. Interestingly, most are drawn from Chinese and Albanian archives, offering
a view of the conflict in Vietnam as seldom reported in the United States.

World War I Document Archive  https://wwi.lib.byu.edu/
This archive of primary documents from World War I has been assembled by volunteers of the World War I Military History List. The archive is international in focus and intends to present in one location primary documents concerning the Great War. 

World War I Timeline https://theworldwar.org/explore/interactive-wwi-timeline
The timeline brings events by integrating text, photos, drawings, maps, and videos. For instance, a quote by Kaiser Wilhelm II, "The sword is being forced into my hand," is followed by a 45-second video outlining the first months of the war.

Also worth looking at is: World War I: Trenches on the Web.

World War II Resources  www.ibiblio.org/pha/
"Primary source materials on the Web"