Mexican Studies: Primary-Source-Rich Collections Accessible at UCSD

Guide to Resources for Research on Mexico at UCSD and the greater San Diego-Baja Region and beyond

Subscription Databases with Primary Source Content Related to Mexico

Archives Unbound
102 collections of archival primary sources spanning American social and diplomatic history. Includes various collections on the Mexican Revolution: Colección Revolución, 1910-1921, Cuartel General del Sur, 1910-1925, Emiliano Zapata, 1901-1919.

American Indian Movement and Native American Radicalism
Black Economic Empowerment: The National Negro Business League
Bush Presidency and Development and Debate Over Civil Rights Policy and Legislation
Chinese Maritime Customs Service: The Customs’ Gazette, 1869-1913
Colección Revolución, 1910-1921
Correspondence from German Concentration Camps and Prisons
Country Intelligence Reports/State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research Reports China (1941-1961)
Country Intelligence Reports/State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research Reports Japan (1941-1961)
Country Intelligence Reports/State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research Reports Korea (1941-1961)
County and Regional Histories & Atlases: California
Cuartel General del Sur, 1910-1925
Emiliano Zapata, 1901-1919
European Colonialism in the Early 20th Century: German Colonies in Asia and the Pacific: From Colonialism to Japanese Mandates, 1910-1929
Fannie Lou Hamer: Papers of a Civil Rights Activist, Political Activist, and Woman
Federal Surveillance of African Americans, 1920-1984
Fight for Racial Justice and the Civil Rights
Final Accountability Rosters of Japanese-American Relocation Centers, 1944-1946
Franklin D. Roosevelt and Race Relations, 1933-1945
General George C. Marshall's Mission to China, 1945-1947
German Foreign Relations and Military Activities in China, 1919-1935
Global Missions and Theology
Holocaust and the Concentration Camp Trials: Prosecution of Nazi War Crimes
Integration of Alabama Schools and the U.S. Military, 1963
James Meredith, J. Edgar Hoover, and the Integration of the University of Mississippi
Japan and Korea: Summation of Nonmilitary Activities, 1945-1948
Japan at War and Peace, 1930-1949: U.S. State Department Records on the Internal Affairs of Japan
Japan-U.S. Economic Relations Group Records, 1979-1981
Japan: Records of the U.S. Department of State Relating to Commercial Relations, 1910-1949
Japan: Records of the U.S. Department of State Relating to Commercial Relations, 1950-1963
Japan: Records of the U.S. Department of State Relating to Internal Affairs, 1950-1954
Japan: Records of the U.S. Department of State Relating to Internal Affairs, 1955-1959
Japan: Records of the U.S. Department of State Relating to Political Relations, 1930-1939
Japan: Records of the U.S. Department of State Relating to Political Relations, 1940-1944
Japan: Records of the U.S. Department of State Relating to Political Relations, 1945-1949
Japan: Records of the U.S. Department of State, 1950-1959
Japan: U.S. Naval Technical Mission, 1945-1946
Japanese American Internment: Records of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library
Japanese-American Relocation Camp Newspapers: Perspectives on Day-to-Day Life
Korea: Records of the U.S. Department of State, 1930-1963
La Guerra Civil Española
Laos: Records of the U.S. Department of State, 1963-1966
Liberia and the U.S.: Nation-Building in Africa, 1864-1918
Nazi Bank and Financial Institutions: U.S. Military Government Investigation Reports and Interrogations of Nazi Financiers, 1945-1949
Overland Journeys: Travels in the West, 1800-1880
Papers of Amiri Baraka, Poet Laureate of the Black Power Movement
Personal Justice Denied: Public Hearings of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment, 1981
Policing the Shanghai International Settlement, 1894-1945
Political Relations Between China, the U.S. and Other Countries, 1910-1929
Political Relations and Conflict between Republican China and Imperial Japan, 1930-1939: Records of the U.S. State Department
Political, Economic, and Military Conditions in China: Reports and Correspondence of the U.S. Military Intelligence Division, 1918-1941
Post-War Europe: Refugees, Exile and Resettlement, 1945-1950
Ralph J. Bunche Oral Histories Collection on the Civil Rights Movement
Rastafari Ephemeral Publications from the Written Rastafari Archives Project
Records of US State Department's Division of Chinese Affairs
Records of the Far Eastern Commission, 1945–1952
Records of the National Council for United States-China Trade 1973-1983
Records of the U.S. Information Service in China: Chinese Press Reviews and Summaries, 1944-1950
SAFEHAVEN Reports on Nazi Looting of Occupied Countries and Assets in Neutral Countries
Shanghai Municipal Council: The Municipal Gazette, 1908-1940
Subject Files of US State Department's Office of the Republic of China Affairs (1951-1978)
Testaments to the Holocaust. Documents and Rare Printed Materials from the Wiener Library, London
Thailand: Records of the U.S. Department of State Relating to Internal Affairs, 1945-1954
Thailand: Records of the U.S. Department of State Relating to Internal Affairs, 1955-1963
The Chinese Civil War and U.S.-China Relations: Records of the U.S. State Department's Office of Chinese Affairs, 1945-1955
The Chinese Recorder and the Protestant Missionary Community in China, 1867-1941
The Minutemen, 1963-1969: Evolution of the Militia Movement in America, Part I
The Minutes of the Shanghai Municipal Council
The Quest for Labor Equality in Household Work: National Domestic Workers Union, 1965-1979
Tiananmen Square and U.S.-China relations, 1989-1993
U.S. Relations with the Vatican and the Holocaust, 1940-1950
We Were Prepared for the Possibility of Death: Freedom Riders in the South, 1961
“Through the Camera Lens:” The Moving Picture World and the Silent Cinema Era, 1907-1927

