The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies,
The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, 1919-1997, offers a unique collection of primary source material from the archives of the world’s largest humanitarian network.
Documents within the collection date back to the 1919 establishment of the League of Red Cross Societies, which united the National Societies of the UK, USA, France, Italy, and Japan. In 1983, the union extended its boundaries, incorporating Red Crescent Societies from majority Muslim countries. The League was renamed the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) in 1991.
This digital archive contains two core resources: The Central Registry comprises correspondence and reports exchanged by the League of Red Cross Societies from 1919 to the early 1970s. Digitised files cover topics such as League organisation, conferences, disaster relief, and aid to war victims, along with more specialised material on epidemic diseases.
The Non-Registry collection includes non-centralised material from IFRC departments, alongside Coordinated Relief Bulletins and Relief Bureau Circulars (c.1940s-1980s). These documents report on the activities of National Societies and the IFRC, and provide updates on ongoing disasters, specific needs, and appeals.
Additionally, the archive also provides students, researchers and academic staff with access to over 2,000 files from the Relief Operations Bureau (1970s–80s) and Thematic Operational Files, covering major conflicts such as Vietnam, Korea, and the Middle East.
Part of Gale’s Global Development and Humanitarian Aid Collection, this new collection aligns with the University’s ongoing commitment as a University of Sanctuary. Search in conjunction with resources such as Refugees Relief and Resettlement (cross-searchable on the same platform) and Border and Migration Studies (part of the Global Issues Library) and physical materials housed within our pioneering Humanitarian Archive at The John Rylands Library.
A UoM-curated collection from British Online Archives
As a consequence of ongoing mapping activity relating to our position as National Research Library in the North the Library has significantly boosted its holdings from British Online Archives.
A number of the 21 new primary source collections acquired therefore align directly not only with existing online digital reserves, but with particular strengths at Rylands - so our extensive women’s suffrage collections have now been strengthened by a specifically Scottish archive of further material to assist researchers in compiling a more expansive picture of the movement. Reinforcing our holdings on the business of mass media, material from the BBC now complements the Granada corporate archive. Similarly, a digital archive addressing Walt Whitman builds on physical collections of manuscripts and books that have been described as the “largest and most important Whitman collection outside of the United States.”
Complementary digital additions to our extensive collections of economic and industrial history - trade, commerce and shipping records - have been sourced to further ongoing research and teaching. In accordance with the University’s civic commitment, records allowing researchers to more fully address hidden issues and uncomfortable truths – from slavery and colonialism to investigative journalism archives – have also been purchased.
A significant section of the expanded portfolio has been consciously collated from institutions outside the capital, and where relevant, from the North, exemplified by The Industrial Revolution: Technological Innovation in the Textile Industry, 1672–1929.
A comprehensive index of all our individual collections on the BOA platform is listed under ‘Related Titles’ on the Library Search entry and the platform can be cross-searched thematically, with contextual essays also offered to assist users.
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Burney Newspapers Collection
With the purchase of the second and final instalment of the 17th and 18th century Burney newspapers collection, the Library’s digital reach now stretches back to the beginnings of the newspaper as we know it.
This recent release also offers greatly improved reprographic quality on its 2007 predecessor. Largely sourced from the British Library and supplementing existing digital resources such as Eighteenth Century Journals, it offers full text access to almost a million pages addressing the immediate concerns of contemporary society in the Early Modern period. Matters political (both domestic and colonial), cultural and economic can now be easily traced and tracked through a variety of hard-to-find and often short-lived media housed within this major historical archive.
'Topic Finder' and 'Term Frequency' tools allow researchers to trace emerging themes and patterns and the opportunity to develop new and alternative chronologies.
China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) E-Books Service
The Library is excited to announce its subscription to the CNKI E-Books service, offering full-text access and the option to download entire books. With over 9,000 high-quality academic titles from China’s most authoritative scholarly publishers, this service covers a wide range of subject areas, including Art, Language & Literature, History, Nationality & Geography, and Philosophy & Religion. It provides invaluable resources for both research and learning.
The CNKI E-Books collection covers a variety of specialized topics, such as:
This invaluable resource enhances access to authoritative Chinese scholarly content, significantly enriching China-related studies. It is also essential for students working on dissertations and theses that require Chinese-language sources.
The Cambridge Histories series is one of the most respected reference collections in academia. Now extending to over 400 volumes, titles nominally encompass 10 subject areas: American History; Ancient History & Classical Studies; Asian History; British & European History; Global History; Literature; Middle East & African Studies; Music & Theatre; Philosophy & Political Thought and Religion. However, it is worth noting that the topics addressed extend across the full range of the humanities, encompassing longstanding series, such as those documenting the history of the major global religions, but also recent innovations such as the World History series, which traces the development and chronology of fields as diverse as Food, Medical Ethics, Sexualities and Slavery.
