Tag: British history
TRIAL: Primary Sources: Foreign Office Files for the Middle East
The Library currently has a trial for Adam Matthew Digital’s collection of FOREIGN OFFICE FILES FOR THE MIDDLE EAST, 1971-1981.
This currently includes only Module 1, 1971-1974: The 1973 Arab-Israel War and the Oil Crisis, which was released in January.
The trial ends February 29. The resource can be accessed at www.archivesdirect.amdigital.co.uk/FO_MiddleEast. With trial access it is not possible to download documents in the collection.
“Digitising full runs of Foreign Office files from The National Archives, this collection provides invaluable insight into events in the Middle East during the 1970s. Covering events such as the Arab-Israeli War, the Lebanese civil war and the Iranian Revolution, Foreign Office Files for the Middle East, 1971-1981 is an essential resource to help students and researchers understand the modern Middle East. This collection documents UK interests in the internal activities and political relationships of countries such as Egypt, Israel, Syria, Iran, Libya and Lebanon, the oil affairs of nations like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Algeria and Iraq, as well as participating in military intervention and peace negotiations during key conflicts, and monitoring the UK’s commercial interests. Split chronologically into three modules, Foreign Office Files for the Middle East, 1971-1981 tackles these events using a variety of material, from correspondence between civil servants and embassies, reports and memorandums, to political summaries and personality profiles.”
Two more modules will be published in the future:
• Module 2, 1975-1978: The Lebanese Civil War and the Camp David Accords (Nov 2016)
• Module 3, 1979-1981: The Iranian Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War (Jan 2017)
Please contact me with your thoughts about the usefulness of this resource.
Primary Sources: British Documents on the End of Empire Project
British Documents on the End of Empire (BDEEP) is an online platform providing access to full-text downloadable copies of three series of books produced by the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London. The volumes contain largely previously unpublished materials from the official archives of the British Public Record Office (now U.K. National Archives).
Each volume was edited by a leading scholar in the field of decolonization, who located and analyzed “key documentation charting shifts in the political, social, and economic policies of officials, both at home and in the colonies.” As stated at the site, the volumes “contain a wealth of material on issues such as constitutional reform, economic development and foreign relations which remain remarkably relevant to the work of contemporary policy-makers in the UK and across the Commonwealth.”
Series A is volumes of general British government documents relating to the British Empire. Series B is volumes on particular countries. Series C volumes are guides to archival sources at the Public Record Office.
Series A
1. Imperial Policy and Colonial Practice, 1925-1945 (in two parts, 1996), edited by SR Ashton and SE Stockwell
2. The Labour Government and the End of Empire, 1945-1951 (in four parts, 1992), edited by Ronald Hyam
3. The Conservative Government and the End of Empire, 1951-1957 (in three parts, 1994), edited by David Goldsworthy
4. The Conservative Government and the End of Empire, 1957-1964 (in two parts, 2000), edited by Ronald Hyam and Wm Roger Louis
5. East of Suez and the Commonwealth, 1964-1971 (in three parts, 2004), edited by SR Ashton and Wm Roger Louis
Series B
1. Ghana (in two parts, 1992), edited by R Rathbone
2. Sri Lanka (in two parts, 1997), edited by KM De Silva 3. Malaya (in three parts, 1995), edited by AJ Stockwell 4. Egypt and the Defence of the Middle East, 1945-1949 (in three parts, 1998), edited by John Kent
5. Sudan (in two parts, 1998), edited by Douglas H Johnson
6. The West Indies (in one part, 1999), edited by SR Ashton and David Killingray
7. Nigeria (in two parts, 2001), edited by Martin Lynn
8. Malaysia (in one part, 2004), edited by AJ Stockwell
9. Central Africa (in two parts, 2005), edited by Philip Murphy
10. Fiji (in one part, 2006), edited by Brij V Lal
11. Malta (in one part, 2006), edited by Simon C Smith
Series C
1. Records of the Colonial Office, Dominions Office, Commonwealth Relations Office and Commonwealth Office (in one part, 1995), edited by Anne Thurston
2. Records of the Cabinet, Foreign Office, Treasury and Other Records (in one part, 1998), edited by Anne Thurston
The Library has only a few of the print volumes in its collection. Many thanks to James Vernon for making me aware of this valuable resources. A link to this site has been added to the History: Britain & Ireland subject guide at http://guides.lib.berkeley.edu/uk/empire.
Primary Sources: Records Relating to the Slave Trade at the Liverpool Record Office
This British Online Archives collection includes private merchants’ papers preserved at the Liverpool Record Office relating to the transatlantic slave trade. During the eighteenth century when these documents were compiled, Liverpool was the leading slave trade port in the world. “The material includes correspondence with ship captains and Caribbean agents about the acquisition of Africans and their sales; statistics on the Liverpool slave trade; sales accounts of the lots of Africans disembarked in the Americas, often with the names of purchasers and prices; information on dealings with diverse African groups along the coast of West Africa; and details of payments for slave sales. The account books of ships’ voyages includ material on the outfitting of vessels and the cargoes of goods exported to Africa.”
The vast majority of these documents are handwritten and have not been transcribed. The metadata describing the documents can be searched, but not the documents themselves. Only individual pages can be downloaded and/or printed.
Primary Source: The Meerut Conspiracy Trial, 1929-1933
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In Spring 1929 a group of labor leaders and trade unionists were arrested and charged under section 121-A of the Indian Penal Code (Act 45 of 1860) for “conspiring to deprive the King of His Sovereignty of British India.” Labeled by the British government as Bolsheviks, only a few of the men were members of the Communist Party, which at the time did not have a strong presence in India. The preliminary proceedings, subsequent trial, and appeals together lasted four years, during which the accused garnered much public sympathy and the Communist movement in India gained more support.
