New: Confidential Print: Latin America

Researchers in Latin American and Caribbean History now have access to Confidential Print: Latin America, 1833-1969, a terrific database recently acquired by the Bodleian Libraries that focuses on the subject area through a British diplomatic lens.

Front page of Confidential Print: Latin America showing tabs for further information (Introduction, Documents, Chronology, Interactive World map, Essays, Help). The main space is a photo of a steam ship on a river.

Confidential Print: Latin America, 1833-1969 is part of Archives Direct, published by Adam Matthew Digital, which is a cross-searchable platform incorporating multiple products sourced from the National Archives at Kew.
Image credit: akg-images

OvERVIEW

[Information from Adam Matthew Digital/Archives Direct website]

“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.

“This collection consists of the Confidential Print for Central and South America and the French- and Spanish-speaking Caribbean. Topics covered include slavery and the slave trade, immigration, relations with indigenous peoples, wars and territorial disputes, the fall of the Brazilian monarchy, British business and financial interests, industrial development, the building of the Panama Canal, and the rise to power of populist rulers such as Perón in Argentina and Vargas in Brazil. …

“The collection begins in the aftermath of independence for the former Spanish and Portuguese colonies of Latin America, addressing the politics of state-building and the Latin American nations’ establishment of their place in the fast-expanding global economy.”

Scope of the collections

Confidential Print: Latin America, 1833-1969 includes the following file classes from The National Archives, Kew in their entirety.

  • FO 420/1-294: Central and South America general, 1833-1941
  • FO 467/1-5: Brazil, 1947-1951
  • FO 486/1-10: Mexico, 1947-1956
  • FO 495/1-10: River Plate countries (Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay), 1947-1956
  • FO 497/1-10: South America general, 1947-1956
  • FO 533/1-11: Central America and Caribbean general, 1946-1957

The following selected files are also included:

  • FO 118/276, 281, 287, 305, 317, 331: South and Central America general, 1906-1913
  • FO 177/297: Chilean Revolution, 1891
  • FO 461/14-22: Americas general, 1958-1969
  • FO 508/8: South and Central America general, 1908-1909

Material types included:

  • Profiles of leading political, military, diplomatic and economic figures
  • Incoming and outgoing diplomatic dispatches
  • Correspondence
  • Statistical charts and tables
  • Descriptions of leading personalities
  • Accounts of tours
  • Minutes of meetings and conferences
  • Texts of treaties
  • Political summaries
  • Economic analyses
  • Annual reports and calendars of events, by country
  • Maps

Searching the collection

There are multiple ways of searching the full text database. A simple box on the home page that enables you to search the collection via its dedicated portal, as well as giving you the option, once you’ve clicked through to the next interface, to cross-search one or more of the other collections on the platform that the Bodleian Libraries subscribes to.

In addition, you can use the advanced search that enables you to select multiple keywords and you can also click out to search by country using an interactive world map.

There is a useful set of search tips.

Confidential Print: Latin America, 1833-1969 is available via SOLO or Databases A-Z. University members should use Single Sign On for remote access. The individual newspapers are also discoverable in SOLO.

Frank Egerton, Librarian (Bodleian Latin American Centre Library) and Subject Consultant (Latin American History and Social Sciences).

While you are here, you might also be interested in…

  • Save the date: Bodleian iSkills: Confidential Print and Foreign Office Files: Sources for 19th and 20th century studies. 7 November 2023, 2-3pm (Week 5)
  • More Foreign Office sources at Oxford.
  • Guide to resources for Latin American History (LibGuide)

New: Central Asia, Persia and Afghanistan, 1834-1922: From Silk Road to Soviet Rule

Oxford reseachers now have access to Central Asia, Persia and Afghanistan, 1834-1922: From Silk Road to Soviet Rule (Archives Unbound).

‘This collection of documents sheds a remarkable light on British and Anglo-Indian foreign policy and intelligence across the Persianate world – Russian Central Asia, Qajar Persia and Afghanistan. It contains a wealth of diplomatic correspondence and memoranda – much of it intercepted from Britain’s rivals and neighbours in the region – which include much ethnographic, religious and cultural material alongside the purely political. It will be an essential resource for scholars and students alike.’ Dr Alexander Morrison, University of Oxford.

