Primary Sources

Please note, we do not expect you to necessarily incorporate primary sources; we are far more interested in your knowledge and understanding of the key ideas and ability to formulate an argument.

However, below are some places where you might find some useful examples to mobilise as part of your analysis. A few well-chosen and well-analysed examples and/or primary sources will serve you better than a host of sources dropped into an essay without discussion or analysis.

 

Modern Records Centre

We are incredibly lucky to have the Modern Records Centre on campus. As students you are able to attend and more information about visiting the archive can be found here: https://warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc/studying/

The MRC has also curated several relevant collections of digitised material such as:

• The Politics of Protest: Social Movements in Western Europe since the 1960's
• War and Economy in the Twentieth Century
• Stalinism in Europe
• Peace movement and pacifist history

A guide for sources for history students can be found here: https://warwick.ac.uk/services/library/mrc/studying/history-2021/

 

Library Databases

The Warwick Library subscribes to numerous databases of primary source material you can access online through the Warwick Library website. Relevant databases for this module can be found within the Modern History Section.

Some databases that might be useful include various newspapers and periodicals (such as the Times and Daily Mail) as well as:

• Conditions & Politics in Occupied Western Europe, 1940 – 1945
• Empire Online
• The Fortunoff Archive
• The Great War Archive
• Political Extremism and Radicalism
• Post War Europe: Refugees, Exile & Resettlement 1945-1950
• Testaments to the Holocaust
• Trench Journals and Unit Magazines of the First World War
• Women, War and Society 1914-1918

 

Imperial War Museum

https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections

IWM has a host of digitised sources that you can search by type, as well as by period.

 

International Encyclopaedia of the First World War

1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War is the largest digital English-language reference work on the First World War. Articles here have been written on a variety of themes by leading scholars and this is one of the few times I am happy for you to reference something with “Encyclopaedia” in the title!

Many of the articles have primary sources included and these are certainly worth exploring.

 

London School of Economics

If you are interested in the peace movements and/or the relationship between gender and war, there are some great resources available via LSE Digital Collections such as:

• Peace and Internationalism collections (including material on League of Nations Union)
• Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, British Section (WILPF)
• Greenham Women Everywhere
• Women’s peace campaigning