All Blog Posts - The Gale Review

Contours of Connection: Exploring India–Africa Ties Through Memory, Movement, and Meaning

May 12, 2026May 12, 2026 by Gale Ambassadors

│By Anushka Srivastava, Gale Ambassador at the University of Delhi, India│

India-Africa relations are strengthening in a new global scenario, driven by economic complementarity, strategic alignment, and a shared focus on multilateralism. In 2025, India strengthened its ties with Africa through several high-level visits. Prime Minister Narendra Modi undertook a significant five-nation tour in July 2025, in Ghana and Namibia, and President Droupadi Murmu made a historic visit to Angola in November 2025.

Understanding the long-standing relationship between India and Africa requires exploring the historical documents that shaped early contact, mobility, diplomacy, economic networks, and political exchange. For this, Gale Primary Sources offers unparalleled access to documents that illuminate how people, commodities, and ideas moved between the two regions.

This blog post traces these linkages through four lenses – historical, diplomatic, economic, and political – using illustrative citations from Gale Primary Sources collections.

Laughing at Your Professors: Disruptive Behaviour in Early Modern English Universities

April 28, 2026 by Gale Review Team

│By Benjamin Armus, Gale Intern│

From the raucous atmosphere of college sports to emergent subversive online cultures, the university experience has always been defined by a tension between institutional discipline and youthful rebellion. However, a rejection of decorum is by no means a modern invention; the halls of Oxford and Cambridge four hundred years ago were frequently just as rowdy, and more dangerous, than the campuses of today.

To capture the spirit of these interactions, we must turn to the paper trails left behind by the students and masters themselves. Drawing on the extensive archives within Gale’s Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) and British Literary Manuscripts Online, this post will examine a selection of primary texts – from jestbooks to memoirs.

By analysing these firsthand accounts, we can understand the deeper function of humour and violence, revealing how these disruptive behaviours shaped the social and intellectual climate of the early modern university.

Small Books, Big Ideas: Eighteenth‑Century Miniatures in ECCO

April 15, 2026April 14, 2026 by Gale Review Team

│By Eleanor Leese, Acquisitions Editor, Gale Primary Sources│

As an editor at Gale, I’ve been lucky enough to visit some of the most prestigious archives in the country, but nothing has been as exciting as when I was invited to see the conservation lab at the British Library. By sheer good luck, the week that I was there they were working on their collection of miniature books ahead of scanning them for Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Part III which sparked something of an obsession in both myself and the rest of the Gale team.

Critical Thinking in Business Studies using Gale Primary Sources

March 31, 2026 by Gale Ambassadors

│By Brendon Ndoro, Gale Ambassador at the University of Cape Town│

In Business studies, it is easy to assume that success is all about securing the best return on investment. However, true academic and professional success requires a deeper, more analytical approach: critical thinking.

The foundational concepts explored in the study of business ethics, particularly covered in the “Business Ethics”¹ textbook by Jimmy Winfield, George Hull, and Greg Fried, will be used to explore the topic of critical thinking and how it can be used to distinguish between what is merely profitable and what is genuinely right.

The Times Digital Archive offers us the ability to travel back in time, providing us the opportunity to audit the reasoning of past business leaders and equip ourselves with the logical tools needed to succeed today.

Inside ECCO Part III: The Eighteenth‑Century Obsession with Insuring Everything

March 17, 2026March 17, 2026 by Gale Review Team

│By Eleanor Leese, Acquisitions Editor, Gale Primary Sources│

As we approached a significant milestone in the life of Eighteenth Century Collections Online – the launch of Part III in March 2026 – I found myself minded to go looking for significant milestones inside the archive itself. And what more significant milestones are there than births, marriages, and deaths? But what I found in ECCO Part III weren’t emotional tracts about these major life events. Instead, I found tables of mortality data, and an eighteenth-century specialty: the insurance of births, marriages, and deaths. Turns out, there’s little that you couldn’t insure in the 1700s.

In the first decades of the eighteenth century, insurance policies developed into a thriving financial marketplace, where policies could be taken out on homes, fire damage, on the birth of a baby, the length of a marriage or apprenticeship, or the length of a life.