2022 & 2023 Arrivals

Papers of American Missionaries to Asia: Arthur M. Guttery and YMCA China
Papers of American Missionaries to Asia: Jay C. and Lucile C. Oliver and YMCA China
Papers of American Missionaries to Asia: Missionaries Associated with Fujian and Taiwan
Papers of American Missionaries to Asia: The Ashmore Family in China, Thailand, and Japan
Records of the US State Department: Korea; Political & Governmental Affairs, February 1963-66
U.S. Relations and Policies in Southeast Asia, 1944-1958: Records of the Office of Southeast Asian Affairs
British Mandate in Palestine/Arab-Jewish Relations & The US
German Anti-Semitic Propaganda
Jewish Question: Records from The Berlin Document Center
Nuremburg Laws and Nazi Annulment of Jewish German Nationality
Foreign Relations Between the US and Latin America and the Caribbean States, 1930-1944
Indian Trade in The Southeastern Spanish Borderlands: Papers of Panton/Leslie & Company

U.S. Army Center of Military History Historical Manuscripts Collection: The Korean War
Papers of Old Shanghai: Business, Banking, and Insurance, 1874–1949
Papers of Old Shanghai: Press, Education, Healthcare, and Charity, 1863–1948
Papers of Old Shanghai: Social Shanghai, 1906-1912
Papers of Old Shanghai: Societies and Clubs, 1890–1942
Shanghai International Settlement: Urban Planning and Development, 1845–1948
Economic Cooperation Administration’s Relief Mission in Post-War China, 1946-1948
Shanghai International Settlement: Shanghai Municipal Council Annual Reports & Budgets, Departmental Reports, and Minutes of Ratepayers Meetings, 1867–1941
National Farm Worker Ministry: Mobilizing Support for Migrant Workers, 1939-1985
Confidential Print: North America, 1824-1961
The collection covers a broad sweep of history from c.1824-1961, taking in the USA, Canada, the Caribbean and Central America. The series originated out of a need for the British Government to preserve all of the most important papers generated by the Foreign and Colonial Offices. Some of these were one page letters or telegrams -- others were large volumes or texts of treaties. All items marked 'Confidential Print' were circulated to leading officials in the Foreign Office, to the Cabinet, and to heads of British missions abroad
Confidential Print: Latin America, 1833-1969
The documents of Confidential Print: Latin America are full text records of the British Foreign Office covering the whole of South and Central America, plus the non-British islands of the Caribbean, from just after the final Spanish withdrawal from mainland America in the 1820s to the height of the Cold War in the 1960s. The series originated out of a need to preserve the most important papers generated by the Foreign and Colonial Offices. These range from single-page letters or telegrams to comprehensive dispatches, investigative reports and texts of treaties. All items marked ‘Confidential Print’ were printed and circulated immediately to leading officials in the Foreign Office, to the Cabinet, and to heads of British missions abroad.
Latin American Anarchist and Labour Periodicals Online
This collection contains the periodicals that have been accumulated by the Austrian anarchist, historian and collector Max Nettlau (1865-1944), together with a number of later additions, held at the International Institute of Social History (IISH) in Amsterdam. The collection provides a richness of documentation pertaining explicitly to the formative anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist episode (1890-1920) in the history of Latin American labor movements.
Covers publications from: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Suriname, Uruguay.
Socialism on Film
Socialism on Film is collection of documentaries, newsreels and features that reveals the world as seen by Soviet, Chinese, Vietnamese, East European, British and Latin American filmmakers. It ranges from the early twentieth century to the 1980s and examines the themes of War & Revolution, News & Current Affairs plus Culture & Society. The whole spectrum of socialist life is here on film.
