Welcome to SOAS

Follow the History blog for updates on SOAS Library resources, book reviews, websites, news-stories and much more

You can go to the Information skills pages on the BLE for general research guides, guides to the various databases and subject specific research guides

You can also use the Subject Guide for History on the main Library website for internet resources selected by Library staff : http://www.soas.ac.uk/library/subjects/history/

If you have any queries about the history collections in SOAS Library, finding books and journals, or using any of the online resources, you can contact me:

Mary Seeley (Subject Librarian for History and Religions; Ancient Near East, Semitics and Judaica)
Room C3 (Library)
Email: ms28@soas.ac.uk
Tel.: 020-7898-4195

Russian Orientalism: 2 new studies

Read Rachel Polonsky's article "The paradoxes of Russian Orientalism" from the online Times Literary Supplement which examines the Russian view of "the East" and outlines the connections between the nomads of the Asian steppes and the European Slavs.
The article looks at how these issues are explored in two recent books - David Schimelpenninck van der Oye's Russian Orientalism: Asia in the Russian mind from Peter the Great to the emigration (2010) - in SOAS Library at A303.48247 / 733376 - and Vera Tolz's Russia's own Orient: the politics of identity and Oriental studies in the late imperial and early Soviet periods (2011) - on order

Gertrude Bell and Iraq

This article from the Jerusalem Post looks at the life and legacy of Gertrude Bell (1868-1926) both as an adventurer and explorer, as well her role as a "political officer" in Basra in 1916 and involvement in the creation of the modern Iraqi state in 1920