Landing page for the resource. Image shows a colour print of an Oriental market scene.

Central Asia Persia and Afghanistan 1834-1922: From Silk Road to Soviet Rule © Adam Matthew Digital 2023

From Adam Matthew Digital:

“This collection of Foreign Office files explores the history of Persia (Iran), Central Asia and Afghanistan from the decline of the Silk Road in the first half of the nineteenth century to the establishment of Soviet rule over parts of the region in the early 1920s. It encompasses the era of “The Great Game” – a political and diplomatic confrontation between the Russian and British Empires for influence, territory and trade across a vast region, from the Black Sea in the west to the Pamir Mountains in the east.”

Included in the resource “are 188 volumes from FO 65 and all 11 volumes of FO 106, comprising original correspondence, drafts and enclosures which detail ‘Proceedings in Central Asia’ from 1858 to 1905; 30 volumes of general correspondence relating to Central Asia from FO 371, dated 1920-1922; and 118 Confidential Print files for Central Asia from the FO 539 series, covering 1820-1971. Maps previously included in these volumes and extracted to form part of the MFQ, MPK and MPKK series are also made available here.”

“The collection begins with materials relating to Britain and Russia’s relations with regional powers in the 1830s, and continues with volumes which can be used to explore the Anglo-Afghan Wars, conflicts between Russia and its neighbours to the south, the construction of strategic infrastructure, border disputes and confrontations including the Panjdeh Crisis, and continued competition between Britain and Russia for influence and territory into the early twentieth century, ending with documents which describe fears of Communist subversion in British India and growing Soviet influence over the governments of Afghanistan and Persia.”

Snippet from Affairs of Persia and Afghanistan Correspondence Part I page 3: Correspondence relating to the affairs of Persia and Affghanistan [sic]. No 1: Mr McNeilk to Viscount Palmerston (received April 28 1837). Described of transmitting a copy of a letter from the Indian government and discusses British intentions towards Afghanistan and Persia.

Affairs of Persia and Afghanistan Correspondence Part I page 3. 1837-1838, FO 539/1, in Central Asia, Persia and Afghanistan, 1834-1922: From Silk Road to Soviet Rule © Images including crown copyright images reproduced by courtesy of The National Archives, London,

The Foreign Office files contain:

  • Correspondence
  • Telegrams
  • Intelligence Reports and Agents’ Diaries
  • Newspaper clippings, and translations of Russian-language articles
  • Maps and plans
  • Government reports and memoranda
  • Copies of treaties and agreements
  • Photographs, sketches, and landscapes.

The documents are mostly in English though some French items are included. You can search and browse in various ways. Some documents are digitised manuscripts.

While you are here, you might also be interested in:

New: Cambridge Archive Editions: China Political Reports 1911-1960, 1961-1970

Thanks to colleagues in the China Centre Library, Oxford researchers now have access to the Cambridge Archive Editions: China Political Reports 1911-1960, 1961-1970. It can be accessed via SOLO or Databases A-Z.

This resource draws together the periodic political and intelligence reports sent by British officials based in China back to the British Foreign Office. The set includes:

  • Annual Reports
  • Personality Reports
  • Occasional Despatches
  • Peking Fortnightly Summaries
  • Peking Observations
  • Shanghai Summaries
  • Occasional Reviews

The reports have been published as an electronic version of the originally 14 printed volumes rather than a database. Therefore the reports are filed chronologically.

At the beginning of each volume there is a detailed contents listing which is helpful to identify the documents included in each particular volume.

Please note that full-text searching is not yet possible!

The first collection, 1911-1960, covers the “history of the rise of Communism in China and its effects over more than half a century. Although the period covers the First and Second World Wars the impact of these world events is almost matched for the Chinese by their internal struggles. After the declaration of the People’s Republic of China, Chinese diplomacy took a more international turn but by then the international arena had become paralysed by the effects of the cold war and the prevailing beliefs of the Great Powers were anti-Communist in nature thereby continuing the isolation of China.” (Eastview, accessed 23/1/18)

The second collection, 1960-71, covers the “recovery from the ‘Great Leap Forward’ and the main thrust of the ‘Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution’ which two events alone would sustain research for years to come but also within this period are the huge foreign relations disputes that grew out of the complications of the cold war.” (Eastview, accessed 23/1/18)

Also of interest: