Global History and Culture: Databases

Sources from the National Archive, UK

The Wason Pamphlet Collection, Cornell University

Sources from the School of Oriental and African Studies and the British Library, London: 1793-1980

Sources from the National Archives, UK

Sources from the National Archives, UK.

Sources from the National Archives, UK.

Sources from the National Archive, UK.

Sources from the National Archives, UK.

Drawing upon the wonderfully rich and diverse manuscript collections of the National Library of Scotland this resource will be of great value to all those teaching or researching into the History of South Asia between the foundation of the East India Company in 1615 and the granting of independence to India and Pakistan in 1947. The material comprises diaries and journals, official and private papers, letters, sketches, paintings and original Indian documents containing histories and literary works.

To enable wider access to this important and unique material we have created a resource which will allow users to explore the material in a variety of ways.

The documents can be browsed in several ways; by manuscript reference, theme and date order. Each document within the resource has a detailed description providing background and biographical information. To enable users to search and browse with ease across the whole collection each document has been indexed in detail with topics, places and names.

From a detailed study of the material and history we have identified the following thematic areas by which to group the documents, providing a useful starting point for research and a further way in which to approach the material:

The East India Company: Government and Administration c.1750-1857
Agriculture and Trade c.1750-1857
Society, Travel and Leisure c.1750-1857
The Mysore and Maratha Wars
Indian Uprising 1857-58
The Raj: British Government and Administration of India after 1858
Agriculture and Trade after 1858
Society, Travel and Leisure after 1858
India: Literature, History and Culture

The Edward Sylvester Morse papers (ca. 1858-1925, 40 cubic feet), document the numerous and valuable contributions made by Morse to the areas of malacology, zoology, ethnology, archaeology and art history. The range and depth of his interests are reflected in the complexity of the papers. Included are diaries, scrapbooks, correspondence, research files, drawings, manuscripts, publications and teaching materials. Morse utilized his artistic abilities to illustrate his research as well as daily observations and correspondence. Drawings which were particularly fragile and/or on odd shaped pieces of paper have been encapsulated in polyester.

This collection consists of content from fifteen archival series:

Correspondence; Diaries; Scrapbooks; Natural History; Archaeology Field Work; Ethnology; Japanese Pottery; Lectures; Publications; Inventions; Materials Collected by Morse; Financial Records; Noise Abatement; Biographical and Personal; and Miscellaneous. The papers were given to the Peabody Museum in 1926 and processed in 1984 under a grant from Skogakukan of Tokyo, Japan.

Some documents in this collection contain outdated, biased and offensive views, and terminology that is no longer deemed acceptable. Documents identified as including such content include a warning; further content which expresses such views may be found within other documents included in the collection.

Highlights include:

A complete run of the Stock Exchange Official Year-book for 1875-1945, tracing the development of British, Commonwealth and world finance and industry from the heights of the Victorian era to the end of the Second World War
All the working papers of John Maynard Keynes and his private office during his second period of service at the Treasury, from 1940 until his death in 1946
The papers of David A. Morse, Director-General of the International Labour Office in Geneva from 1948 to 1970
The complete manuscript diaries of the British Labour politician Hugh Dalton, 1916-1960, covering his extensive career as an MP and government minister
A complete run of The Mechanical Engineer for 1897-1917, featuring authoritative articles and reports, along with excellent diagrams and illustrations concerning the rapid scientific and technical advances of the period.

Global Commodities: Trade, Exploration and Cultural Exchange provides a vast range of visual, manuscript and printed materials sourced from over twenty key libraries and more than a dozen companies and trade organisations around the world. These original sources will help scholars to explore the history of fifteen major commodities and to examine the ways that these have changed the world.



The fifteen commodities explored in this resource are:People disembarking at a dock

Chocolate
Coffee
Cotton
Fur
Opium
Oil
Porcelain
Silver and Gold
Spices
Sugar
Tea
Timber
Tobacco
Wheat
Wine and Spirits

Market Research and American Business, 1935-1965 provides a unique insight into the American consumer boom of the mid-20th century through access to the market research reports and supporting documents of Ernest Dichter; the era’s foremost consumer analyst and market research pioneer.



The collection is a treasure trove of information on some of America’s best known brands, containing thousands of reports commissioned by advertising agencies and global businesses in a booming era for consumerism, ‘Madison Avenue’ advertising and global brands on consumer goods ranging from tobacco and broadcasting to cars and hotels.


Immensely influential, Dichter’s Freud-inspired studies put the consumer “on the couch” and emphasised the unconscious motives behind consumer behaviour. The Institute of Motivational Research employed trained social scientists and used established methodologies to conduct psychological research. Dichter’s career reached its peak after Vance Packard’s bestselling exposé The Hidden Persuaders (1957) presented Dichter as a mastermind manipulator who could exploit the emotions of consumers for the benefit of any advertising agency or big brand.

