Tag Archives: trade

Trial until 1 Jan 2025: Trade in Early Modern: London Livery Company Records, 1450-1750

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Home page of Trade in Early Modern London: Livery Company Records, 1450-1750. Showing decorative digitised documents and a single search screen.

(c) AM. Trade in Early Modern London: Livery Company Records, 1450-1750

Trade in Early Modern: London Livery Company Records, 1450-1750 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.

Oxford students and researchers need to use SSO for remote access. The resource is accessible via SOLO.

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.

The documents provide a rich source for a variety of aspects of early modern trade but also beyond the purely mercantile aspect. The resource is also useful for the study of early modern…

• 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

Archives included

Three archives contribute the content to this database:

  1. The Drapers’ Company
  2. The Goldsmiths’ Company
  3. The London Archives, from which source is included:
    • The Fishmongers’ Company collection
    • The Merchant Taylors’ Company collection [accounts go back to late C14]
    • The Skinners’ Company collection
    • The Vintners’ Company collection

Highlighted collections include:

  • Institutional records of churches, workplaces, alms-houses, and schools detailing the daily lives and work of a large proportion of the city’s inhabitants
  • Company records documenting the livery companies’ involvement in the Lord Mayor’s Show, providing a wealth of material relating to civic culture and pageantry, including payments to musicians and performers
  • Beautifully illuminated ordinances and memoranda books, including the Goldsmiths’ Company Books of Ordinances, the Book of the Fraternity of the Assumption of Our Lady (Skinners’ Company), and The Book of the Fraternity of Corpus Christi (Skinners’ Company)
  • A range of contextual features bring the resource to life for students and researchers, including a Chronology, a Glossary of Terms, a Guide to Reading Early Modern Records, and Livery Company Histories

There is a range useful supplementary materials such as contextualised essays by leading historians, including Ian Archer (University of Oxford). There is also a glossary and chronology, and helpful information on weights & measures, and the Julian (OT) and Gregorian (NT) dating systems.

The challenge of using archival material

The two digitised documents are displayed side-by-side on the screen.

(c) AM – Comparison of The Fishmongers’ Company Committee minutes of 13 Oct 1741 with the Letter A in the Index to committee minute books (1731-1758).

Like other AM databases, Trade in Early Modern London uses Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) technology to allow full-text searching of manuscript documents. Users can download the transcript (where it exists) but should note that the HTR technology is still developing and that it’s advisable to check for accuracy. The database allows users to compare the original with the transcript or with other related documents.

Searching and reading the documents will be challenging to the non-expert. The resource provides various ways to find material and guidance is available how to best search and browse. Additionally, uses can view side-by-side related documents, such as contemporary indices.

The trial ends on 1 January 2025. Please send any feedback to isabel.holowaty@bodleian.ox.ac.uk.

While you are here, other early modern databases might be useful:

  1. British History Online
  2. The Cecil Papers
  3. Early English Books Online
  4. Eighteenth Century Collections Online
  5. Electronic Enlightenment
  6. Making of the Modern World
  7. Medieval and Early Modern Sources Online (MEMSO)
  8. Medieval and Early Modern Studies (AM Scholar)
  9. Proceedings of the Old Bailey, The: London’s Central Criminal Court, 1674 to 1913 (free on the web)
  10. Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Burney Newspapers Collection
  11. Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Nichols Newspapers Collection
  12. State Papers Online I – IV: The Tudors, Stuarts & Commonwealth 1509-1714 (Foreign & Domestic)

Or, to find more early modern materials, check out our LibGuide for Early Modern History (British & West European).

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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