We are currently trialling South Asia Commons, an online resource comprising two modules, South Asia Archive and South Asian History and Culture.
(C) Coherent Digital
South Asia Archive, the first module, is a collection of 4.5 million pages of documents and published material from across the Indian subcontinent from 1700 to 1953. The collection was originally amassed by the South Asian Research Foundation in Kolkata and contains material relating to economics, politics, law, Indology, gender, archaeology, anthropology, culture, history and education. The content is mostly English, with 15% in South Asian languages, primarily Bengali and Sanskrit.
The second module, South Asian History and Culture, is a comprehensive, full-text repository providing centralised access to millions of pages of South Asian primary source materials from across the internet.
The trial will run until 30th May 2026 and can be accessed via the New/Trial Databases section on Databases A-Z. Please send any comments and feedback to emma.mathieson@bodleian.ox.ac.uk.
This major resource provides digital access to a remarkable life-writing archive, offering a rare window into the everyday lives, thoughts and emotions of ordinary people living through the turbulent final decades of the twentieth century and the early twenty-first.
At its heart are the voices of hundreds of Mass Observers: individuals who responded to open-ended questionnaires (“directives”), reflecting on their experiences, opinions and personal lives. Their writing captures moments that are rarely recorded elsewhere: private reflections on relationships, family life and identity, alongside candid accounts of work, health, routines and the small details of daily life. It is precisely this combination of the intimate and the everyday that makes the archive so distinctive and valuable.
At the same time, these personal testimonies are deeply connected to wider historical events. Contributors record their reactions as events unfold, offering immediate, unfiltered perspectives on major social and political developments. The archive therefore allows researchers to trace how national and global events were experienced, understood and felt at the level of individual lives.
The directives span an extraordinary range of topics, including: 9/11, AIDS, climate change, the Criminal Justice Act, the death of Princess Diana, disability, education, the EU referendum and Brexit, the Falklands War, the First Gulf War, general elections, the rise of the internet and social media, the Iraq War, the Millennium, natural disasters, the NHS, railway strikes, security and crime, and university life.
Together, these materials create a uniquely rich and textured record of modern life—one that brings history closer to lived experience and gives voice to perspectives that are so often absent from the historical record.
(C) Mass Observation Archive Trustees. Mass Observation Project. 1982 Summer directivem (p1): Public and private services, the Budget, gas and electricity bills, royalty, inflation, currency, food, EEC
Individual responses also capture basic demographic information, such as marital status, employment status and occupation. This makes it possible to identify and analyse the views of specific cohorts in different circumstances.
Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) has been applied to all documents to allow full text searchability. The resource offers automatically-generated transcript for download for this document but please note that during the trial, the downloading function has been disabled.
This collection is drawn from the personal papers of a multitude of Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) activists throughout the twentieth century. This includes those at the heart of party (such as full-time “national organisers”), “full-time” CPGB activists such as Mariam Ramelson and Jack Dunman, and peripheral figures who supported the communist cause (such as Labour MP Dennis Nowell Pritt).
The works of trade unionists are featured extensively, and the papers of Peter Kerrigan and Arthur Horner shed light on the activities and campaigns of the Amalgamated Engineering Union and the Welsh Miners Federation, respectively.
The collection houses material from regions ranging from colonial Africa to war-torn Northeast Asia. The collection also hosts material related to militant activism, with biographical material concerning British volunteers in the Spanish Civil War, as well as accounts of those who fought against fascism in the Second World War.
The collection is accompanied by three contextual essays written by Kevin Morgan.
The 2026 theme for LGBT+ History Month aims to highlight the contributions of LGBT+ people, both historically and today, and to raise awareness of the individuals behind them.
Just in time for LGBT+ History month, we warmly invite Oxford researchers to explore and give feedback on two databases Sex & Sexuality and LGBTQ+ Life in America (see the VHL Blog post for more information).
Sex & Sexuality is an online resource providing access to key archival material related to human sexuality from leading archives across the world. It will be useful to students and researchers in gender / sexuality studies, history, sociology, anthropology, and medicine.