Often incorporating contributions by University of Manchester academics, the collections offer invaluable contextual introductions for first-time researchers as well as regular monthly updates on developing areas of scholarship. The library has recently undertaken a review exercise to ensure online access to all available electronic titles and instituted a subscription for the addition of annual releases to ensure consistent and comprehensive access to this flagship reference series.
The Cambridge Histories also complement other recent state-of-the art and regularly updated reference material recently added to the Library’s holdings – most notably Oxford Bibliographies and Oxford Research Encyclopedias.
Refugees, Relief and Resettlement
A key resource for the study of forced migration and the history of refugees, this collection collates materials from a wide range of sources including the U.K. National Archives, the British Library, World Jewish Relief, and the US Department of State.
Refugees, Relief and Resettlement comprises two parts addressing refugee crises across different chronological periods. The first part, Forced Migration and World War II, focuses on refugees and displaced persons across Europe, North Africa, and Asia from 1935 to 1950. The second part, The Early Cold War and Decolonization, examines the changes effected by the Cold War and the decolonisation of, and rise of independence movements within, the nations of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. This series offers a wealth of primary sources including legal briefs, refugee reports, and government documents, manuscripts, pamphlets, and letters.
Refugees, Relief and Resettlement addresses an ongoing global issue and is of value to students and researchers across a range of disciplines and research groups including Migration, Refugees and Asylum, Humanitarian and Conflict Response and Histories of Humanitarianism. This new addition enriches our collections of primary source materials in this challenging research area. These include both digital resources such as Border and Migration Studies (part of the Global Issues Library) and Post-war Europe: Refugees, Exile and Resettlement, 1945-1950, and the physical materials housed within our pioneering Humanitarian Archive at the Rylands. In addition, it aligns with the University's ongoing commitment as a University of Sanctuary.
African Diaspora, 1860-Present
An invaluable aide to understanding Black history and culture, African Diaspora, 1860-Present allows researchers to trace the migrations, developing societies, and evolving ideologies of people of African descent after the abolition of slavery. With a focus on communities in the Caribbean, Brazil, India, United Kingdom, and France, the collection includes an extensive range of newly digitized primary source documents, including personal papers, organizational papers, periodicals, newsletters, court documents, letters, and ephemera.
In addition to work by key thinkers and historians such as George Padmore and Paul Gilroy and material from the pioneering UK-based Caribbean publisher, Hansib, the collection also incorporates images and film – including David Olusoga’s acclaimed 2016 BBC television series, Africa and Britain: a Forgotten History. As such the holdings complement existing Library resources, such as Black Thought and Culture, which focuses on the Black experience in the USA, and in particular the notable and extensive print and oral history resources housed at the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah RACE (Race Archives and Community Engagement) Centre.
A user-friendly interface facilitates topic searches allowing scholars to easily address the emergence of societal developments such as the Back to Africa and Pan-African movements.
Royal Geographical Society Archive (with IBG)
Following extensive consultation with academics, the Library is delighted to announce the purchase of the Royal Geographical Society Archive (with the Institute of British Geographers - IBG).
From its formation in 1830 the Royal Geographical Society has served as the leading organisation and support network for the discipline in both the UK and wider field of study.
This new digital collection compiled from the society’s comprehensive archives gives researchers online access to a wealth of material extending from 1482-2010, much of which is available online for the first time. Handwritten documents are made decipherable by the typeset transcripts feature and a special function makes it easy to keep an eye on your bibliography with the onscreen citations tab.
The archive not only bolsters studies in the conventional fields of geography and geology but also aligns seamlessly with the interdisciplinary investigations carried out by a wide range of research teams within the University.
The Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) digital archive, divided into two parts covering the periods 1482-1899 and 1900-2010, boasts a collection of over 150,000 maps, charts, and atlases. This extensive archive is enriched with valuable additions such as manuscripts, field notes, expedition reports, scrapbooks, correspondence, diaries, illustrations, and sketches.
With a particular focus on resources related to Agricultural Geography, Anthropology, Cartography, Borders, Nations & Power, Colonial and Post-Colonial Studies, among many others, the Royal Geographical Society archive has played an influential role throughout its history.
Furthermore, it augments the Library’s digital resource collections and complements the rich reserves of the “Maps, Travel and Discovery” holdings at The John Rylands Research Institute and Library, offering researchers potentially new ways of addressing the respective collections. As the archive of a leading professional body, the RGS holdings also throw an interesting sidelight on the activities of contemporary scientific organisations; those housed on the same platform (British Association for the Advancement of Science) and those at Rylands, which will be of particular interest to historians of science.