Sourced from the archives of the British Film Institute (BFI), this resource makes available the superb ETV-Plato Films collection amassed by British communist Stanley Forman in the years following the Second World War. The collection consists of films produced almost exclusively in the communist world and later versioned into English for distribution in the West. All the films included in this resource have been digitized from the original 16mm and 35mm film reels.
Frontier Life: Borderlands, Settlement & Colonial Encounters
These primary source documents collected here help understand existence and consequences on the various frontiers that arose from the movements of Europeans to Africa, Australasia and North America. Document types include correspondence, diaries, government papers, business records, land transactions, legal documents, speeches, books and pamphlets. The earliest documents are from the seventeenth century and the latest the mid-point of the twentieth century.
The earliest documents in this collection are from the seventeenth century but the majority of the material originates from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The material covering North America covers the varied frontier regions from fur trappers in Canada to cowboys in Texas and government in Baja California. It is divided into the frontier regions of the American East, the American Midwest, the American Southwest, California & Mexico and Canada. It covers the exploration of these regions followed by trade with native peoples, colonial rivalries, expansion of government and new nations and the final settlement and 'closing' of the frontier. These materials include a large number of manuscripts from the UC San Diego Library's Special Collections & Archives, including a collection of municipal and government documents from Baja California that are too fragile to be used in their original format in the library (Baja California government documents. MSS 778.)

Africa is mainly represented by its frontiers of the south with the British colonial expansion into modern day South Africa. There are also excellent clusters of material relating to the exploration of West Africa and the colonial administration of Lagos.

The beginnings of European Australia and New Zealand are covered by British government documents, starting with Arthur Phillip and the penal colony at Sydney. The frontiers of other parts of Australia are also covered by documents from the UK National Archives and some material from Australian archives.

Finally, there is some material relating to Central America, specifically British Honduras (Belize), in the form of the George Arthur Papers. George Arthur’s career here relates to the other regions featured here as he spent time on the Canadian and Australian frontiers.
Border and Migration Studies Online
A collection that explores and provides historical background on more than thirty key worldwide border areas, including: U.S. and Mexico; the European Union; Afghanistan; Israel; Turkey; The Congo; Argentina; China; Thailand; and others. Featuring at completion 100,000 pages of text, 175 hours of video, and 1,000 images, the collection is organized around fundamental themes associated with border and migration issues.

Latin American History and Culture: An Archival Record

This is a multi-volume project capturing imprints from major Latin American Collections in Latin America and Beyond on microfilm (much of which is now digitized). Series (parts) of the collection including Mexican content are listed here. Most are available at one of the UC Libraries, as indicated below. In the few cases that they are not, the best way to locate them is by using WorldCat (OCLC)'s consortial global catalog. Please note that the link provided here is different from (and has more functionality than) clicking the WorldCat radio button in UC Library Search. Select "Accession Number" from the Search Index Drop-down options, and paste in the number indicated below.