Please be aware that this resource contains material of a sexually explicit nature. Content includes, but is not limited to, descriptions and imagery of sexual violence; non-consensual sexual activity; sexual activity including minors; surgery and suicide.
The trial ends on 28 February 2026.
(c) AM Digital / Institute for Sex Research
From papers of leading sexologists to LGBTQI+ personal histories, Sex & Sexuality allows researchers to explore changing attitudes to human sexuality, gender and sexual behaviour. Geographic coverage is primarily in the United States, but also includes archival material from the UK and Australia.
Module I is sourced solely from the Kinsey Institute Library and Special Collections, making available the papers of the first three institute directors (including Dr Alfred C. Kinsey), papers and research files of sexologists and researchers, publications and ephemera from the Institute and other organisations and advocacy groups, as well as correspondence and queries from members of the American public.
Module II is sourced from US, UK and Australian archives, and focus on personal experiences and self-expression. It includes personal histories, as well as accounts of grass-roots organisations and activism from the late 19th Century to the present day. Resources include official records of pressure groups and community organisations, diaries and correspondence, photographs, objects, erotic fiction, papers of noted sexologists and more.
Oxford historians are now warmly invited to trial three databases which are useful for research into British trade, economy and shipping of the late 17th century to the early 20th century. The trials end on 24 February 2026.
The resources provide historical insight into the colonial, economic, and maritime dimensions of British history throughout this period. It should also interest those exploring broader themes, such as the escalation of global trade and the development of the fiscal-military state.
Throughout this pivotal period of British and global trade expansion, these resources shine a light on Britain’s increasing naval capabilities and the expansion of lucrative maritime trade networks fuelled significant economic growth. Frequently built upon exploitation and enslaved labour, the establishment of British trading outposts and plantations throughout Africa, Asia, the Americas, and the Caribbean laid the foundations for a worldwide empire and secured access to sought after commodities, such as sugar, tobacco, and textiles.
A collection of trade ledgers, registers and indexes that supply detailed statistical data on trade throughout the Long Eighteenth Century. It also includes official registers of “Mediterranean passes” which include information on which vessels were issued passes, their port of embarkation and destinations, as well as additional information on their size, crew, and defences.
(c) British Online Archives (Microform Academic Publishers). CUSTOMS 3/2: Imports and Exports, September 1698 to December 1698. Ref: 73808-A03
A significant collection of digitized primary source documents, primarily Bristol Presentments (bills of entry), offering insights into nearly 150 years of maritime trade for Bristol, detailing ship arrivals, departures, goods traded (like sugar, tobacco, coffee), and key merchants, crucial for maritime history, economic, and social research, accessible via libraries and archives.
(c) 2014 Microform Academic Publishers, scanned & published with the permission of Bristol Central Library. Bristol Shipping Records: Exports 49, nos. I (4 January) – XLIX (27 December).
Provides access to over 85,000 digitized bills of entry, manifests, and related documents. It offers insights into 19th-century Liverpool’s trade via bills of entry, detailing cargo, ships, dates, people, and routes, crucial for understanding the city’s rise as a global port, its links to colonial goods (cotton, sugar, tobacco), the slave trade, and evolving international commerce,
(c) 2013 Microform Academic Publishers, scanned & published with the permission of Liverpool City Council and the National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside. Bills of Entry for the year 1820
It’s Christmas time – and we bring you good tidings!
Oxford students and researchers now have access to the online El País Historical Archive, 1976-2023. You have remote access with your Single Sign On (SSO). Access is made available thanks to colleagues at the Taylor Institution Library.
Founded on 4 May 1976, six months after the death of dictator Francisco Franco, El País was created as an independent paper dedicated to the promotion of democratic ideals in post-Franco Spain.
Today, El País is the most circulated daily newspaper in Spain and it is a national newspaper of record, covering local, national, and international news. El País has been offering coverage of global events since 1976. This offering represents a rich historical archive of Spanish-language news from a pro-democracy newspaper. With El País, researchers can dive deeply into a distinctly European-Spanish perspective on historical events, culture, society, politics, sports, and more.