The work of Dichter and his Institute for Motivational Research provided the building blocks for many of the great campaigns of advertising’s golden age – including Exxon’s famous “put a tiger in your tank” campaign and the slogan “bet you can’t just eat one” for Frito-Lays – as well as facilitating the successful introduction of Mattel’s Barbie Doll.


This collection will provide researchers of consumer culture, business, advertising, marketing and psychology with a wealth of documentation. The wide variety of industries featured will allow for diverse – and multilateral – approaches from a range of academic disciplines.



Industries Covered


Advertising Electronics and Technology Non-Profit
Animal and Agriculture Energy and Utilities Office and Stationery
Arts and Crafts Financial Services Public Services
Automotive Food and Drink Personal Products
Broadcasting General Politics
Cleaning Products Hair and Beauty Retail and Wholesale
Clothing and Accessories Healthcare and Pharmaceuticals Sport and Leisure
Construction and Real Estate Household Goods Tobacco
DIY and Gardening Manufacturing Travel and Tourism
Education Media and Publishing Toy and Game
Motion Picture

This multi-archive collection, comprising collections from The National Archives at Kew, the British Library and Senate House Library navigates the complex social climate of nineteenth and early twentieth-century Britain between the introduction of the New Poor Law in 1834 and the eventual abolition of the workhouse system in 1930.'Some Contrasts' from The Reformatory and Refuge Journal: Christmas Number © Images reproduced courtesy of Senate House Library, University of London

Poverty, Philanthropy and Social Conditions in Victorian Britain introduces users to the interactions between government policy and public philanthropy in Victorian and early twentieth-century society, demonstrating a shift in welfare reform and the social tensions surrounding poverty and public welfare. Discover the conditions of workhouses and the administration of the new poor relief system through the official government correspondence of the Poor Law Office, documenting conditions and providing reports of healthcare, diet, sanitation and employment within the institutions. Aimed at regulating relief to the underprivileged, the workhouse system faced many challenges including workhouse scandals which resulted in their infamous reputations.

As these state efforts to regulate and manage the poor increased with the introduction of a workhouse system, philanthropic initiatives which aimed to educate and empower recipients of relief swiftly emerged. Users can research social reform movements in the period through contemporary pamphlets, newsletters and periodicals published by settlement houses across the country, as they ventured to alleviate poverty across the nation through integration of the rich and poor in society. The collection also includes pamphlets and public notices which contextualise societal concerns regarding welfare and reform from the Family Welfare Association Library, exploring broad topics relating to social conditions and policy.

With essays and case studies from academics and specialists, the resource provides insightful approaches to the complex social climate during the period, focusing on a breadth of topics including workhouses and outdoor relief, health and medicine, disability, housing, sanitation and education.

This resource is designed as an important portal for slavery and abolition studies, bringing together documents and collections covering an extensive time period, between 1490 and 2007, from libraries and archives across the Atlantic world. Close attention is given to the varieties of slavery, the legacy of slavery, the social-justice perspective and the continued existence of slavery today.
The project offers:

High-quality color and greyscale images of many thousands of original manuscripts, pamphlets, books, paintings, maps and other documents not available elsewhere.
A powerful portal with links to other significant online sources approved by leading scholars. These international sites are a very important aspect of this resource.
A series of contextual essays by leading authorities from around the world. Each essay includes hypertext links to the primary sources it discusses.
It is designed for both teaching and research use. There is extensive coverage of topics such as the African coast; the Middle Passage; the varieties of slave experience (urban, domestic, industrial, farm, ranch and plantation); spiritualism and religion; resistance and revolts; the Underground Railroad; the abolition movement; legislation; education; the legacy of slavery and slavery today.

The project aims to assemble many substantial clusters of material offering in-depth case studies in America, the Caribbean, Brazil and Cuba along with important material examining European, Islamic and African involvement in the slave trade. The illustration to the right, courtesy of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, depicts Toussaint L'Ouverture during the rebellion which led to the independence of Haiti.

The history of slavery covers many different forms of human exploitation across many cultures and throughout human history. We take 1490 as our starting date. However, it must be acknowledged that the Arab and Eastern slave trade, during which some 14 million people were sold into slavery, was well established by this time and dates back to the 7th century AD. The Atlantic triangular trade started much later. Slavery as an institution goes back much further to the ancient Mediterranean civilizations of Egypt, Greece, the Roman Empire, Assyria and the Islamic Caliphate. A few rare books included within this project will look back to these earlier periods, but our principal focus here will be 1490 to 2007.

Drawing upon the wonderfully rich and diverse manuscript collections of the National Library of Scotland this resource will be of great value to all those teaching or researching into the History of South Asia between the foundation of the East India Company in 1615 and the granting of independence to India and Pakistan in 1947. The material comprises diaries and journals, official and private papers, letters, sketches, paintings and original Indian documents containing histories and literary works.

To enable wider access to this important and unique material we have created a resource which will allow users to explore the material in a variety of ways.

The documents can be browsed in several ways; by manuscript reference, theme and date order. Each document within the resource has a detailed description providing background and biographical information. To enable users to search and browse with ease across the whole collection each document has been indexed in detail with topics, places and names.

