Europe

Studying Colonialism in Complementary Archives: Nineteenth Century Collections Online and Decolonization

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│By Louis Venter, Gale Ambassador at the University of the Free State│

If you ask any seasoned historian what makes historical research unique, they will emphasise the crucial role of primary sources, which define and distinguish history from other forms of academic writing. In an ever-digitising world, historians can now access digital scans of genuine archival material from anywhere, eliminating the need to travel to distant archives, and making research more efficient.

Bringing together primary sources from multiple archives can enhance one’s research, and Gale Primary Sources offers two key complementary digital archives that can be used in tandem to study colonialism – Nineteenth Century Collections Online: Europe and Africa, Colonialism and Culture and Decolonization: Politics and Independence in Former Colonial and Commonwealth Territories.

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Down To The Wire: The Impact of the Newswire in the Post-World War Two Period

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│By Charlotte Steffen, Gale Ambassador at the University of Portsmouth│

One of the greatest revolutions in journalism was the introduction of the newswire which allowed the sending of information around the world at a much faster pace than ever before. As a History PhD student, and a frequent user of Gale Primary Sources, I have come to heavily rely on newspapers for information in my research but also use them to get an insight into public opinions or changes in opinion. Using Gale’s Associated Press Collections, I investigated how these historic documents give an insight into the civil population’s daily life during the post-war period and its importance for the present-day historic discourse. 

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How Might a Cultural History Scholar Use State Papers Online: The Stuart and Cumberland Papers?

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Stuart and Cumberland

|By Rose O’Connor, Gale Ambassador at Maynooth University|

The Stuart and Cumberland Papers from the Royal Archives, Windsor Castle document the lives of the exiled Stuarts, from the Glorious Revolution in 1688 to the death of the last Stuart heir, Henry Benedict, Cardinal Duke of York in 1807. The Jacobite movement was the struggle, conducted through military and diplomatic means, by the exiled Stuarts and their supporters to regain the English throne. The Stuart and Cumberland Papers archive contains a wide variety of sources on this period of history. From the daily operations of the Stuart government in exile to the details of failed rebellions, there is plenty of material here to assist a political or military historian wishing to investigate eighteenth-century politics in Europe. However, this blog post is going to show you how the sources are also of great use to cultural historians. By reading the same sources, but noticing different details, this is a great way to help with your own essay writing. Let me show you some examples.

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Refugee Nurses and the Second World War

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Nursing Times cover images
In this blog post, Dr Jane Brooks discusses the value of the Historic Nursing Journals – one of the collections included in Women’s Studies Archive: Female Forerunners Worldwide. The Historic Nursing Journals collection was sourced from the Royal College of Nursing (UK). Dr Brooks also explains how she is using the fascinating primary sources in this archive in her own research.

|Dr Jane Brooks, Senior Lecturer at the University of Manchester (UK)|

The digitisation of Historic Nursing Journals by Gale has created a dynamic and valuable resource for historians of nursing in the UK and beyond. I have been working in the field of nursing history for over twenty years. In 2010, I began researching nursing in the Second World War. I predominantly work with personal testimony such as oral history, letters and diaries. However, as well as these source materials usually located in public archives, I have used multiple types of entries in nursing journals, most frequently Nursing Times. I live in Yorkshire, the Royal College of Nursing headquarters library is in London and the archives are in Edinburgh, so every time I wanted to conduct any research using Nursing Times I had to travel to review the hard copies. If I needed to check a reference, I again had to make a journey or request one of the very busy archive staff check for me.

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Paradise Found: Exploring Historical Maps and Travel Writing

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Harris, T. "A South Prospect of the Flourishing City of New York in the Province of New York in America 1746

│By Matthew Trenholm, Gale Ambassador at the University of Exeter│

Of all the Gale archives I’ve explored so far, my favourite is Maps and Travel Literature. Part of Nineteenth Century Collections Online, it has already been a great help to my undergraduate History dissertation on English ports. Maps have been an essential part of human development and Maps and Travel Literature allows you to examine maps from all over the world, produced for different reasons by different people and organisations. There is also a huge range of travel writing to sink your teeth into, giving insight into the human experience behind the maps and other geographical documents.

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Suomi mainittu! – Finland in American News in the Late Nineteenth Century

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Pauli Kettunen, Gale Ambassador at the University of Helsinki

Primary sources are essential to the study and research of history, but most of the time students only read textbooks, journal articles, and other academic material. It is, of course, important to study what has been researched, but with such sources the history has already been written out. To my fortune, I took a course in which an essay had to be based on physical archival sources, so I have been to the National Archives of Finland, to inspect material for it. Browsing propaganda leaflets from the 1940s was fascinating, and I decided I wanted to be able to formulate my own interpretations again, and not only rely on texts written by others.

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Newspaper Coverage From the Christmas Truce 1914

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“Every infraction of this order will be punished as treason”: the fallout from newspaper coverage of the ‘Christmas Truce’

Over Christmas in 1914, one of the most extraordinary and civilised moments of the combat on the Western Front happened: the press dubbed it ‘the Christmas Truce’, an event to modern eyes so inexplicable and contradictory to our perceptions of war that it seems it almost cannot be true.

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18th-Century Brexit? A sneak preview of State Papers Online: Eighteenth Century: Part III

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When reading through some documents contained within the State Papers’ SP94 (Spain) series recently, I was struck by some parallels between early-eighteenth century diplomatic relations and those of our current post-‘Brexit’ times. There is palpable tension in Anglo-Spanish relations from the letters exchanged between British Ambassador to Spain Paul Methuen and James Stanhope, Secretary of State for the Southern Department.

More broadly, this was a time of flux for European relations, with 1713 marking the end of what has been termed the first ‘global’ war: the War of Spanish Succession. Lasting for thirteen years, the war placed greater strain on European ties. Developing from a dispute over the succession of the Spanish throne when King Carlos II died childless in 1700 (leaving the Bourbon, Philippe Duc d’Anjou as his heir), England, Austria, and the Dutch Republic could not countenance a Franco-Spanish alliance dominating Europe. They therefore rejected the proposed succession by declaring war. After a thirteen-year campaign, the 1713 treaty concluding the war confirmed the succession of Philippe as Felipe V of Spain. As those letters show though, this succession prompted a re-evaluation of Anglo-Spanish trade arrangement.

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In or Out? Exploring Britain’s Relationship with Europe using Chatham House Online Archive

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Mahatma Ghandi, Winston Churchill, Benazir Bhutto. Three iconic political figures who each touched the lives of scores of people around the world during their illustrious lives. What is perhaps lesser known is that all three feature in Chatham House Online Archive, having contributed in one form or another to the world-renowned UK think tank. Ranked the second most influential think tank globally in 2015, Chatham House has offered the perfect platform for leading thinkers in their fields to voice their thoughts on the international affairs of the day.

As the EU Referendum in the UK draws ever nearer, and the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ campaigns gather pace, I took the opportunity to delve into Chatham House Online Archive; its comprehensive coverage of over 80 years of international affairs includes the last UK referendum in 1975, which saw a two-thirds majority in favour of continued European Economic Community (EEC – the precursor to the EU) membership. Looking at five pieces of content from a range of contributors reveals some intriguing insights, and continuities, which have characterised Britain’s relationship with Europe over the past forty-four years.

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Gazza, Platini… and Zagorakis: Five Highlights from European Championships Past

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It is a familiar time for football fans across Europe. Flags decorate bedroom windows, cars, and  the faces of millions of hopeful fans, believing that this may be their year. It can only mean the beginning of another football tournament: UEFA Euro 2016.

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