Oxford researchers and students are invited to trial Interwar Culture Module 1: 1919-1929 & Module 2: 1930-1939.
This resource provides access to runs of both prominent and lesser-known periodicals published throughout the interwar period, covering various facets of culture, entertainment, fashion, home and family life, world current affairs, class, social and welfare issues. These historically significant and visually rich magazines provide an important insight into these dynamic yet turbulent decades, as well as allowing examination of a growing media industry that both shaped and reflected society.
Module 1 reflect the social, artistic and cultural dynamism that characterised the ‘Roaring Twenties’ in fashion, music, literature, dance and entertainment as well as post-war intellectual thought and modernism. As the world emerged from the Great War into a new era, periodicals navigated a myriad of issues such as the ongoing undercurrent of feminism, the muddy waters of post-war recovery and the eternal question of youth and morality.
Module 2 tracks these cultural shifts through periodicals of the 1930s, a turbulent decade of contradictions. Against a backdrop of the Great Depression, mass unemployment and the rise of fascism, the 1930s also witnessed a renewed and fierce appetite for entertainment and culture seen in the booming film industry, seminal works of art and literature and ground-breaking innovations in technology, architecture and aviation.
Historians, you now have ten new source databases at your fingertips. With your University SSO, you can do your research anywhere whether you are researching in a café, library or on a sofa.
The new resources will be of interest to historians working across early modern to modern history, from England to the far reaches of America, South Africa and India. Resources are on a variety of topics such as trade, administration, foreign affairs, slavery and anti-slavery, culture and environment. Most resources are digitised archival material (letters, accounts, reports) but also include historical newspapers.
In line with the Bodleian Libraries’ strategy (pdf) to enhance our collections, we have committed funding to a set of selected purchases of electronic research resources. These acquisitions reflect our ongoing commitment to supporting the University of Oxford’s world-class research community by providing access to high-quality, authoritative digital content across a wide range of disciplines.
These resources, and others in our extensive list of source databases, are all accessible via SOLO or Databases A-Z. University staff and students can access them anytime, anywhere, using their Single Sign-On (SSO) credentials.
This resource is useful for the study of the history of early modern London through the lens of the livery companies and trade. It provides access to the various livery companies records, providing a unique overview of trade in early modern London over a key three-hundred year period. They are also a useful commentary on pivotal events such as the Reformation, the Civil War, the Great Plague, and the Great Fire of London.
Livery companies evolved from London’s medieval guilds, becoming corporations under royal charter responsible for training in their respective trades, as well as for the regulation of aspects such as wage control, labour conditions, and industry standards. The companies’ rich and varied records document the central role that these institutions played in the economic, political, social, and cultural life of the city.
Sources
The source materials include full runs of all extant court minute books and wardens’ account books from six of the Great Twelve livery companies, up to the year 1750. These records are the heart of the companies’ day-to-day business. Some supporting records have also been selected from each company, including ordinances, charters, ledgers, and other financial records. Where indexes or handwritten transcripts exist for the court minutes or wardens’ account books, these have also been included and can be viewed alongside the original document using comparison functionality.
Handwritten Text Recognition has been applied to the handwritten materials but palaeographical skills will still be needed. Research Tools are provided to help users to find the hidden narratives.
Themes
Each record is rich in content and broad in scope and all of these themes below might be useful:
• Charity and Philanthropy • Citizenship • Civic Ceremonies, Music, Drama and Pageantry • Civic Government • Commerce • Craft and Regulation • Education • Immigration • Politics • Prices and Wages • Property and Estates • Religion
Contributing Archives
Trade in Early Modern London includes material from three UK archives:
The Drapers’ Company
The Goldsmiths’ Company
The London Archives, from which source is included:
This newly digitised collection complements the existing Burney Newspaper Collection by offering new titles and additional issues of already digitised titles. The expansion includes c 200 additional newspapers, newsbooks, and broadsheets.
For historians, literary scholars, and researchers in related fields, Burney Newspapers Collection offers a rich collection of primary sources that highlight the cultural, political, and social landscapes of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. You can gain deeper insights, cross-reference information, and explore previously unavailable content, enriching your research and contributing to a more comprehensive understanding of this pivotal era.
This module complements others already available. It includes India Office Records F The Board of Commissioners: Expansion, Control and Education and focuses on the Board of Commissioners, which exercised supervision over the Company’s policies. Material covers key events in the history of India and the Company including the Government of India Act 1833, which removed the Company’s trade monopolies and gave the Board of Control full power and authority over the Company, the First Opium War, the Anglo-Afghan War, and the English Education Act, which reallocated funds from the East India Company towards education and literature in India.
The Age of Emancipation includes numerous rare documents related to emancipation in the United States, as well as Latin America and the Caribbean. This collection supports the study of many areas, including activities of the federal government in dealing with former slaves and the Freedmen’s Bureau, views of political parties and postwar problems with the South, documents of the British and French government on the slave trade, reports from the West Indies and Africa, and other topics.
Content advisory: This archive provides access to primary sources created by groups and individuals that were products of their time. Therefore, users may come across content that is upsetting such as outmoded language, cartoons and caricatures, and other imagery that may be offensive because of its representation of race, gender, sexuality, beliefs, or other characteristics.
Due to the nature of the subject and the time period in which the sources were published, Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive, contains racist and outdated discussions of race, racial stereotypes and offensive imagery.
This resource brings together primary source material from archival collections in the UK, USA and Australia to reveal the shifting and expanding theatre world of the nineteenth century. Featuring material such as prompt books, programmes, company records, photographs and playbills, users can explore the multi-faceted nature of the nineteenth-century theatre industry, the lives and careers of well-known actors and actresses and the production, performance and reception of popular plays of the time.
This resource brings together material from within former British colonies and Commonwealth nations, alongside some from former French and Portuguese territories, to provide valuable primary source material created for local audiences by local actors during a period of enormous global change. After the Second World War, decolonization movements around the world gathered pace, and from the small port colony of Aden to the vast Indian sub-continent, new borders were set, and new nations built.
The development of party politics, trade unions and other local and national movements in former colonies and Commonwealth nations across Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Australasia, and the Americas took many different forms. This archive allows insight into the variety of systems and modes of national and international political thought that became prominent in the twentieth century, including socialism and communism, anti-imperialism, regional independence movements, trade unionism, student activism, Pan-Africanism, and many modes of constitutional democracy.
The range of materials from across the world permits analysis and comparison of different political movements within a country, as well as the different paths and politics in the transition to self-rule in different nations, and the ways in which former colonies and Commonwealth nations negotiated their own agency and their own futures. Researchers can explore economic and social development, domestic politics and international relations, media and culture, labor history and strikes, civil rights movements and moments of political violence, alongside the constitutions and manifestos of many different parties and groups.
Content advisory: This database contains material representing various historical viewpoints related to race, gender, terrorism, and other subjects, and includes a variety of terms applied to different groups of people reflecting ideas and prejudices at their point of creation. Some of these terms and attitudes will appear pejorative and expressive of ideas that are no longer regarded as acceptable, such as segregated and apartheid systems, and imperial or colonial rhetoric.
This resource brings British government files from the Foreign Office, Colonial Office and the Ministry of Overseas Development and Overseas Development Administration together to provide information and insight into environmental issues and human-environment interactions throughout the globe, particularly in those places of influence of the former British Empire.
The files chart the development of colonial attitudes towards the natural world. They also provide insight into global colonial policy, changing attitudes towards land and natural resources, and the relationship between people and the natural world before the advent of environmental movements and activism later in the century. The environmental impact of colonialism can be explored through these files, from large-scale forestry and mining, to irrigation, soil surveys, pollution, industrial change, research into tropical diseases, agriculture, industry and conservation, as well as material on trade and commodities such as oil, cocoa, animal hides and skins, minerals and timber.