From a detailed study of the material and history we have identified the following thematic areas by which to group the documents, providing a useful starting point for research and a further way in which to approach the material:

The East India Company: Government and Administration c.1750-1857
Agriculture and Trade c.1750-1857
Society, Travel and Leisure c.1750-1857
The Mysore and Maratha Wars
Indian Uprising 1857-58
The Raj: British Government and Administration of India after 1858
Agriculture and Trade after 1858
Society, Travel and Leisure after 1858
India: Literature, History and Culture

Life at Sea explores the lives of seafarers in the Anglo-American maritime world during the period 1600-1900. The emphasis of the resource is largely on narrative content, giving accounts of life onboard a variety of ocean-going vessels, including merchant and naval vessels, whalers, and pirate ships. A large amount of this content is sourced from journals written by sailors at sea but also from memoirs written by sailors reflecting on their lives. Another major source of narrative content are court records, especially from depositions and witness statements, including the examinations of pirates and court martials within the Royal Navy.

Material has been sourced from institutions in both England and the United States, providing collections that reflect the maritime experience on both sides of the Atlantic. The bulk of the material ranges from 1650-1850, reflecting the availability of material and roughly coinciding with the Golden Age of Sail. The end of the 1850s is also the high-water mark of American whaling prior to the discovery of oil in 1859 at Titusville, Pennsylvania.



Material has been sourced from world-renowned maritime archives and heritage collections:
Massachusetts Historical Society
Mystic Seaport Museum
The National Archives, UK
National Maritime Museum, Greenwich UK

Migration to New Worlds explores the movement of peoples from Great Britain, Ireland, mainland Europe and Asia to the New World and Australasia. Split across two modules, and including collections from 26 archives, libraries and museums, Migration to New Worlds brings together the movement and memories of millions across two centuries of mass migration.

Migration to New Worlds: The Century of Immigration concentrates on the period 1800 to 1924 and covers all aspects of the migration experience, from motives and departures to arrival and permanent settlement. To supplement this, the collection includes early material such as the first emigration ‘round robin’ from 1621 and letters from late eighteenth-century merchants and travellers in the United States. Some later material is also available, including ocean liner and immigration depot photographs from the mid-twentieth century.

The collection presents a unique insight into the personal stories of migrants during this period. Letter collections, travel journals, diaries and oral histories provide a wealth of first-hand accounts for research into emigration experiences and the hardship of settlement. These are supplemented by scrapbooks, government papers, hand-drawn maps, watercolours, objects, emigration pamphlets, shipping papers and rare printed material which provide significant context to government legislation, commercial interests and living conditions for migrants during this period.

Significant material on the movement of Indian and Chinese indentured labourers is included from The National Archives. The complete War and Colonial Department and Colonial Office: Emigration Original Correspondence files cover both the emigration and remigration of indentured labourers and all printed material is fully text-searchable.

The primary source documents collected here in Frontier Life: Borderlands, Settlement & Colonial Encounters help us to understand existence and consequences on the various frontiers that arose from the movements of Europeans to Africa, Australasia and North America.

When Europeans left their shores in their millions in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to settle in faraway Africa, Australasia and North America, they ushered in a new era of global history. The frontier regions that arose from these movements were spaces where people of different backgrounds – cultural, economic, political – encountered, cooperated and competed with one another. The frontiers that came about were dynamic places that resulted in adventure, misery, economic booms, busts and huge extensions of influence. Yet not only wealth but new states and global powers were created as a result of the advances and evolutions of these frontier zones. The European settlers, and for a time Indigenous peoples, then colonial governments and new independent nation states were able to exploit the opportunities that arose as a result of these new dynamics, helping to create a new world order. On the other side was demise for the original incumbents of the lands that these frontiers surpassed. Indigenous peoples were decimated and damaged as a result of these influxes and theirs is a story that is also told here.

The primary source documents digitized and collected here tell the story of some of these frontiers in North America, Australasia and Africa, allowing scholars to better understand the nature and significance of these regions at various points from the eighteenth century up until the twentieth century.

Sources from The National Archives, UK.

Mass Observation Project consists of all the directives (questionnaires) sent out by Mass Observation and the responses to them from the hundreds of Mass Observers.

Addressing topics such as the Falklands War, clothing, attitudes to the USA, reading and television habits, morality and religion, and Britain's relations with Europe, the directives and responses are an essential resource for anyone interested in late-twentieth and early twenty-first-century British social history.

Broad themes covered include current events, friends and family, the home, leisure, politics, society, culture and the media, work, finance and the economy and new technology.

There is also the addition of observer material from the celebrations of Queen Elizabeth II’s Silver Jubilee in 1977. This event was seen as a perfect time to attempt a modest revival of the Mass Observation project, before the full reinstitution of the Mass Observation Project in 1981. Volunteers were asked to collect information and observations based on the preparations for Jubilee celebrations, and what these celebrations entailed such as street parties and media responses to the Jubilee.

