InfoGuides: British/United Kingdom-Western European History Core Sources: Begin Your Research

Begin your research

This InfoGuide contains primary source resources and research strategies in British History, including the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Use this guide to discover resources available to you at Mason and online.

Find Secondary Sources -Research tools to assist finding secondary sources
Find Primary Source Books and Imprints - Electronic collections of primary source books and other published sources
Find Primary Source Periodical Publications - Electronic collections of primary source magazine and newspaper collections
Search Legal and Government Documents - Electronic collections of political and legal resources including government documents
Access Specialized Collections -Selected primary source collections by topic.(e.g. African American, Native American, Civil War etc.)
Find Archival Collections -Research tools to assist finding manuscript sources in repositories
Get Help - Chat with a librarian or setup an appointment with the History Librarian

Top 5 Resources to Start

Historical Abstracts This link opens in a new window
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Provides English language abstracts of scholarly literature from 1955 to present (journal articles, articles in collections, dissertations, book reviews) on world history from 1450, excluding North America. Note: with full-text links to 420,000 journals.
Tutorial for the Historical Abstracts database.
British Library Newspapers This link opens in a new window
Includes more than 160 newspapers originating in England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland selected by the British Library to best represent different political and cultural segments of 19th century British society.
Tutorial for the British Library Newspapers database.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) This link opens in a new window
Collects over 136,000 titles (155,000 volumes) and 9,000 legal treatises tracing the development of law in the British Empire, covering Anglo-American law and legal practice during the 18th century. Includes many publications summarizing the laws, explaining the court system, dramatizing past and pending cases, guiding attorneys, and theorizing and commenting on the application of legal standards. ECCO is based on the English Short Title Catalogue, and includes books, pamphlets, broadsides, and more. View a tutorial on this database here.
Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals: Series 1 - New Readerships This link opens in a new window
Covers the events, lives, values and themes that marked the advent of commercial lifestyle publishing in Britain and the rapid rise of modern magazine culture.
Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals: Series 2 - Empire This link opens in a new window
Covers the events, lives, values and themes that shaped the 19th century world, including the role Britain played beyond its own borders as an imperial power throughout the nineteenth century.