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
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.”
(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:
The Drapers’ Company
The Goldsmiths’ Company
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
(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.
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.
This 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
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.
This site uses cookies to support some content and functions, and also Google Analytics. By using this site you agree to their use. Find out more and opt out »
![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)