To assist scholars looking at the rise and fall of empires around the world, the Library has purchased permanent access to Empire Online, an extensive and diverse repository of primary source material covering some 5 centuries. Offering a useful starting point for both newcomers and experienced researchers addressing this complex and contentious area of study, the collection offers primary source material from American, French, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, German, and British perspectives, thereby providing varying points-of-view for comparative research. Documents from Africa, India and North America are also featured. Formats too are similarly diverse, encompassing first-hand travel accounts, manuscripts, maps, official government papers, periodicals, children’s adventure stories and a selection of images
Of wide-ranging appeal to researchers and students in areas as diverse as colonial history, decolonial studies, politics, economic ‘development’, the propagation of religion and issues of historical representation, this readily accessible digital repository also of course complements the rich physical holdings in these areas housed at the Rylands and the Ahmed Iqbal Ullah RACE Centre.
All items are included in their entirety within a structure of five sections selected around key themed topics: Cultural Contact, 1492-1969; Empire Writings and the Literature of Empire; The Visual Empire; Religion and Empire; and Race, Class, Imperialism and Colonialism, 1607-2007. To further enhance teaching and research a range of learning tools, including contextual scholarly essays, interactive maps and chronologies, historiography, searching aids and biographies of individuals who shaped the course of Empire have also been developed to enable the demonstration of the theories, practices and consequences of empire.
In collaboration with academics from the Faculty of Humanities, the Library has arranged for electronic access to the complete Making of The Modern World database, a rich collection of digitised primary source material centring on the dynamics of Western trade and wealth from the last half of the fifteenth century to the first half of the twentieth century. Through the lens of industries such as coal, iron, steel, cotton, railways and banking and financial systems, areas as diverse as the rise of the modern labour movement, the evolving status of slavery, the condition and making of the working class, colonization, the Atlantic world, Latin American/Caribbean studies, social history, gender, and the economic theories that championed and challenged capitalism in the nineteenth century can be re-examined. Sourced from a variety of major historical library collections – including those of Senate House, Goldsmiths’, Yale, Columbia, and Harvard’s Kress Library – much of this material is rare and often unique. Whilst topics can be conveniently and readily traced across the database as a whole, MOMW is also grouped into 4 themed collections:
The Making of the Modern World, Part I: The Goldsmiths'-Kress Collection, 1450–1850 offers new ways of understanding the expansion of world trade, the Industrial Revolution, and the development of modern capitalism.
The Making of the Modern World, Part II: 1851–1914 documents the progress of the nineteenth century nations' rapidly changing economies through a wide variety of local reports, broad overviews, abstract analyses, reports on the financing of railways, economic textbooks, social polemics, and political speeches.
The Making of the Modern World, Part III: 1890–1945 deepens holdings into the twentieth century and moves beyond the study of economic thought to incorporate resources for the study of social and political forces unleashed by economic transformations and the upheaval of international conflict.
The Making of the Modern World, Part IV: 1800-1890 offers extensive coverage of the “Age of Capital,” the industrial revolution, and the High Victorian Era. The core of this collection (1850s-1890s) offers rich content in the high Victorian period, the apogee of the British Empire. It is especially strong in “grey literature” and non-mainstream materials rarely preserved by libraries - including pamphlets, plans, ephemera, and private collections.
Translated Texts for Historians E-Library
Compiling material from 3 longstanding and well-respected book series this newly-launched digital compilation by Liverpool University Press makes available a range of historical sources from A.D. 300-800 translated into English, in many cases for the first time. Complementing the Aris & Phillips Classical Texts Online collection, the Translated Texts for Historians E-Library also extends the language pool of its source material beyond Greek and Latin to incorporate languages as varied as Armenian, Gothic and Old Irish, together with those of the Islamicate world, including Syriac and Arabic, giving researchers access and opportunity to widen both their reading and potential sources of comparison and contrast. The scope of the material within the repository is equally diverse and incorporates chronicles, letters, annals, formularies, political speeches, military and theological handbooks, poems, biblical and theological commentaries, sermons, church histories and records, Christian and pagan panegyric and polemic and lives of saints, bishops and popes.
Over 90 titles are now readily accessible and the collection might perhaps be best viewed as a foundational digital reserve for scholars operating across the Humanities at Manchester, either within the traditional confines of classics, ancient history and religions and theology, or interdisciplinary research groupings such as the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (MEMS).
In line with our standard practice to ease discovery, in addition to offering a link to the collection as a discrete database, the library has ensured that each volume - a selection of which can be seen above - is individually indexed. You can also move seamlessly across the platform to view the Aris & Phillips Classical Texts Online collection which is also now newly accessible to researchers.
The following are important databases for this subject area, however if you don't see what you're looking for, please go to the Database Directory for History to browse a wider selection.
Follow the links below to browse databases for specific types of resources.
You can use our Database Directory to browse a broader range of databases that are relevant to History as well as other subjects. The directory also allows you to identify databases that provide access to specific types of resources (e.g. Full Text Articles, Streaming Video, Patents, Theses and Dissertations, and much more).
The University of Manchester's research is internationally recognised. Go to Research Explorer, Manchester's research database, to discover the breadth of research produced by staff across the University.
Browse research publications from the Department of History (please note: whilst many of the publications listed are available to access/Open Access, some records are for forthcoming titles awaiting publication).