From music and youth culture to politics and fashion, the period from 1950 to 1975 witnessed dramatic changes in society. Popular Culture in Britain and America, 1950-1975 traces the development from 1950s austerity to the excess of the 1970s through a range of printed and manuscript sources, visual material, ephemera and video footage including:

Pamphlets, letters, government files, and eye witness accounts covering key events of the period.
The renowned Social Protest Collection from University of California, Berkeley.
Underground magazines including OZ and IT; as well as American fanzines and alternative press titles from Bowling Green State University.
Thousands of indexed photographs depicting the people and events of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.
Ephemera and memorabilia – posters, pins and artefacts.
A collection of carefully selected video footage that brings the sights and sounds of the period to life.

Additional material explores the key issues and events of the period and includes:

Music: artist files, record company documents, chart lists, fan magazines, photographs and posters from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Press kits and lobby cards for popular movies and television from Bowling Green State University.
Full-colour mail order catalogues and advertising proofs.
The complete run of Gandalf’s Garden magazine.
Original video footage spanning 1950-1975 featuring key personalities from John F. Kennedy, Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe to The Beatles and The Rolling Stones.
Photographic material sourced from the Mirrorpix archives.
Documents from the Labour Party archives charting social change and important records on The Troubles in Northern Ireland from The National Archives.
Important documents depicting student unrest from the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament archives held at Warwick University.

Everyday Life & Women in America is a resource for the study of American social, cultural and popular history, providing access to rare primary source material from the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History, Duke University and The New York Public Library.

Everyday Life & Women in America comprises thousands of fully searchable images of monographs, pamphlets, periodicals and broadsides addressing 19th and early 20th century political, social and gender issues, religion, race, education, employment, marriage, sexuality, home and family life, health, and pastimes. The collection is especially rich in conduct of life and domestic management literature, offering vivid insights into the daily lives of women and men, as well as emphasizing contrasts in regional, urban and rural cultures.


Unique primary sources cover the following themes: 

Political and Social issues
Race
Religion
Family
Popular Fiction & Sensational Literature
Children's Prescriptive Literature
Periodicals
Women
Fashion & Beauty
Cookery
Medicine
Education
Work
Farming

This resource is produced in association with the Perdita Project based at the University of Warwick and Nottingham Trent University. “Perdita” means “lost woman” and the quest of the Perdita Project has been to find early modern women authors who were “lost” because their writing exists only in manuscript form. Thanks to the endeavours of the Perdita Project the valuable work of these “lost” women is being rediscovered.


AM has now enhanced this path-breaking research by linking their catalogue descriptions with full digital facsimiles of many of the manuscripts. Over 230 of the entries from the Perdita Project have been carefully selected to digitise for this resource. Many of these entries were chosen for the large amount of detail they contain, all of which has been painstakingly captured by the project's dedicated researchers over a number of years.


The manuscripts in this site were written or compiled by women in the British Isles during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and they have been sourced from archives and libraries across the United Kingdom and the USA. One of the key attractions of Perdita Manuscripts is that it brings together little known material from widely scattered locations. The provision of a powerful searching facility, biographical and bibliographical resources, and contextual essays by academics working in the field, makes this an indispensable resource for students and researchers.

Sex & Sexuality provides unprecedented access to a wealth of essential primary sources collated by prominent sex researchers and sexologists, community activists, official organizations, social reformers, and individuals. This resource aims to provide an insight into the wide-ranging breadth and experience of human sexuality from all angles, for example scientific, historical attitudes, sexuality, and sexual behaviours.

Module I: Research Collections from The Kinsey Institute Library & Special Collections

A unique collaboration with the Kinsey Institute Library and Special Collections presents correspondence, research papers and records spanning the tenures of the first three Institute directors; Dr Alfred C. Kinsey (1947-1956), Dr Paul H. Gebhard (1956-1982) and Dr June Reinisch (1982-1993).

Trace key Institutional developments, the research agendas of leading specialists in diverse fields such as criminology, medicine, anthropology and sexology and discover the evolving public interest in human sexuality and identity.

Module II: Self-Expression, Community and Identity

The second module of Sex & Sexuality is focused upon the lived experiences of individuals from across the spectrum of human sexuality, including heterosexual and LGBTQI+ experiences, at different times in history – specifically from the nineteenth century up to the present day. It also covers the criminalization of sexuality; both in terms of sex work but also the relentless prosecution and persecution of, mostly men, for "homosexual acts". Flashpoints in LGBT history such as the Stonewall riots and the resulting movements for change and grass-roots activism that we are still experiencing today are also represented within these documents. There is coverage on the establishment of Pride parades which were an act of social defiance at the time, as well as interviews with patients and public consciousness-raising efforts from the devastating HIV/AIDs crisis.

Self-Expression, Community and Identity expands the resource with further collections from the Kinsey Institute focusing on eroticism and personal writings, adding the everyday experience alonside the papers of sex researchers and medical practitioners. Partnerships with the ONE Archives at the USC Libraries, and The National Archives, UK, plus the Edward Carpenter Papers, the Norman Haire Collection, the National Lesbian and Gay Survey, and the Anne Lister Diaries build a chorus of voices representing a diversity of lived human experience in Sex & Sexuality.