Friendly Society. A proposal for insuring houses by the Friendly Society. N.p., [1715?]. Eighteenth Century Collections Online, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/UAGSDQ724157587/ECCO?u=webdemo&sid=bookmark-ECCO&xid=4d368d51&pg=1.

Douglas MacArthur – A Life in Service

March 10, 2026March 3, 2026 by Gale Review Team

│By Phil Virta, Senior Acquisitions Editor, Gale Primary Sources│

Douglas MacArthur was an American military commander whose career spanned World War I, World War II, and the Korean War. One of the few U.S. military leaders to achieve a five-star rank, MacArthur was described by admirers as heroic and patriotic, while critics considered him to be overly ambitious and narcissistic.

The archive Asia in the Twentieth Century: General MacArthur and War, Occupation, and Reconstruction in the Pacific, 1941-1972 is about more than just MacArthur, but his figure permeates the sources. His leadership shaped the Pacific War, the rebuilding of Japan, the course of the Korean War, and U.S. policy across Asia.

Discovering American Roots of the Indian Independence Movement through Gale Primary Sources: The Hindu-German Conspiracy Trials in the USA

February 19, 2026February 17, 2026 by Gale Ambassadors

| By Amandeep, Gale Ambassador at Banaras Hindu University |

Whenever the Indian revolutionary movement outside India is taught in history classes at different universities and colleges, the Komagata Maru incident of 1914 and the revolutionary activities of the Ghadar Movement in the United States certainly bring a thrilling experience to students and teachers. However, over the years, it has become a footnote when it comes to bringing new discourses.

For decades, the revolutionary movements outside India have not been rethought in the ways they should have been. The paucity of primary sources and travel limitations have been among the significant reasons why scholars and students have been unable to rethink and revisit the revolutionary movements abroad, especially in the USA.

Doing Rather than Listening: Developing DH Skills at Hacking History

February 12, 2026February 3, 2026 by Gale Review Team

│By Chris Houghton, Head of Academic Partnerships│

This blog post discusses why it’s so important to provide additional value to universities at a time of unprecedented upheaval through professional development events like Hacking History workshops. It also reflects on the evolution of these events and the success of the third Hacking History event which recently took place at Coventry University.

Queen Victoria: The Unexpected Feminist Icon Explored Through State Papers Online: Nineteenth Century: The State Papers of Queen Victoria and King Edward VII

January 27, 2026 by Gale Review Team

│By Rachel Holt, Senior Acquisitions Editor, Gale Primary Sources│

When we think of feminism, names like Harriet Martineau or Mary Wollstonecraft often come to mind—not Queen Victoria. After all, in an 1870 letter to Sir Theodore Martin she called women’s rights activists “mad, wicked folly.”

Her reign from 1837 to 1901 however tells a more nuanced story and although Queen Victoria may not have embraced the women’s suffrage movement, her life and leadership challenged the rigid gender norms of her time, making her an inadvertent feminist icon.

The latest expansion of the extensive State Papers Online programme sees the launch of State Papers Online: Nineteenth Century with its first instalment as the State Papers of Queen Victoria and King Edward VII. Hosting two unique collections from the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle, this resource contains correspondence between the monarchs and their governments, representing Queen Victoria and King Edward VII’s state papers. It enables researchers to explore questions such as these.

A Right Won, A Civic Duty to Learn: Women’s Civic Education After the Nineteenth Amendment

January 20, 2026 by Gale Ambassadors

│By Kat Weiss, Gale Academic Intern |

In the years leading up to the Nineteenth Amendment and after its ratification in 1920, American women realised that equality did not end with the right to vote. They recognised that they now had a civic duty to their country, to use this newfound right responsibly. With that realisation came a new question: now that women could participate in democracy, how would they learn to practice it?

They did not have access to the same education and resources as their male peers because the system was not built for them; they needed to find new ways to educate themselves and each other. With that in mind, the Nineteenth Amendment opened a new chapter in women’s history, one centred on learning how to exercise civic power. Using primary sources from Gale’s Nineteenth Century Collections Online, we can trace how women across the USA began to define and teach the responsibilities of citizenship.