Tag Archives: trade

Trial until 15 March: ZEDHIA – historical business information from the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and post-war Austria

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Oxford researchers are now invited to trial ZEDHIA. The trial can be accessed from OxLIP+.ZEDHIA resource provides historical business information from the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and its successor and partly neighbouring states. This includes the areas of modern Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Romania and many more until 1945 and more complete information restricted to Austria afterwards. It currently covers 1812 to 2003.

The backbone of the database are the Compass yearbooks covering 1868- 2000 and the Zentralblatt für die Eintragungen ins Handelsregister (commercial register entries) covering 1904-2001. It gives access to depth-structured, digitised, full-text resources in the fields of Central European financial, economic and trade history and genealogy. There is also much information on local villages, town, their geography and population.

Amongst others, the Compass periodical also includes

  • calendars of national and international importance, e.g. solar eclipses, innovations, religious calendars.
  • directories and dates of markets in Germany, Austria, Hungary
  • information on the postal system, e.g. how post is sent from Austria to any part of the world and how much it costs.
  • information on the finances, branches and staffing of the Austrian national bank and other financial institutions
  • information on transport companies (rail, shipping), their finances, staffing and official notices
  • information customs and excise procedures

Zentralblatt für die Eintragungen ins Handelsregister is particularly useful to trace any retail, financial or commercial enterprise and its owner(s).

Also included in ZEDHIA is Der Tresor: Revue, Statistik und Archiv für Volkswirtschaft und Finanzwesen (1872-1919), a weekly periodical which focused on Austro-Hungarian stock companies and government securities. There were regular and highly detailed financial, statistical and economic analyses as well as in-depth reports on economic and political developments in Austria-Hungary and around the world. Der Tresor is also selectively freely available online at ANNO (Austrian Newspaper Online).

As well as finding information relating to business and commerce, the digitised periodicals also include interesting advertisements of banks, businesses, schools, products for industry agriculture or the home, etc.

You can search and browse in many different ways, applying filters to narrow down your search. The interface can be displayed in either German or English though all the content and the metadata describing the publications are in German.

Please send feedback to isabel.holowaty@bodleian.ox.ac.uk by 15 March 2018.

Trial until 8 June: America and Great Britain : diplomatic relations, 1775-1815

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Together with the Vere Harmsworth Library, we have organised a trial to America and Great Britain: diplomatic relations, 1775-1815. Oxford readers can access it via SOLO or OxLIP+.

America and Great Britain diplomatic relations - title pgThis resource is the digitised Cambridge Archive Edition 9-volume set of facsimile British diplomatic primary material, charting the emergence of an independent United States and comprising diplomatic correspondence between America and Britain.

It provides access to diplomatic and official correspondence between America and Britain and gives a good insight into the shaping of a nation, from America being referred to as ‘our Colonies and Plantations in North America’ by the King, to its recognition as the ‘United States’ by Britain in 1782.

The correspondence is formed of diplomatic letters between the British Government and American officials including Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, James Madison, John Jay and John Hancock. The collection begins with a résumé of events centered around American protests over taxation, follows the course of the War of Independence, and concludes, after ratification of the Treaty of Ghent in February 1815, with the restoration of normal diplomatic relations.Together these correspondences form a narrative which not only captures major historical events from a contemporary viewpoint, but also provides a vivid, lively and uniquely personal insight into the creators of modern America.

Transcript: "All that the americans want from Europeans is a supply of European manufactures... " America and Great Britain : diplomatic relations, 1775-1815. British government documents. Volume 3. 1783-1791 (Cambridge, 2016), p.344

Transcript: “All that the americans want from Europeans is a supply of European manufactures… ” America and Great Britain : diplomatic relations, 1775-1815. British government documents. Volume 3. 1783-1791 (Cambridge, 2016), p.344

 

The archive is a valuable tool in understanding an era of modernization in diplomatic practises. With the expansion of the British Foreign Office, there was a movement away from the era of the aristocratic amateur towards a more tightly controlled process, where professionalised servants of the British Crown filed regular despatches from across the world to a rigid procedure. The collection also provides an insight into European politics during this period. Conflicts between America, France and Britain arising over trade, defence and diplomacy are explored and increase our understanding of this complex trans-Atlantic triumvirate.

Feedback to isabel.holowaty@bodleian.ox.ac.uk or jane.rawson@bodleian.ox.ac.uk.

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