Continues Part I. Includes documents which chart the continued development towards the attempted implementation of grand apartheid. Sources are largely British government files from the Foreign, Colonial, Dominions, and Foreign and Commonwealth Offices spanning the period 1948 to 1975. These previously restricted letters, diplomatic dispatches, reports, trial papers, activists’ biographies and first-hand accounts of events give unprecedented access to the history of South Africa’s apartheid regime.
This archive treats U.S. foreign affairs during the presidency of Jimmy Carter. Notable subjects include the Arab-Israeli Conflict; the Camp David Accords; China; Panama Canal treaties; Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (SALT); the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan and U.S. responses to the intervention; the Iran Hostage Crisis; human rights; among other topics.
This collection complements our existing subscription to BBC Monitoring which provides access to the broader BBC Monitoring service and current content.
BBC Monitoring tracks, translates, summarises and analyses local media sources around the world. Its stated specialisms include: Russia, Eastern Europe, Middle East and North Africa, Sub Saharan Africa, Latin America, Asia, and Disinformation.
BBC Monitoring was founded in 1939 at the start of WWII. Its purpose was to listen to radio broadcasts and gather open-source intelligence to help Britain and its allies understand global dynamics and assess emerging global threats. Over the next 60 years, the scope of its monitoring grew quickly. Trained specialists transcribed broadcasts of speeches, current affairs, political discussions, and social and cultural events worldwide. Transcripts, in turn, were translated into English and critical content was selected for publication. Finally, selections were curated into daily reports that comprise the Summary of World Broadcasts. These original daily reports often included commentary and evaluation by subject experts, as well as synopses and specialist briefings.
This resource documents 80 years of merchant shipping to and from the city of Liverpool. This collection of over 85,000 documents comprises Bills of Entry derived from the reports and manifests of ships that docked in the city. These detailed documents offer unique insights into Liverpool’s maritime history and the goods traded in the city throughout most of the nineteenth century. They also illustrate how heavily Liverpool became involved in various imperial trade networks, including those concerned with cotton, indigo, rice, rum, sugar, and tobacco. Many of the goods traded in the city were derived from the labour of enslaved people. Liverpool and its merchants were major players in the transatlantic slave trade. By 1800, the city was the largest slave trading port in the world and much of Liverpool’s wealth and development relied upon enslavement and this triangular trade.
Content Warning: This collection contains racist or offensive terms. Owing to their historical importance, the sources are in their original state.
More about this resource
“Liverpool was a major slave trading port during the eighteenth century. This changed after the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 and, subsequently, the end of plantation slavery in most British colonies after 1833. Cotton therefore became the most important commodity in Liverpool. In 1784, the first cotton from North America arrived in the city. By 1850, over 1.5 million bales of cotton were imported from America to Liverpool every year and cotton accounted for almost half of the city’s trade. This boom relied upon cotton produced from the labour of enslaved people, as slavery was not abolished in North America until 1865. Mills across Lancashire transformed this cotton into finished goods, which were exported across the globe from Liverpool’s docks.”
“Bills of Entry are printed records of imports and exports. The first Bills of entry for Liverpool were printed around 1750. Over time, they became more extensive, eventually serving as business newspapers for the local commercial community. By the late 1840s, the Bills were printed daily, except for Sundays, giving a comprehensive overview of maritime trade in Liverpool. The documents in this collection contain detailed information, such as the names of ships, where they arrived from and where they embarked for, their captains, their tonnage, their date of arrival and departure, cargo details, as well as the names of the people and companies associated with each shipment.
The sources in this collection provide a detailed overview of the nature and development of Liverpool’s trade routes and relationships. They also highlight how trading priorities changed over time, particularly during the Industrial Revolution, when Britain began exporting large volumes of goods manufactured using new technologies and processes. Crucially, the sources also illustrate how Britain’s commercial interests and networks laid the foundations for a vast, global empire.
The sources in this collection detail key imports and exports entering and leaving Liverpool. For example, pimento and logwood were shipped to Britain from Jamaica, while mustard seeds, liquorice root, and saffron came from India. Bacon and lard made their way from New Orleans, and wine, lemons, and oranges were imported from Spain. Meanwhile, Britain exported tobacco, paint, and sewing machines to Africa; cotton, soap, and tools to Singapore; whilst wine, leather, and glassware were shipped to Brazil.”
