UK / Great Britain - History - European - Guides at Middlebury College

Primary Sources - United Kingdom / Great Britain

Use these AND the resources on the All Countries pages.

UK Parliamentary Papers (formerly House of Commons Parliamentary Papers) This link opens in a new window
On Login page, select "Log in through your Institution", then find "Middlebury College and Institute Libraries." U.K. Parliamentary Papers provides complete online coverage of the sessional papers of the British House of Commons and the 19th Century House of Lords. It includes detailed primary source for the history of Britain, its colonies, and the wider world. It covers working documents of government for all areas of social, political, economic and foreign policy.

British Legislation
Covers legislation back to the year 1267.
British House of Commons Debates
From the United Kingdom Parliament site. Includes archived Commons Hansard debates back to 1803 under Historic Hansard link. To search the House of Commons and the House of Lords together, see Hansard 1803-2005.
British Cabinet Papers, 1915-1981
Search by keyword or browse by theme.
House of Commons Journals (1835 - 2010)
Free from the UK Parliament. "The corrected, archive edition of Votes and Proceedings, the formal record of House of Commons business for a given day. "
British Official Documents
Includes Command Papers and House of Commons Papers published since May 2005.
National Archives [Great Britain]
Provides online access to archived digital datasets and documents from UK central government departments. The collection spans 40 years of recent history, with the earliest available dataset dating back to about 1963.
MIDCAT List - British Parliament Publications
A number of parliamentary documents and papers can be found in some of our online archive subscriptions and books listed in midcat. Click on title to run a MIDCAT author search: Great Britain. Parliament.

Eighteenth Century Collections Online This link opens in a new window
Over 100,000 books, pamphlets, essays, and broadsides published in the UK and elsewhere during the 18th century. Includes a chronology, key document gallery, and essays.
Nineteenth Century Collections Online This link opens in a new window
Middlebury's access includes: Asia and the West; British Politics and Society; British Theatre, Music and Literature; Children's literature and childhood; The Corvey Collection of European literature, 1790-1840; Europe and Africa: commerce, Christianity, civilization, and conquest; Mapping the world; Photography: the world through the lens; Religion, society, spirituality, and reform; Science, technology, and medicine, 1780-1925, parts 1 and 2; Women: transnational networks.

British Periodicals
Full text of hundreds of British periodicals from the late seventeenth century to the early twentieth.

Early English Books Online - EEBO This link opens in a new window
EEBO is a digital library containing about 100,000 of over 125,000 titles listed in Pollard & Redgrave's Short-Title Catalogue (1475-1640) and Wing's Short-Title Catalogue (1641-1700) and their revised editions, as well as the Thomason Tracts (1640-1661) collection and the Early English Books Tract Supplement. Major subjects include: English literature, history, philosophy, linguistics, theology, music, fine arts, education, mathematics, and science. There is some coverage of other parts of the world (British accounts or other works published or translatedin English).
EEBO is a digital library containing about 100,000 of over 125,000 titles listed in Pollard & Redgrave's Short-Title Catalogue (1475-1640) and Wing's Short-Title Catalogue (1641-1700) and their revised editions, as well as the Thomason Tracts (1640-1661) collection and the Early English Books Tract Supplement. Major subjects include: English literature, history, philosophy, linguistics, theology, music, fine arts, education, mathematics, and science. There is some coverage of other parts of the world (British accounts or other works published or translatedin English).
East India Company (India Office Records from the British Library, 1599-1947) This link opens in a new window
A unique collection of India Office Records from the British Library, London. Containing royal charters, correspondence, trading diaries, minutes of council meetings and reports of expeditions, among other document types, this resource charts the history of British trade and rule in the Indian subcontinent and beyond from 1599 to 1947. Middlebury has access to Module I (Trade, governance and empire, 1600-1947) and Module IV (Correspondence: early voyages, formation, and conflict)
Women, War & Society 1914-1918 This link opens in a new window
Includes documents such as charity and international relief reports, pamphlets, photographs, press cuttings, magazines, posters, correspondence, minutes, records, diaries, memoranda, statistics, circulars, regulations and invitations. Also includes interpretative essays from leading scholars.
The First World War had a revolutionary and permanent impact on the personal, social and professional lives of all women. Their essential contribution to the war in Europe is fully documented in this definitive collection of primary source materials brought together in the Imperial War Museum, London. These unique documents - charity and international relief reports, pamphlets, photographs, press cuttings, magazines, posters, correspondence, minutes, records, diaries, memoranda, statistics, circulars, regulations and invitations - are published here for the first time in fully-searchable form, along with interpretative essays from leading scholars. Together these documents form an indispensable resource for the study of 20th-Century social, political, military and gender history.URL: http://go.galegroup.com/gdsc/i.do?id=6ACP&v=2.1&u=vol_m58c&it=aboutCollections&p=GDSC&sw=w
Sex and sexuality This link opens in a new window
Module 2 Only. It is focused upon the experiences of individuals from across the spectrum of human sexuality, including heterosexual and LGBTQI+ experiences, from the nineteenth century to the present day. It also covers the criminalization of sexuality, both in terms of sex work and the prosecution and persecution of primarily men for "homosexual acts." Includes information on the Stonewall riots and the resulting movements for change, the beginning of the Pride parades, and the HIV/AIDs crisis. Module 2 also includes collections from the Kinsey institute, the ONE Archives at the USC Libraries, and The National Archives, UK, plus the Edward Carpenter Papers, the Norman Haire Collection, the National Lesbian and Gay Survey, and the Anne Lister Diaries.
Archives of sexuality and gender: LGBTQ History and Culture Since 1940, Parts I & 2 This link opens in a new window
Archives of Sexuality & Gender: LGBTQ History and Culture Since 1940,
Part I contains primary sources on social, political, health, and legal issues impacting LGBTQ communities around the world. Rare and unique content from newsletters, papers, government documents, manuscripts, pamphlets, and other types of primary sources sheds light on the gay rights movement, activism, the HIV/AIDS crisis, and more. It features documents published in more than 35 countries, and 15 languages.
Part II provides coverage of underrepresented communities through access to key publications. It highlights often-excluded groups—even within the LGBTQ community—and enables users to draw new connections across the development of LGBTQ culture and activism.
LGBT Magazine Archive This link opens in a new window
The archives of 26 leading but previously hard-to-find magazines. Includes the principal UK titles, notably Gay News and its successor publication Gay Times.

Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913
London's criminal court. "A fully searchable edition of the largest body of texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing 197,745 criminal trials held at London's central criminal court."

British Documents on Foreign Countries

Confidential Print: Africa, 1834-1966

Online archive to the UK's Colonial, Dominion and Foreign Offices’ confidential correspondence relating to Africa between 1834 and 1966. Includes: European conquest and colonization, early stages of imperial expansion & indigenous resistance in the interior of western and southern Africa, the European scramble for the continent in the late 19th century, the expansion of settler colonialism in southern and eastern Africa, the rising challenges to imperialism in the 20th century, & European withdrawal from the continent in the 1950s and 1960s. See Full Brochure

British Documents on the End of Empire
Reprinted British documents. Includes Imperial Policy and Colonial Practice, 1925-1945; The Labour Government and the End of Empire, 1945-1951;The Conservative Government and the End of Empire, 1951-1957; Ghana; Egypt and the Defence of the Middle East.
British Documents on Foreign Affairs...Russia, 1859-1914
Reports and papers from the Foreign Office
British Documents on Foreign Affairs...Soviet Union, 1917-1939-
Reports and papers from the Foreign Office

World War I and Revolution in Russia, 1914-1918 This link opens in a new window
This collection documents the Russian entrance into World War I and culminates in reporting on the Revolution in Russia in 1917 and 1918. The documents consist primarily of correspondence between the British Foreign Office, various British missions and consulates in the Russian Empire and the Tsarist government and later the Provisional Government.
Foreign Office Files, South East Asia, 1963-1980 This link opens in a new window
Archival records from the (British) Foreign Office covering South East Asia, particularly Malaysia and Indonesia, during times of conflict, growth, and change.
Foreign Office Files for India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, 1947-1980 This link opens in a new window
Three archival collections drawn from the British Foreign Office files on the countries of South Asia from shortly before Indian partition and independence up to 1980. The archival documents are divided into the following sections: (1) Independence, Partition and the Nehru Era, 1947-1964, (2) South Asian Conflicts and Independence for Bangladesh, 1965-1971 (3) Afghanistan and the Cold War, Emergency Rule in India, and the Resumption of Civilian Rule in Pakistan, 1972-1980.
Earl George Macartney Collection This link opens in a new window
This is a collection of a great variety of records related to Earl George Macartney’s historic mission to China during 1792-1794. The mission was dispatched by King George III of Britain in the name of congratulating Emperor Qianlong’s 83rd birthday. This Cornell University Library collection consists of letters, journals, logbooks, watercolors, engravings, and books (illustrated accounts of the expedition/mission) produced by Macartney himself and those who accompanied him on the mission.

Additional Web Sites & Gateways

British Monarchy
The official website of the British Monarchy
Tudor History
Includes biographies, chronologies, electronic texts, maps, images, and a bibliography
Victorian Web
The Victorian Web is the WWW translation of Brown University's Context 61, which served as a resource for courses in Victorian literature. These materials ultimately derive from Context 32, the Intermedia web that provided contextual information for English 32, 'Survey of English literature from 1700 to the Present.' Context 32 was begun in Spring 1987 as part of Brown University's Institute for Research in Information and Scholarship (IRIS) Intermedia project, which IBM, Apple Computers, the Annenberg/CPB Project, and other sources funded.