World History by Period: Home

This guide provides tips and links to help you with your world history research, when that history falls within a specific period of time.

The Library Research Strategies page gives a quick overview on how to do library research.

The broad periods of history covered on this guide are:

▪ Prehistory & ancient history
▪ Medieval history
▪ Early modern history
▪ 19th & 20th centuries

Each period tab has lists of links for Background & Reference Information, Primary Sources Scholarly Articles, and other sources.

While this guide focuses specifically on world history by period, the UCSB Library has related history research guides for: 

• United States History 
• World History (generally)
• World History by Region
  • Africa
  • Asia
  • Australia & Oceania
  • British Isles
  • Europe
  • Latin America
  • Middle East
• World History by Topic
  • Commerce, Commodities & Material Culture
  • Empires, Borderlands & their Legacies
  • Gender & Sexualities
  • Public History
  • History of Public Policy
  • Race & Ethnicity
  • Religion, Culture & Society
  • Science & Technology

You may need to consult more than one of these guides to locate the information resources that best cover your topic.

There are multiple research guides for history.

• United States History

• World History (generally)

• World History by Period 

  • prehistory & ancient history

  • medieval history

  • early modern history

  • 19th & 20th centuries

• World History by Region

  • Africa

  • Asia

  • Australia & Oceania

  • British Isles

  • Europe

  • Latin America

  • Middle East

• World History by Topic

  • Commerce, Commodities & Material Culture

  • Empires, Borderlands & their Legacies

  • Gender & Sexualities

  • Public History

  • History of Public Policy

  • Race & Ethnicity

  • Religion, Culture & Society

  • Science & Technology