Browse Website Reviews
A curated guide to the best online content, large and small, in world history through website reviews from the perspective of a world history teacher.
Fishing junks under sail off the Shandong coast

The Hedda Morrison Photographs of China, 1933-1946

The Morrison collection is nevertheless a rich and accessible one that will nicely serve the dual themes of visual culture and childhood—among many others—for studies of early-to-mid 20th century China.
Detail: A painting titled "Moment of Tearing" by Ryuji Ishitani showing a person ducking in cover in a flash of light

Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum

The historical material that is presented from multiple angles carefully allows the material to speak for the catastrophe and reconstruction.
Detail of an engraving titled "Tabulae Sceleti e Musculorum Corpis Humani" showing a skeleton with an angel

Dream Anatomy

This site, developed as part of an exhibit, remains a valuable online source for the study of the history of anatomy.
Detail: Map of Taiwan

Taiwan Documents Project

This site seems most valuable not as an unbiased repository of information, but rather as part of the movement for Taiwanese independence and more generally as a historical case study in the politics of national identity.
A 1909 map of India

Digital South Asia Library

The information and source materials presented on this site are extremely wide ranging, rare, and occasionally quite specific. Given the amount of content, this specificity should be seen as an asset rather than a drawback.
Horse drawn carts going down a cleared forest path taken from the view of a railway

Around the World in the 1890s: Photographs from the World's Transportation Commission, 1894-1896

Although these photographs are immediately useful to any discussion of 19th-century travel, they also provide an important look at the nature of colonialism and industrialization in many of the regions to which Jackson traveled.
The gate to the second courtyard at Xihuang Si (Xihuang Temple) 西黃寺. The tip of the stupa is slightly visible over the top of the gate.

East Asian Collection

Students could be encouraged to probe the social, religious, cultural, and geographic diversity of China in the early 1900s as well as the impact of momentous events upon different regions and social groups.
Photograph of nave flyers on the north side of the cathedral

Amiens Cathedral

The site’s rich image collections still recommend it for classroom and research use.
Detail: Scan of pages 46 and 47 of George Percival Scriven's diary

George Percival Scriven: An American in Bohol, The Philippines, 1899-1901

The diary could be used by teachers in a variety of ways. Its representation of the inhabitants of Bohol and of the island itself illuminate turn-of-the-century thinking on race and landscape.
A three masted ship

Excerpts from Slave Narratives

This website is unique in the growing number of Internet sources that explore African experiences and slavery. Teachers will find Mintz’s documents invaluable in promoting classroom discussion.

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