This book offers a detailed and comprehensive guide to contemporary sources for research into the history of individual nineteenth-century U.S. communities, large and small. The book is arranged topically (covering demography, ethnicity and race, land use and settlement, religion, education, politics and local government, industry, trade and transportation, and poverty, health, and crime) and thus will be of great use to those investigating particular historical themes at national, state, or regional level. As well as examining a wide variety of types of primary sources, published and unpublished, quantitative and qualitative, available for the study of many places, the book also provides information on certain specific sources and some individual collections, in particular those of the National Archives.

English local and regional history has attracted widespread attention in the last twenty-five to thirty years. Its study has expanded at undergraduate and postgraduate levels in universities, polytechnics, and at other institutions of higher education, and it has long retained its popularity as a subject for adult education classes. In schools the teaching of local history in its own right, and as an ingredient of general history, environmental studies, and local and social studies, is well established, and commonly involves the use of original sources. The expansion of genealogical studies into the wider area of family history has involved many individuals and groups in the investigation of the local conditions, which existed where former generations lived and, in this pursuit, increasing use of local records has been made. Many who seek to involve themselves in this work, however, find that they are ill-equipped in the knowledge of what sources exist, where they are to be found, or what techniques are suitable in making the best use of them.

The Tudor revival of government and administration in Ireland dramatically increased the quantity of written sources concerning Ireland. This book attempts to survey this documentary material. It analyses of the written sources for early modern Irish history for the period 1534-1641. It discusses the different types of sources available and also provides descriptions of transcripts, copies and summaries of manuscript material which has been destroyed. This is very valuable, because much of the original documentation for this period was destroyed when the Public Record Office in Dublin was burnt, at the beginning of the civil war in 1922. The final chapter in the book includes an assessment of the historiography of early modern Irish history. In the light of the need for historians to understand the administrative machinery which produced the documents they use, the book also includes an account of the civil and ecclesiastical administration of early modern Ireland.

If a scholar wishes to create a picture of a topical society in all its aspects, there is little of what he needs to know that he cannot know, although there may still be much that he cannot understand. For the history of Greece and Rome, there is a great deal that is simply unknowable. From the end of the archaic age of Greece, there is an unbroken sequence of works by Greek and, later, Roman historians down to the end of antiquity. Their vision and range of interest were often limited and much of what they produced has been lost. Some help may be derived from the documentary material supplied in antiquity, material that was the product of officials organising public activities, or heads of families organising their affairs, or individuals leaving their mark on the world. Beyond this, the evidence of archaeology and numismatics may also be helpful. The four essays in this book set out to characterise the nature of the ancient literary tradition, the inscriptional material, the archaeological and numismatic evidence and to explain how and for what purposes they may be used.

The purpose of this book is to put before the student of politics and the general reader an overall conspectus of the sources from which political ideas took their origin. The author, who is an acknowledged international authority on the subject and who over many years of intensive research has acquired an intimate familiarity with the material, makes his specialised knowledge available to the non-specialist. The book traverses ground that is virtually uncultivated, and it does so in an exciting way - by taking the reader into the chanceries of governments, of public organs and functionaries, and into the lecture halls of the great scholars in the universities. It shows upon what presuppositions publicists, litterateurs, government advisers, scholars and learned writers have proceeded to arrive at their political views. This variegated mass of material is here comprehensively presented.