The Meerut Conspiracy Trial, 1929-1933, a collection contained in British Online Archives, includes documents drawn from the British Library, Labour History Archive & Study Centre and Working Class Movement Library. They include India Office records, personal papers of one of the accused, papers of a Secretary of the Labour party that show widespread support of the accused, and a collection of books and pamphlets related to the trial.
Primary Sources: The British Union of Fascists: newspapers and secret files
Part of British Online Archives, The British Union of Fascists: newspapers and secret files collection includes documents from the UK National Archives and the Imperial War Museum related to the 1930s British fascist movement led by Sir Oswald Mosley.
Three principal publications of the BUF, Action (1936-1940), Blackshirt (1933-1939) and Fascist week (1933-1934) are reproduced here. The collection also includes information gathered by the Home Office, the Police, MI5 and the Cabinet Office on Mosley and his second wife Lady Diana Mosley.
Primary Sources: British Cartoon Archive
With holdings dating back to 1904, the British Cartoon Archive includes “artwork for more than 150,000 British editorial, socio-political, and pocket cartoons, supported by large collections of comic strips, newspaper cuttings, books and magazines.”
The collection can be browsed and a basic and advanced search are offered. Advanced searching allows the user to find images by cartoonist, date, subject, publication, and many other aspects.
Resource: Shakespearean London Theatres (ShaLT) project
In spring 2013 an ambitious endeavor was launched: The Shakespearean London Theatres (ShaLT) project, the purpose of which is to make widely available information about the history of Elizabethan theaters in London. Scholars Gabriel Egan and Andrew Gurr desired to broaden the public’s awareness of theaters beyond the Globe Theatre. They developed a tourism project of walking tours, with background information about the theaters available in short lectures, in a guidebook, and on a website. An app is also available at the iTunes store.
The project was produced under a Creative Commons license, which allows anyone to share, remix or reuse the content available at the site.
Trial: Orlando: Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginning to the Present
Until June 6, The Library has access to a trial of Orlando: Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginning to the Present.
Tabs lead the user to a brief overview of an author, a list of writings, a brief life (with bibliography of sources), an overview of life/writing (each with bibliographies), a lengthy timeline of events in the author’s life, and links to mentions of the author in other parts of Orlando. The timelines are quite helpful as is the ability to search by occupation, place and genre. Most interesting, perhaps, is the tag search, which allows the user to combine many different aspects of authors’s lives to create a dataset. I recommend you look at the PDF guide, which provides simple instructions for accessing the many features of the database.
A review of Orlando in Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature provides some background on the project and suggestions on how to best exploit its features. Excepts from additional reviews can be found on the Orlando site.
Please send your comments to Michaelyn Burnette.
(Miranda Hickman. “Orlando: Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present (review).” Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature 27.1 (2008): 181-186. Project MUSE. Web. 13 May. 2014
Primary Sources: British Online Archives
British Online Archives (BOA) consists of eleven thematic series, each containing individual collections of archival contents. The series are largely oriented toward British and British colonial history and new collections are added as they become available. The eleven series comprising BOA are:
- Anglo-American Relations
- British Broadcasting Corporation
- British Records on the Atlantic World, 1700-1900
- Colonial & Missionary Records
- Communist Party of Great Britain
- Industrial Revolution
- People & Protest in Britain and Abroad, 1800-2000
- Twentieth Century Political History
- Records of the Raj
- Religion
- Science & Medicine
Some of the collections are listed in more than one thematic series.
The digital collections have been converted from microform sets distributed by Microform Academic Publishers, a few of which the Library already owns. There are guides associated with each collection, which will assist researchers in browsing. Basic and advance searching are offered; the advanced search function allows a choice between searching “all collections” or selecting only one collection at a time. Search results can be frustrating, because while the system will indicate where in a document the search terms appear, the terms are not highlighted in the document.
A major inconvenience is that the documents currently can only be printed or downloaded one page at a time. With Adobe Acrobat (free to all students, faculty and staff, remember) individual pages can be stitched together into one PDF, but I’m well aware of the extra effort that entails.
Despite these drawbacks, these collections can be of great value to researchers here. In future posts, I’ll be describing a few of them in more detail.
Trial: British Online Archives
Until November 22nd, The Library has trial access to the British Online Archives, which includes 38 collections of primary historical sources. Main areas of coverage include missionary and colonial records through the archives of the East India Company and the United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. There is a strong emphasis on slavery and the Triangular Trade as well as a large collection of material concerning Anglo-American relations. There are many collections concerning twentieth century British politics, including the papers of the Parliamentary Labour Party and the British Union of Fascists, as well as a separate archive dedicated to the Communist Party of Great Britain.
You can select either the Advanced Search link in the menu, or Start in the black navigation bar to access the Advanced Search page. Enter your search or category criteria here, and select any of the filter options. You can also perform a Quick Search of the archive by entering up to five keywords in the menu search field.
Search results will come up with any collections which contain the keywords searched for in their metadata. To narrow down your search and home in on your desired result, click the collection you would like to see the results for, you can then search within the collection, the results will show only the series that are relevant to your search, within the series a document that is relevant, and within the document individual images that contain the search criteria. If only one document matches, the search will take you straight to it. At the image level your search ‘hits’ will be highlighted red in the left hand panel of the document viewer.
Please send your comments about this source to dorner@berkeley.edu or comment here.