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.

New resources are:

1. Trade in Early Modern London: Livery Company Records 1450-1750 (Module 1)
2. Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Burney Newspapers Collection (Part II)
3. East India Company (Part VII)
4. Slavery and Anti-Slavery Part 4: Age of Emancipation
5. Nineteenth Century Stage: The Industry, Performance and Celebrity
6. Decolonization: Politics and Independence in Former Colonial and Commonwealth Territories
7. Environmental History: Colonial Policy and Global Development, 1896-1991
8. Apartheid South Africa: Part II: 1967-1975 (Archives Direct)
9. Carter Administration and Foreign Affairs (Archives Unbound)
10. BBC Monitoring: Summary of World Broadcasts: Essential Global Media, 1939-2001

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.

Trade in Early Modern London: Livery Company Records 1450-1750 Module 1

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:
  • The Fishmongers’ Company collection
  • The Merchant Taylors’ Company collection
  • The Skinners’ Company collection
  • The Vintners’ Company collection

Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Burney Newspapers Collection part II

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.

East India Company module VII

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.

Slavery and Anti-Slavery: a Transnational Archive – Part 4: Age of Emancipation

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.

See also Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive, part II: Slave Trade in the Atlantic World  – Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive, part III: The Institution of Slavery

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.

Nineteenth Century Stage: The Industry, Performance and Celebrity

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.

Decolonization: Politics and Independence in Former Colonial and Commonwealth Territories

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.

Environmental History: Colonial Policy and Global Development, 1896-1991

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.

Apartheid South Africa 1948-1994: Part II: 1967-1975 (Archives Direct)

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.

Carter Administration and Foreign Affairs (Archives Unbound)

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.

BBC Monitoring: Summary of World Broadcasts: Essential Global Media, 1939-2001

Primary source collection featuring nearly 70,000 reports.

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.