Sources from The National Archives, UK.

The Lady’s Magazine – an entertaining and educational journal aimed at “the housewife as well as the peeress” – was the first objective and professional effort to create a magazine acceptable for women. Topics include aspects of the social and domestic sciences, as well as health, education, and the humanities.

The documents published here range from the late nineteenth century up until the late 1990s with the bulk representing the post-1945 world. The collections included are the Publications, Account Files for nine key clients, Staff Newsletters, Staff Writings & Speeches, Chicago Office Research, New York Office Research, New Business Records, Information Center Records, Corporation Vertical Files, Review Board Records, Staff Meeting Minutes and a selection of Print Advertisements. A huge number of brands, companies, and industries are covered from automobiles to cosmetics and cruises. It includes complete files on some of J. Walter Thompson’s key accounts.

Journalism played a vital role in keeping those serving in the war informed and connected, wherever in the world they happened to be stationed. Service newspapers acted as a vital mouthpiece, being variously responsible for:

keeping the units apprised of the general progress of the war
providing news local to where the units were stationed
reporting on life back at home
encouraging discussion and intellectual improvement
offering amusing anecdotes, competitions, cartoons and entertainment
The newspapers would be shared between units, often changing hands several times, eagerly anticipated for the morale boost and distraction from the discomforts and uncertainty of wartime military service. The nature of the content varies considerably from title to title, depending on such factors as availability of printing resources and whether the editors were appointed from among the men themselves (often resulting in more light-hearted editorial) or officially commissioned by senior staff (which usually meant a certain element of censorship).

To today’s scholars these newspapers, so rich in social and cultural history, offer a unique perspective on the local and global experience of the war and will enable the research of key historical events through the medium of contemporary publications.

Trade catalogues have been a prominent feature in commerce and manufacturing from the eighteenth century to the present day. Highly illustrated, they are an essential visual record of a variety of products and facilitate research into popular culture, material culture, social norms and attitudes, as well as the history of marketing, business, and technology.

These documents provide evidence of the evolution of distribution and communication systems linking manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers, and consumers across the emerging United States and beyond. They document the changing commercial tastes and fashions of the consumer over a period of rapid growth, expansion and crisis (both at home and overseas), revealing contemporary prices and economic expenditure for households and individuals on a range of products.

Interrogation of trade catalogues, trade cards and marketing ephemera provides opportunities for interdisciplinary research across the social sciences including:

• Material culture
• Social history
• History of business and marketing
• The rise of mail order and department stores
• The role of women; both within the home and without
• The changing nature of consumerism
• The idea of the ‘American Dream’
• Mass production
• The effects of conflict on business and consumerism
• Consumer habits and purchasing power within this timeframe
Scope of the Collection
The wide range of industries and documents covered within this period allow researchers to explore: gender, class, changing social attitudes towards consumerism, the rise of the American Dream, and the response of American business to conflict. It is possible to explore the shaping of the United States in a century that witnessed the closing of the frontier, the mapping of states, domestic and international conflict, Reconstruction, the Great Depression – and the resulting cultural and societal changes including the role of women and material culture. Users can trace business history, the development of advertising, the rise and popularity of mail order shopping and department stores as well as changes in design, improvements in technology and the impact on domestic life using the material included within this resource.

Colonial Office Files from The National Archives, UK

Sources from the National Archives, UK

Produced in collaboration with the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive Ethnomusicology: Global Field Recordings is comprised of over 60 field collections from ethnomusicologists dating from the mid-twentieth century to the early twenty-first century. This resource also features material from the University of Washington Ethnomusicology Archive relating to prominent ethnomusicologist Robert Garfias.

The audio recordings, videos, field notebooks and journals in this resource document musical traditions and how music interacts with different societies and cultures all over the globe. There are recordings from Alaska to the Pacific Islands, West Africa to Indonesia, including religious music, secular music, celebrations and funerals. There are interviews with musicians, slides and photographs of field sites and photographs of instruments being played and in isolation.

This resource provides a wealth of materials for the interdisciplinary study of ethnomusicology; whether the focus is on music, anthropology, dance, religion or spirituality.