This resource charts nearly 150 years of British trade and shipping by giving access to a collection of trade ledgers, registers and indexes that supply detailed statistical data on trade throughout the Long Eighteenth Century. It also includes official registers of “Mediterranean passes” which include information on which vessels were issued passes, their port of embarkation and destinations, as well as additional information on their size, crew, and defences.
Throughout this pivotal period of British and global trade expansion, this resource shines a light on Britain’s increasing naval capabilities and the expansion of lucrative maritime trade networks fuelled significant economic growth. Frequently built upon exploitation and enslaved labour, the establishment of British trading outposts and plantations throughout Africa, Asia, the Americas, and the Caribbean laid the foundations for a worldwide empire and secured access to sought after commodities, such as sugar, tobacco, and textiles
This resource will be useful to those researching the colonial, economic, and maritime dimensions of British history throughout this period. It should also interest those exploring broader themes, such as the escalation of global trade and the development of the fiscal-military state.
This collection is composed of British Naval Office shipping lists between the years of 1678 and 1825. These 150 years saw the rise of British naval power across the globe, which significantly contributed to the proliferation of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the eventual establishment of the British Empire.
Information provided by the shipping lists includes the name of the vessel, the name of its home port and colony, details of the vessel’s construction, the name of the owner(s), the tonnage of the vessel, the number of guns carried, the number of crew, and the cargo carried (including enslaved people as well as raw material). Thus, the files paint a detailed picture of how triangular trade was conducted between Britain, her colonies, and lucrative markets in Europe and the Americas.
Content Warning: This collection contains racist or offensive terms. Owing to their historical importance, the sources are in their original state.
Launched in 1965, this new magazine endeavoured to “reflect all aspects of the life of London”. Throughout its brief existence, it proved adept at conveying the spirit of the “Swinging Sixties” in the world’s “capital of cool”. Featuring interviews with cultural icons as well as contributions from rising stars, such as the supermodel, London Life remains emblematic of 1960s counterculture.
Encompassing nearly 5,000 images, this collection contains all 63 issues of London Life, published between October 1965 and December of the following year.
London Life covered a wide range of topics, from music and film to sexuality and the thriving nightlife of London’s West End. It likewise captured the increasingly cosmopolitan nature of British society, documenting the emergence of a more diverse media landscape and audience. This collection contains essential material for those interested in the cultural history of the 1960s and, more specifically, in Britain’s cultural revolution and the advent of its “permissive society”.
From its first issue, The Sphere adopted a consciously international outlook, aiming to “hold pictures and thoughts from all lands”. Upon its release, it was praised as “a striking advance in illustrated journalism” due to the beauty and artistry of its presentation. It soon became popular. This collection includes nearly 160,000 images and almost 4,000 issues published between January 1900 and June 1964.
The Sphere reflected a patriotic and staunchly pro-establishment position, expressing support for the British monarchy and for the empire. The publication reported extensively on world events, such as the rise of communism, the First and Second World Wars, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. It printed articles discussing a wide range of prominent personalities from the arts, sciences, and politics—from John Ruskin to Albert Einstein; from Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Golda Meir. It also featured contributions from well-known literary figures. This collection contains vital material for researchers and students of British society, military history, and the legacies of colonialism.
This collection contains reports and other records compiled by the Communist Party of Great Britain’s (CPGB) International Department between 1944 and 1986. The majority of the documents cover the Sino-Soviet split and the Chinese-Indian disputes of the 1960s and 1970s. There are also materials relating to Soviet satellite states in Eastern Europe, the left in Western Europe, and anti-colonial movements in the developing world.
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![Snippet of results list when searching for Nat Turner. The 1st items is:
Southard, Nathaniel. Why work for the slave? [U.S.]: [s.n.], [1838?]. Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive (accessed July 30, 2025).](http://blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/history/wp-content/uploads/sites/118/2025/07/Gale-Slavery-AntiSlavery-IV-Nat-Rurner-search.png)
