The collection features briefs (appellants’, appellees’, reply, amicus), appendices, memoranda, petitions, transcripts, and more from all Courts of Appeals, including these major circuits:

• Second Circuit, New York—one of the most influential, often cited in business and copyright law rulings
• District of Columbia Circuit, Washington, D.C.—especially relevant to cases on constitutional and administrative law
• Ninth Circuit, California—regarded as the most liberal of circuit courts

The circuits/collections are the same for Part I and Part II, since there are only 10 circuits plus the District of Columbia circuit. All new content has been added to the existing circuits/collections.

REVIEW OF KEY FEATURES

To support the research needs of legal scholars, we have built support for the following search fields:

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Crime, Punishment, and Popular Culture, 1790–1920

Daily Mail Historical Archive, 1896–2016

International Herald Tribune Historical Archive 1887–2013

Mirror Historical Archive, 1903–2000

Public Health Archives: Public Health in Modern America, 1890–1970

Punch Historical Archive, 1841–1992

Refugees, Relief, and Resettlement: Forced Migration and World War II

Religions of America

Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Burney Newspapers Collection

Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Nichols Newspapers Collection

The Telegraph Historical Archive, 1855–2016

The Times Digital Archive, 1785–2019

Covering the second half of the nineteenth century, Part II of China and the Modern World: Imperial China and the West completes the Foreign Office series of general correspondence relating to China (FO 17) and offers an unparalleled level of insight into Anglo-Chinese relations, the roles of China, Britain and other Western Powers in the wider Asian context, and the beginning of the end of China's final Imperial dynasty, the Qing.

As the Western Powers competed to extend their influence in China, building railways and mines, providing ships and weapons and granting loans to the Chinese government while conducting hugely profitable trade from the busy ports of Canton, Shanghai, Amoy, Ningpo, Chefoo and more, the Qing dynasty faced challenges, both internal and external, to their position as a great Power in Asia.
 

The Foreign Office correspondence within Part II illustrates the wide range of issues that concerned the British in China, as well as major events in the region, covering the Chinese role against the French in Tonkin (northern Vietnam), disputes over Korea and Taiwan, the development of the First Sino-Japanese war and the Treaty of Shimonoseki, as well as the Boxer Rebellion and the siege of the international Legations in Beijing. The British representatives throughout the region provide valuable reports and opinions, and of particular interest are the volumes of correspondence to and from the British representatives at Seoul. Alongside the hundreds of volumes (FO 17/873–1768) of correspondence in FO 17, Part II also contains several volumes of Law Officers’ reports to the Foreign Office focused on China, held separately in series FO 83.

These hand-written documents have been opened up to scholars with the use of Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) technology, as well as item-level information drawn from the Foreign Office Indexes in series FO 605 or newly created for Imperial China and the West. Researchers will also find Foreign Office indexing from series FO 566, FO 804 and FO 738.

Major historical events and topics are covered in the archive, including;

• The Sino-Soviet Ili crisis and the Treaty of St Petersburg (1881)
• The training of Chinese naval officers in the UK
• The First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895)
• King Gojong of Korea takes refuge in Russian Legation
• The Boxer Rebellion and the signing of the Peking Protocol (1900)
• Railway Development and international competition
• Piracies in the China Seas 
• The Panthay Rebellion
• Chinese emigration

The third module in Gale’s Women’s Studies Archive series, Rare Titles from the American Antiquarian Society, 1820-1922, gives researchers unprecedented access to over one million pages of female-authored work across a diverse range of both fiction and non-fiction. Sourced from and curated by the American Antiquarian Society, the pre-eminent collector of pre-twentieth century Americana, this archive includes around 5,700 monographs published between 1820 and 1922 in the United States and authored by women.

An official bibliography of female-authored texts published in the United States during this period does not exist. In its absence, this assembly of monographs, expertly curated by the American Antiquarian Society, serves this purpose for scholars.

Composed of rare and unique titles and covering over a century of female writing, the collection will enable new scholarship into feminist perspectives and the discovery of female-authored works that have been previously overlooked. Providing users with a canon of women’s literature, the archive helps to answer questions about women’s cultural contributions, provides insight into the female experience, and represents exciting new opportunities for the digital humanities. Although several of the authors found within will be highly recognisable, such as George Eliot and Louisa May Alcott, many of them will be completely unknown, allowing scholars to make new connections as well as rediscovering lost or ignored works from the past. The vast majority of monographs have never been scanned before and are not available on the open web.

ARCHIVE CONTENT

Curated by the American Antiquarian Society, the monographs in this archive were selected from across the library’s collection, primarily because they were authored or edited by women, to provide users with a canon of women’s literature. By maintaining a wide scope in the selection of material, this artificial collection supports a diverse variety of research areas, both answering questions on women’s cultural contributions and providing insight into the day-to-day lives of both upper-class and working-class women.

Encompassing more than one hundred years of female authorship, the material in Rare Titles from the American Antiquarian Society, 1820-1922  includes a diversity of fiction genres and non-fiction subjects such as poetry, personal letters, recipe books, memoirs, histories, pamphlets, leaflets, instructional guides on domesticity and etiquette, biographies, autobiographies, personal papers, children’s literature, commentaries on fashion, diaries, religious tracts, legal accounts, oration, political ephemera and fiction, although there is no overlap with Gale’s American Fiction archive.  These titles are united in that they are all texts written by women, not just documents about them, with the wide variety of genres supporting multiple avenues of research into women’s history, in women’s own voices.

A de-duplication analysis has been conducted and none of the content overlaps with other Gale archives, and there is a minimal amount available via open access platforms.