Key themes covered
Education and the teaching of Ethnomusicology
The interaction between music and art
Religion and ritual
The history and development of the discipline
Cultural identity and social norms
Music and gender
Music and conflict
Musical traditions

Explore a wide range of primary source material, including printed and manuscript cookbooks, advertising ephemera, government reports, films, and illustrated content revealing the evolution of food and drink within everyday life and the public sphere. The unique material in this collection has been sourced from across the globe to reflect a wide range of food cultures and traditions, creating an unparalleled resource for research.
Documents are tagged with one or more themes to help users browse to the most useful content. These themes were identified based on the content of the collection. Click below to find out more about thematic groupings and to discover the documents that are categorised under each:

Front cover of Quick Frozen Foods, 1962. Content compilation © 2019, by the Hagley Museum & Library. All rights reserved.
Advertising and Marketing
Alcohol Production and Consumption
Beverages
Education and Cooking Schools
Farming and Agricultural Industrialisation
Food and Gender
Food and Identity
Food Economics
Food Power, Politics and Activism
Food Preparation
Food Production and Industry
Food, Race and Ethnicity
Food Regulation and Adulteration
Food Retailing
Food Rituals, Feasting and Religion
Food Technologies
Food and War
Gastronomy
Global and Ethnic Cuisines
Health and Nutrition
Restaurant Culture and the Professional Chef
Storage and Packaging
Taste and Appetite
Vegetarianism and Food Diets

The documents of the Globe’s performance archive primarily deal with productions from the opening of the theatre in 1997 to the end of Dominic Dromgoole’s tenure as Artistic Director in 2016. It includes materials on ‘Original Practice’ productions that attempted to recreate the acting methods and costumes of Shakespeare’s time. It also includes material on performances at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse from 2014-2016. The architectural material includes plans from the 1980s onwards and there are also oral histories discussing the theatre’s early days.

The collection contains information on around 170 different plays, concerts or events and over 400 different productions of these plays.

The archive divides into 14 main collections of document types:

Prompt Books: the stage managers’ notes that documents how a performance was staged and arranged.

Wardrobe Notes and Jottings: containing information on how actors were dressed and costumes conceived and designed.

Music: the sheet music composed or arranged by the music directors and used by the musicians in a performance.

Props: photographs of a selection of props used in productions. This also includes 360 views of some objects.

Performance Photographs: images taken of productions.

Programmes: the information and ancillary essays that accompanied performances plus cast and creatives’ details.

Show Reports: information taken for the Front of House teams detailing audience behaviours and challenges.

Posters: the imagery and artwork used to publicise productions.

Globe Research: papers discussing the findings of particular productions.

Annual Reports: administrative information on the year including financial results.

Around the Globe: the quarterly magazine sent to supporters of Shakespeare’s Globe.

Architectural Material: plans for the building work, correspondence and papers researching the construction and photographs of the building.

June Everett Art: several hundred images drawn and painted by the Globe’s one-time artist in residence.

Oral Histories: interviews with people involved in the early stages of the Globe project.

Shakespeare in Performance goes behind the scenes to shine a light on how Shakespeare’s plays have been interpreted by theatre companies, actors and directors across the centuries.

The resource features prompt books from the world-famous collection at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC. These prompt books tell the story of Shakespeare’s plays as they were performed in theatres throughout Great Britain, the United States and internationally, between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries.

Socialism on Film is an impressive collection of documentaries, newsreels and features that reveals the world as seen by Soviet, Chinese, Vietnamese, East European, British and Latin American filmmakers. It ranges from the early twentieth century to the 1980s and examines the themes of War & Revolution, News & Current Affairs plus Culture & Society. The whole spectrum of socialist life is here on film.
Socialism on Film documents the communist world from the Russian Revolution through to the late 1980s. The digitised films cover all aspects of the socialist experience from everyday life and society to culture, the Cold War, memory and current affairs. Footage includes documentaries, newsreels and feature films. Geographically the films deal with the Soviet Union alongside significant groupings of material on Vietnam, China, Korea, the German Democratic Republic and Eastern Europe, Britain, Spain, Latin America and Cuba.

This resource brings together hundreds of accounts by women of their travels across the globe from the early nineteenth century to the late twentieth century. Students and researchers will find sources covering a variety of topics, including architecture, art, the British Empire, climate, customs, exploration, family life, housing, industry, language, monuments, mountains, natural history, politics and diplomacy, race, religion, science, shopping and war.

A wide variety of forms of travel writing are included, ranging from unique manuscripts, diaries and correspondence to drawings, guidebooks and photographs. The resource also includes a gallery with hundreds of items of visual material, including postcards, sketches and photographs.
Places visited include the USA and Canada; China, Japan and the Philippines; Europe (very well documented); Russia; Africa; and Australia.

World’s fairs are a truly interdisciplinary subject. They engage topics as diverse as globalization and city planning to visual culture, bubble-gum and a global public, and this resource aims to reflect this breadth by including as wide a range of material types as possible. From the governmental records of early financial appeals and delicate international diplomacy, minutes and correspondence of fair committees and plans and design concepts, to contemporary ephemera (tickets, pamphlets, posters), personal accounts and official guidebooks; a huge range of angles of enquiry are made possible.

The first fair represented in this resource is what many consider the first world’s fair, the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations at the Crystal Palace in London, 1851. The latest case study is Montreal’s Expo 1967, but there are documents as recent as Milan’s (successful) bid to host Expo 2015. The largest concentration of documents relate to fairs from the late Victorian-early Edwardian era of 1880-1920; the ‘golden age’ of expositions when cities raced to outdo each other – sometimes hosting rival fairs in the same year.

