Society and Politics Archives

Pulling no Punches! The Punch Historical Archive 1841 – 1992

October 20, 2026October 13, 2026 by Gale Review Team

Cartoon, No. 1." Punch, vol. 5, no. 105, 15 July 1843

| Dr Clare Horrocks, Associate Professor in Print Culture and Public Engagement, Liverpool John Moores University|

Do you have fond memories of sitting at the doctors or dentists and flicking through the latest copy of Punch? Have you ever wondered about the origin of satirical cartoons? The Punch Historical Archive can help those on a nostalgic journey, as well as students and scholars who use it as a gateway to illustrate the past. Published from July 1841, creating the first cartoon ‘Substance and Shadow’ in 1843 (see this blog post’s title image), Punch was the longest running satirical periodical, spanning two centuries. It paved the way for publications like Private Eye and its response to news and current affairs can be seen to have influenced many contemporary television shows like Have I Got News for You.

First published in 2014, the Punch Historical Archive was a pioneering contribution to the field of authorial attribution studies. Collaborating with the British Library, Punch Limited and Liverpool John Moores University, it combined digital precision and prowess with a keen understanding of the user experience. I was an Academic Advisor for the project, coordinating the transcription of the Ledgers and ensuring that, for the first time, readers of Punch would be able to identify those who wrote for the magazine. Some of these writers, like William Makepeace Thackeray and Douglas Jerrold, are already well known, but other contributors like P. G. Wodehouse and A. A. Milne less so.

This blog starts to look at some of the fantastic projects and discoveries that have arisen in the first ten years since the digital archive was produced. This year, 2026, also marks 185 years since Punch was first published, so it is also a good time to consider where the Punch archive may take us in the future.

The Blue-Eyed Shogun: Douglas MacArthur and the Making of Postwar Japan

October 6, 2026September 29, 2026 by Gale Review Team

│By Masaki Morisawa, Product Solutions Consultant│

There are two American names that every Japanese schoolchild learns in history class because of the enormous impact they had on our country. One is Commodore Matthew C. Perry (1794–1858), whose visits in 1853 and 1854 helped end more than two centuries of Tokugawa diplomatic seclusion. The other is General Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964), who, as Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) from 1945 to 1951, oversaw the complete transformation of post-World War II Japan.

Both men embodied American power at critical turning points, but MacArthur’s influence was arguably greater. Perry jolted Japan out of seclusion and set major changes in motion, but he did not rewrite Japan’s laws, restructure its society, or govern its people. MacArthur oversaw sweeping changes in all three areas, leaving a legacy that is still debated today.

In this blog post, I’m going to explore the impact of General Douglas MacArthur using Gale’s exciting new archive collection Asia in the Twentieth Century: General MacArthur, and War, Occupation, and Reconstruction in the Pacific, 1941–1972.

Sustainability Was Built by Women, and Here’s Why

September 15, 2026 by Gale Review Team

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

Sustainability isn’t a modern term created by tech-bros. It is an invention hand-crafted by women from different communities across centuries. And the proof can be found in Gale’s The Times Digital Archive.

History is Creative: How Can Students Use Gale Primary Sources in New and Unique Ways?

September 1, 2026September 1, 2026 by Gale Review Team

│By Helen Cartledge, Gale Ambassador at the University of Birmingham│

Post-colonial thinking is always developing and expanding, especially in relation to how historians understand the Atlantic Slave Trade. Primary sources are integral to the underpinning of this historical narrative and the new ways historians are trying to reconceptualise and re-narrate the slave trade in ways that decentre the European.

Countless types of primary sources exist that can help historians uncover the experiences of many people who were oppressed and marginalised. However, we need to be aware of how primary sources can reveal multiple and strikingly different ideas, even if this is not revealed at first glance.

Thus, this blog post guides you through the process of finding and using primary sources from Gale’s Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive and the different ways such sources can be used within research.

Queen Victoria’s Handwriting and State Papers Deciphered by AI-driven Transcription Solution

August 13, 2026 by Gale Review Team

A montage of images of sources from State Papers Online: Nineteenth Century: The State Papers of Queen Victoria and King Edward VII combined with a photograph of Queen Victoria taken in 1882, available in Wikimedia Commons

|By Paul Schummer – Senior Manager, Gale Content Production, and Chris Houghton – Head of Academic Partnerships|

We often use tools without understanding how they work. Chris, for example, has a hazy memory of learning how a vacuum cleaner works in a school physics lesson, but if you asked him to explain it now, he’d struggle! Most of the time, that’s fine – it’s why we take our car to a garage rather than learning how to fix it ourselves. So it’s understandable that researchers or students working with databases might not know how these collections came to be, and what is actually happening when they run a search. However, to be a truly effective researcher, it’s important to understand how these databases work, so that you can adapt your investigations and not miss vital information that is significant to your scholarship.

