InfoGuides: Core Sources in Middle Eastern and African History: Begin Your Research

Begin your research

This InfoGuide contains primary and secondary source resources and research strategies for Middle Eastern and African History.

Use this guide to discover Middle Eastern and African History resources available to you at Mason and online.

Find Secondary Sources -Research tools to assist finding secondary sources
Find Books and Imprints - Electronic collections of primary source books and other published sources
Find 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 Curated Collections -Selected primary source collections by topic.(e.g. African American, Native American, Civil War etc.)
Finding 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.
African Blue Books, 1821-1953 This link opens in a new window
Collects annual reports on British colonies that provide detailed accounts of the day-to-day concerns and policies of colonial administrators. Include texts, statistics, maps, and illustrations and cover such topics as taxes and duties, military expenditure, civil establishment, legislation and proclamations, population data, import and export statistics, prisons, and meteorological observations. Tutorial on African Blue Books, 1821-1953 database
Aluka This link opens in a new window
Digital library of scholarly resources from and about Africa. Includes a wide variety of scholarly materials contributed by Aluka's partners, ranging from archival documents, periodicals, books, reports, manuscripts, and reference works, to three-dimensional models, maps, oral histories, plant specimens, photographs, and slides. Tutorial for the Aluka database.
Confidential Print: Africa, 1834-1966 This link opens in a new window
Spans the full era of the modern European colonization of Africa, from the occupation of Algeria by France, through increasing British presence on the west African coast and around the Cape of Good Hope in the south, the Berlin Conference which set off the "Scramble for Africa", the high-water mark of economic exploitation of Africans in the Congo Free State, rivalries among European powers, and the era of withdrawal that followed the Second World War. Features 300 color maps.
Tutorial for the Confidential Print: Africa, 1834-1966 database.
Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) daily reports 1974-1996 This link opens in a new window
Access full text of reports issued 1975-1996 created by the U.S. intelligence community to benefit policy makers and analysts, FBIS Daily Reports offer foreign views and perspectives on historical events from thousands of monitored broadcasts, and publications. See World News Connection for broadcasts from 1996 to 2013. See FBIS Electronic Index, below, for a subject search option.

Related Research Guides

The following guides may be useful for doing research in Middle Eastern and African History.