While there are documents for host nations from every continent, the historical focus of international expositions (and therefore this resource) is Northern European, North American, Australian and – in the twentieth century in particular – East Asian. Throughout the centuries, however, countries from all over the world participated in world’s fairs not only as displayed but as active displayers, and can be discovered in this resource.

Sourced from the archive of The Worshipful Company of Stationers & Newspaper Makers, located at Stationers’ Hall in the City of London, this resource allows access to a vast and unique collection of primary source documents. The collection is widely regarded as one of the most important primary sources for studying the history of the book as well as publishing history, the history of copyright and the workings of an early London Livery Company. Explore the variety of documents to uncover the story of the role the Stationers’ Company played in the history of the book trade.

Nineteenth Century Literary Society makes available more than 1,400 items from the archive of the historic John Murray publishing company. Watch the Introduction to the John Murray Archive here.

Held by the National Library of Scotland since 2006 and added to the UNESCO Register of World Memory in 2011, the Murray collection comprises one of the world’s most important literary archives. Primary source materials span the entirety of the long nineteenth century and document the golden era of the House of Murray from its inception in 1768. Records digitised in this resource predominantly focus on the tenure of John Murray II and his son, John Murray III, as they rose to prominence in the publishing trade, launching long-running series including the political periodical Quarterly Review, and publishing genre-defining titles such as Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, Austen’s Emma and Livingstone’s Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa.

The John Murray Archive houses the most complete archival collection of the famed poet, Lord Byron; his manuscripts and personal papers are a particular highlight of Nineteenth Century Literary Society, charting both literary triumph and personal scandal.

Romanticism: Life, Literature and Landscape presents the manuscript collections of the Wordsworth Trust, offering students and researchers of the Romantic period unique access to the working notebooks, verse manuscripts and correspondence of William Wordsworth and his fellow writers. We have also included over 2,500 fine art pieces from the Wordsworth Trust’s fine art collection that serve to contextualize the work of the poets and writers represented in this resource. All documents have been digitised in full colour.

The resource is designed for both teaching and study, from undergraduate to research students and beyond.

Authors and artists represented in this resource include:

- William Wordsworth
- Dorothy Worsdworth
- Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- Thomas De Quincey
- Robert Southey
- Matthew Arnold
- Charles Lamb
- Benjamin Robert Haydon
- J.M.W. Turner
- John Constable
- John Ruskin
- Thomas Gainsborough

The content in Medical Services and Warfare has been selected in close collaboration with collection staff at participating libraries, archives and museums and specialist academic editorial board members in the fields of conflict and medical history. Attendance at focused conferences also played a large part in ensuring material is relevant and appropriate for students and scholars.

The resource is provided in two modules, 1850-1927 and 1928-1949. It tells the story of medical advances during warfare from the mid-nineteenth century to the outbreak of the influenza epidemic in 1918, the discovery of penicillin in 1928, and up to post-war reforms such as the foundation of the British National Health Service. The wealth of documents cover multiple conflicts as well as interwar developments from a range of perspectives.

Material has been sourced from across the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and Europe to enable comparisons on key areas of systematic reform, improvements to sanitation and the treatment of disease, rehabilitation, nursing care, surgical techniques and wound treatment.

The four conflicts robustly represented are the Crimean War, the American Civil War, the First World War and the Second World War. Many other conflicts also have relevant documents and can be discovered via keyword searching, including the Boer Wars, Spanish-American War and the Spanish Civil War. No conflicts within the date range were explicitly excluded, but material was selected based on its contribution to the thematic scope of the project.

Popular Medicine in America documents the history of ‘popular’ remedies and treatments in nineteenth century America, through primary source materials drawn from the extensive collections at the Library Company of Philadelphia and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The material covers popular trends such as phrenology, herbal medicine and hydrotherapy, and documents the rise of widespread advertising by commercial manufacturers of medical aids.

We have selected material with a significant emphasis on ephemera and advertising, aimed at the ordinary man in the street rather than medical professionals, with the focus upon enabling him to treat himself and his family at home using an array of inventive methods and fashionable techniques. These popular practices were built upon the earlier traditions of folk medicine and materia medica as dispensed by apothecaries, and help to show the relationships and differences between traditional old-style medicine and newly emerging scientific methods.

Only five major letter collections exist from fifteenth-century England, and they are all available here in Medieval Family Life.

These letter collections and associated manuscripts take the user into the world of medieval families, businesses, relationships, trade, politics and communities.

A plethora of topics are covered in these collections, from arranging advantageous marriages and inheritances, through estate management and financial dealings to women and their role in the family. Arguments between parents and children, births, deaths, acts of violence, lawsuits and incidents from everyday social and domestic life are all present.

Medieval Family Life presents full-color images of the original medieval manuscripts of which these letter collections are constituted, alongside fully searchable transcriptions drawn from available printed editions.

