A blog from Gale International
By Becky Wright, Gale Content Researcher Gale’s digital collections include a wealth of newspapers, journals and periodicals. From The Times Digital Archive to the newspapers in the 17th and 18th Century Burney Collection, and from the International Herald Tribune to Missionary, Sinology and Literary Periodicals published in China, researchers have access to a vast array … Read more
By Paula Maher Martin, Gale Ambassador at NUI Galway Read this blog in Spanish here ‘A picture drawn from the life of a people whose days are spent under the sky in the open country’. These are the linguistic contours with which Edith Somerville, in examining P.W. Joyce’s 1909 work English as We Speak it … Read more
State Papers Online Eighteenth Century, Part IV: Scandinavia, Eastern Europe and Turkey is now available. The final part in the State Papers Online Eighteenth Century programme, Part IV rounds out the State Papers collection of 1714-1782 with series from Denmark, Sweden, Poland and Saxony, Prussia, Russia, Turkey and the Barbary States, as well as volumes … Read more
By Emery Pan, Gale Editor in Beijing On April 17, 1895, the first Sino-Japanese War (hereinafter, the “War”) came to a truce, and a treaty was signed at the Japanese city of Shimonoseki. Newspapers around the world competed with each other to report on this event. Japan: an ancient, mysterious country and a new power … Read more
By Paula Maher Martín, Gale Ambassador at NUI Galway To read this blog in Spanish, click here. The Germania, an apparently harmless description of the territories, customs and tribes of the Germani by 1st century Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus, was acclaimed by Nazi Germans as a banner: a portrait of the primitive Aryan; ‘virtuous, fearless … Read more
By Daniel Mercieca, Gale Ambassador at Durham University ‘Since t’is the intent and business of the stage, To copy out the follies of the age To hold to every man a glass, And show him of what species he’s an ass’.[1] – John Vanbrugh The sharp, epigrammatic wit of John Vanbrugh’s preface to The Provoked … Read more
On August 26th 1883, Krakatoa erupted. Not, of course, out of a clear blue sky; ash columns and steam plumes had been filling the sky over the island and its archipelago for days, the area had been experiencing tremors and earthquakes for years, and smaller explosions had been throwing up ash, changing the tides and, … Read more
This is an excerpt from an essay by Professor Richard S. Horowitz entitled “The Chinese Maritime Customs Service, 1854–1949: An Introduction”. For almost a century, the Chinese Maritime Customs Service played a central role in the relationship between China and the global economy. The Customs Service was part of the Chinese Government, but it was … Read more
“History is not just a matter of dates. What makes history is what comes before and what comes after the dates that we all remember.” Chris Patten. It will have been exactly twenty years, this coming weekend, since Chris Patten, the 28th and last British Governor of Hong Kong, gave his memorable speech at the … Read more
In the December 21, 1867 issue of the Illustrated London News there appears a striking full-length portrait of a samurai. He is neatly dressed in formal kimono, his left hand holding a sword and his right hand resting on a stool, calmly gazing towards the viewer. Something is odd about this picture, however: the sword … Read more