Uncovering New Angles and Arguments with Text Mining

August 4, 2026 by Gale Review Team

│By Georgia Platt, Gale Ambassador at Lancaster University│

Six months ago, I knew nothing about Digital Humanities or text mining. It wasn’t really a topic covered in my undergraduate degree in History, and I’d always been a bit unsure of the place technology has in historical research. Then I began my MA in Digital Humanities, which I chose to try and engage with these technological aspects of humanities studies that I hadn’t had the opportunity to explore before. I spent the first ten weeks of this course doing an intensive text mining module, and it revolutionised my approach to historical study.

If you’re curious about text mining but don’t know where to start, or are a digital humanities sceptic looking to be proved wrong, this blog post is for you. I will start with some basic theory of what text mining is and what kinds of questions it can answer, then I’ll put my practical skills to the test with an example from my studies in Victorian crime and punishment.

History, Politics and Memory: Ostalgie in Contemporary German Society

July 21, 2026 by Gale Ambassadors

│By Matt Hudson, Gale Ambassador at the University of Durham│

October 3rd, 1990 became a symbol of post-Cold War optimism. As the reunification of Germany was marked with joyous celebrations, liberalism had emerged victorious. The collapse of the stagnant East German regime heralded not just the end of totalitarianism and censorship, but also the triumph of ‘people power’.

This picture appears naïve in today’s climate. In the former East Germany (German Democratic Republic or GDR), economic progress since reunification has not prevented voters from supporting the far-right AfD in their droves. Ostalgie, meaning nostalgia for life in the GDR, served as an early warning sign that the so-called ‘end of history’ was a misnomer.

But when did Ostalgie become an observed phenomenon? How did disaffection with life in a united Germany arise? And has this nostalgia been misinterpreted by western reporters?

Benevolence and Blame: The Question of Race in America’s Early-Twentieth-Century Tuberculosis Crisis

June 23, 2026 by Gale Ambassadors

| By Alice Shadbolt, Gale Ambassador at the University of Liverpool |

Between 1915 and 1940, tuberculosis posed one of the most urgent public health crises for North America and Europe. However, its impact was far from evenly distributed. In the United States, mortality rates amongst Black communities were consistently higher than those recorded amongst white Americans, a disparity that became a central preoccupation of contemporary public health discourse.

Drawing on Gale’s Public Health Archives, which preserves the reports, policy documents, and educational materials produced by municipal and state health departments, this post examines how these institutions approached and explained this disparity. A close reading of these documents reveals how language was strategically deployed to redirect responsibility onto Black communities themselves, pathologising race and obscuring the lived implications of racial inequality.

Gale Fellows Present their DH Research at the Socio-Economic History Society Conference

October 9, 2026June 9, 2026 by Gale Review Team

Blog Post Author with the Gale–SEHS Fellows

| By Masaki Morisawa, Product Solutions Consultant |

On the sunny weekend of 9–10 May 2026, the 95th National Conference of the Socio-Economic History Society (SEHS) took place at Senshu University’s suburban Ikuta campus. More than 300 members gathered for the event, presenting and discussing topics as varied as promissory notes in Edo-period Japan, American civil aviation policy, and industrial development in colonial India. The breadth of subjects on display reflected the geographic and chronological range covered by this interdisciplinary society.

Against this vibrant backdrop, three participants in the Gale–SEHS Fellowship presented the results of their research to an audience of about fifty scholars. Gale has partnered with a number of scholarly societies and academic organisations to support digital humanities research, but until now all of these partnerships had been based in either the United States or Europe. The collaboration with SEHS therefore marked an important milestone as Gale’s first fellowship program in Asia.

Over the course of nine months, three early-career scholars selected by the Society’s board of directors explored historical questions using Gale’s resources and digital tools under the guidance of Chris Houghton, Head of Academic Partnerships. The conference provided an opportunity for them to share their findings with the wider academic community. Although Chris was unfortunately unable to travel to Japan for the event, I had the privilege of serving as moderator in his place.

Interpreting the Bomb: Nuclear Weapons and Global Security in Declassified British Intelligence

May 26, 2026 by Gale Ambassadors

│By Eleanor Turner, Gale Ambassador at the University of Leeds│

Declassified Documents Online: Twentieth-Century British Intelligence offers unique insight into how governments understand and respond to global security threats. The emergence of nuclear weapons in 1945 fundamentally altered the structure of international politics, leading governments to rethink what military conflict could escalate to and the devastating consequences of deploying nuclear weapons. Declassified Documents Online: Twentieth-Century British Intelligence shows how the British government strategised to overcome these changes.