This project provides an extensive collection of manuscript materials for the study of medieval travel writing in fact and in fantasy. The core of the material is a magnificent collection of medieval manuscripts from libraries around the world, dating from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries and focusing in the main on accounts of journeys to the Holy Land, India and China. The manuscripts are sourced from the British Library; Bodleian Library; Bibliothèque nationale de France; Cambridge University Library; Trinity College, Cambridge; Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg; Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin; Österreichische Nationalbibliothek; Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallen; Beinecke Library, Yale University; Trinity College, Dublin; and thirteen other libraries and archives, to make a truly international collection.

The original documents are in a range of languages including English, Dutch, French, German, Latin and Spanish. Sections particularly relevant to the travellers on which the resource focuses have been highlighted, as for example in MS Bodley 648. Supporting these manuscripts are relevant secondary texts of translations and editions, as well as full catalogue details. The sources included tell us much about the attitudes and preconceptions of people across Europe in the medieval period, shedding light on issues of race, economics, trade, militarism, politics, literature and science. This collection will enrich the experience of all those exploring topics such as the nature of pilgrimage, the origins of global trade, travels to the Holy Land, the Silk Road, and the representation of the ‘East’ and the ‘other’ in the Middle Ages. In addition to the archival and published material there is a gallery of maps and images, a bibliography of published works germane to the manuscripts, and a chronology of the period.

From early contacts between European settlers and American Indians and the subsequent political, social and cultural effects of those encounters on American Indian life, these materials tell both the historical and the personal stories of the colonization of the Americas. Continuing through to the modern era, and told against the backdrop of the 19th century expansion into the ‘Western Frontier’ right through to the civil rights movement of the mid-twentieth century, American Indian Histories and Cultures highlights both the myths and realities of the ‘Wild West’ and American Indian cultural identity.

Sources from the Everett D. Groff collection at the Newberry Library, Chicago.

Sources from The National Archives, UK.

Sources from the National Archives, UK.

The period after the Civil War in America became known as the Gilded Age, coined by Mark Twain in his seminal novel The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today, playing on the failure of the expected 'golden era' of Reconstruction. This resource aims to showcase the transformation of America into a modern, urban, industrial global power through business, legal and personal papers. Technological progress and extreme wealth for the few, contrasted with stark inequality and endemic poverty for much of America's population.

The social problems caused by this rapid urbanization led to a widespread reform movement from the 1890s to the 1920s; the period now known as the Progressive Era. These reforms aimed to eliminate political corruption, regulate monopolies, and establish systems of social support. It was also during this period that some of the key Gilded Age captains of industry started donating their profits on a huge scale. They funded scientific research and founded countless public education and arts institutions, creating many of the major museums, libraries and universities in the United States today.

Sources from The National Archives, UK.

Sourced from the records of the Race Relations Department of the United Church Board for Homeland Ministries, housed at the Amistad Research Center in New Orleans, this resource provides access to a wealth of documents highlighting different responses to the challenges of overcoming prejudice, segregation and racial tensions. These range from survey material, including interviews and statistics, to educational pamphlets, administrative correspondence, and photographs and speeches from the Annual Race Relations Institutes.



Key themes covered include:

Desegregation of schools, industries and public transport – survey material documents the attitudes of the community towards prospective desegregation, as well as analyzing the results. The progress of legislation and legal cases can also be explored within the collection.
Migration of African Americans from the rural South to urban centers, which had a significant impact on American industry and the labor movement, as well as domestic issues such as housing, overcrowding and poverty.
The role of the Church in the Civil Rights Movement and in African American communities, from helping to fund organizations like the Race Relations Institute, to the part played in encouraging integration or segregation among their congregations.
Race riots and other racial tensions, which the Race Relations Department worked to diffuse or prevent by aiding communities to identify and address their problems.
Activities of the Civil Rights Movement, including protest marches, sit-in demonstrations, student movements, and legal cases.

ewish Life in America, c1654-1954 is an indispensable resource for scholars and students interested in understanding and exploring the history of Jewish communities in America from their first arrival in New York in 1654 to the integral part that they play today. It will provide an essential resource for teaching and study, from undergraduate to research students and beyond.


The material is based on a rich variety of original manuscript collections from the unique holdings of the American Jewish Historical Society in New York; we provide access to six major organisational collections and twenty-four collections of personal papers; all of which have been digitized in their entirety.

The personal collections are a treasure trove of letters, scrapbooks, autobiographies, notebooks and other materials relating to the late 17th through to the mid-20th century. These include the following:



Philip Cowen Papers
Bernard C. Ehrenreich Papers
Bernard Felsenthal Papers
Franks Family Papers
Gomez Family Papers
Gratz Family Papers
Myer S. Isaacs Collection
Philip Jacobs Collection
Solomon Robert Kagan Papers
Marion E. Kenworthy Papers
Emma Lazarus Collection
Isaac Leeser Collection
Levy Family (New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore) Papers
Jefferson Monroe Levy Collection
Jonas Phillips Levy Papers
Uriah P. Levy Collection
Louis Marshall Papers
Moses Family (of New York City) Papers
Moss Family of Philadelphia Papers
Nones Family Papers
Haym Salomon Collection
Seixas Family Papers