History of Asia

A list of free electronic resources on South Asia gathered by the Library of Congress.

A list of free electronic resources on China gathered by the Library of Congress.

A list of free electronic resources on Japan gathered by the Library of Congress.

A list of free electronic resources on Korea gathered by the Library of Congress.

The official archive for England, Wales, and the government of the United Kingdom. Some collections are available online.

"The Digital South Asia Library provides digital materials for reference and research on South Asia to scholars, public officials, business leaders, and other users."

The Internet Archive is a non-profit website offering access for researchers, historians, and scholars to historical collections that exist in digital format. The Internet Archive includes texts, audio, moving images, and software as well as archived web pages.

A well-organized website with links to primary source documents, most in English translation. Compiled by Paul Halsall at Fordham.

Digitized publications from the Library of the South Asia Institute of the University of Heidelberg.

"Entry into the history of disease and its prevention in 19th and 20th-century British India, including veterinary medicine and animal husbandry."

Digital collections from the National Archives of India (NAI).

Links to many national library websites. National libraries are often responsible for digitizing collections related to the history of the nation.

"The Qatar Digital Library (QDL) is making a vast archive featuring the cultural and historical heritage of the Gulf and wider region freely available online for the first time. It includes archives, maps, manuscripts, sound recordings, photographs and much more, complete with contextualised explanatory notes and links, in both English and Arabic."

A public digital collection of materials on South Asian Americans.

Hosted by JSTOR. "A collaborative, open-access resource for research, teaching, and learning about South Asia. Includes historical and contemporary sources from and about the region in arts, humanities, social sciences, history of science, and other fields in English and other South Asian languages."

Supported by the United Nations, this portal gathers digitized primary sources of every type from worldwide repositories, including many national museums and libraries.

A project of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, this site gathers together and introduces repositories that contain primary sources from across the world.

Google has digitized thousands of books and magazines and made them searchable. Use this advanced search interface for precise searching. You may be able to access the full text of books that are out of copyright. If an item is only available in "snippet view" or "limited preview," you may be able to obtain that item from our own collection or via Interlibrary Loan.

Official documentary historical record of major U.S. foreign policy decisions and significant diplomatic activity. Back volumes are in process of digitization, with some searchable content available back to the 1950s and up to the mid-1970s, and links to browsable volumes since 1861. JMU has some volumes in print and/or on microform.

"Constructed and maintained by the Wilson Center's History and Public Policy Program, the Digital Archive contains declassified historical materials from archives around the world, much of it in English translation. The historical documents presented in the ever-expanding Digital Archive provide unique insights into recent international history, and serve to deepen and enrich international scholarship, history education, and public policy debate on important global issues and challenges."

A rich open-source image collection focusing on cities, sites, and buildings in the Muslim world. Curated by MIT Libraries.

Thousands of images from the British Library.

A growing digital archive of newsreels created by the British Pathé company from the 1890s through the 1970s. These videos include areas such as historical events and documentaries as well as travelogues and contemporary coverage of culture.

This multifaceted tool places art works from the Metropolitan Museum's collection within geographical and chronological context. It has excellent thematic essays (background information) that cover the historical eras and cultures that produced the works of art (the primary sources), along with maps and key events from each place and time period.

From the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection at the University of Texas Libraries.

(1908-1931)

Access to digitized maps from the Library of Congress.

Access to maps from research libraries around the world. You may search a place and a time period to find high-resolution maps.

This website links to historic newspaper digitization projects from around the world. Projects are listed by country or by state. Most newspapers are freely available, but the fee-based projects are noted as such.

Published from 1936 to 1972, this influential magazine chronicled world events and brought stunning images of the world to American readers.

This AMIR blog posting pulls together links to open access newspapers and periodicals on the Mideast and Islam. Organized by country of interest or of publication.

"Covers several countries, including Afghanistan, Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan), India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, and features multiple languages such as Bengali, Dari, English, Nepali, and more. With reportage dating as far back as the 1850s... provides a wealth of coverage and perspectives on major regional and global events of the 19th and 20th centuries."

"Chronicles the changes that took place throughout the region during this period, and the challenges of early statehood. Covering several countries from the region, including Myanmar (formerly Burma), Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam, and featuring multiple languages such as Dutch, English, French, Javanese, Spanish, and Vietnamese... Incorporates a wealth of coverage and perspectives on major regional and global events of the late 19th and 20th centuries."

From the University of Cambridge. "A collection of interviews conducted in the 1970s and 1980s with both Indian and British people describing their experiences of life in British India, the events leading up to independence in 1947 and the early years of independent India and Pakistan. Covers all aspects of South Asian society, from a wide range of perspectives and includes interviews with prominent figures in the movements for independence, senior civil servants, labourers, poets, writers, broadcasters, soldiers etc. There are a total of 400 interviews, all transcribed, totalling over 1,000 hours of recordings."

Records of travelers from the late 18th to the mid-20th C.

Manuscript records of traders, travelers, missionaries and diplomats, 1853-1941.