A MULTIDISCIPLINARY ARCHIVE

The deliberately broad nature of the selected titles included in Rare Titles from the American Antiquarian Society, 1820-1922 means it contains a wide variety of materials that will appeal to a range of disciplines, such as:

• Women’s History
• Gender Studies
• American Literature
• Cultural Studies
• Critical Theory and Analysis
• History / American and Canadian History
• Media and Journalism
• Politics
• Sociology

OPPORTUNTIES FOR DIGITAL SCHOLARSHIP

As an archive of exclusively female-authored works, Rare Titles from the American Antiquarian Society, 1820-1922 presents an exciting opportunity for text and data mining. By providing a unique corpus of material that has clear definition and boundaries, the module forms a perfect data set for digital humanities research, enabling new scholarship into feminist perspectives.

DATE RANGE:
1820-1922

DOCUMENT TYPE:
Monographs

SOURCE LIBRARY:
American Antiquarian Society

This essay originally appears in 1989 with publication of finding aid to the microfilm edition of Jewish People from Holocaust to Nationhood, Series 1: Archives of the Central British Fund for World Jewish Relief, 1933, 1960. This essay is reproduced with the permission of World Jewish Relief.

The Central British Fund for World Jewish Relief (CBF), known variously in the 1930s as the Central British Fund for German Jewry in 1933, as the Council for German Jewry in 1936 and the Central Council for Jewish Refugees in 1939, was founded in the early months of 1933 by a group of Anglo-Jewish communal leaders who represented the breadth of the liturgical spectrum and who held widely diverse political loyalties. Among them were Anthony G. and Lionel de Rothschild, bankers to the CBF, Sir Edward S. Baron, Sir R. W. Cohen, Sir Osmond E. d’Avigdor Goldsmid, Lord Erleigh, K.C., (on the death of his father, Lord Reading, in 1936, Lord Erleigh succeeded to the title), Neville J. Laski, K.C., Lord Simon Marks, Leonard G. Montefiore, Sir Isadore Salmon, Otto M. Schiff and Philip S. Waley. They were moved to organise the CBF in response to the threatened position of Jews in Germany following President von Hindenburg’s appointment of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933.

Early Discriminatory Legislation in Nazi Germany

Hitler’s National Socialist [Nazi] Party had been elected to the Reichstag on a political platform of anti-Semitism. Despoliation and persecution were its mandate, annihilation its ultimate goal. To these ends, legislation was enacted to deprive Jews and other non-Aryans (persons one of whose parents or grandparents was Jewish) of employment, citizenship, and property. A statutory basis for the cumulative body of discriminatory legislation, ordinances, and decrees of the next few years, the Gesetz zur Wiederherstellung des Berufsbeamtentums, was enacted on 7 April 1933. This law for the “Reconstruction of the Civil Service” provided that Jews and non-Aryans, with few exceptions related to pre-1914 civil service and frontline army experience in the First World War, be summarily dismissed from employment or involuntarily retired.

The statute was soon extended, and before the end of 1935 German law provided for the dismissal of Jewish and non-Aryan university professors, school teachers, scientists, employees of national and municipal departments, members of the judiciary, doctors, dentists, lawyers, public health and welfare officers and employees in commercial enterprises. The Jewish press was banned. Jews and non-Aryans were not permitted to bring lawsuits in courts of law. Many fled to neighbouring countries hopeful that the political situation would soon change. Some sought refuge in the United Kingdom; others a temporary haven there until they were able to immigrate to a third country.

Otto Schiff and the First Asylum Seekers

CBF records indicate that the earliest refugees who sought aid from Anglo-Jewish sources arrived in London in March 1933. Those without relatives or friends able to provide housing for them were cared for at the Jews Temporary Shelter in the East End of London, an institution established early in the century to assist Jews fleeing persecution in Russia. Otto Schiff, long known to the Home Office for his work with World War I refugees from Europe, was its president. Schiff enlisted some friends with whom he organised the Jewish Refugees Committee (JRC), which for several months operated from the shelter where a ready-made social service support network was at hand. Schiff continued in his leadership position in the JRC and membership of the CBF Executive until 1949.

The 1930s were years of economic depression and high unemployment in the United Kingdom. In 1933 the number of refugees reaching England was not yet large, but possibly to avoid stirring anti-Semitism at home and to forestall action that might result in their numbers being contained by government regulation, Schiff, representing the CBF, led a deputation that included Neville Laski, President of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, Lionel L. Cohen, K.C., Chairman of the Board’s Law and Parliamentary Committee, and Leonard G. Montefiore, President of the Anglo-Jewish Association, to the Home Office to assure the government that no refugee admitted to Britain would be permitted to become a public charge. This pledge was honoured up to the end of 1939 when as a result of the war, substantial financial contributions from public appeals could no longer be secured.

Austria’s Annexation and Kristallnacht

A massive and panicked exodus followed Germany’s annexation of Austria in March 1938, a movement fueled further later that year by the nationally organised pogrom of 9-10 November, known as Kristallnacht. When areas of Czechoslovakia were absorbed into the German Reich in March 1939, ‘Bloomsbury House’, the appellation by which the Jewish Refugees Committee now operating from that address in London was known, was deluged as it tried to cope with as many as one thousand hapless visitors a day. This influx of refugees from almost all the countries of Europe was halted only after war was declared.

Political Pressures within Jewish Communities

The CBF’s administrative records hold an almost unbroken series of minutes of its Executive meetings dating from 16 May 1933.

The Executive Committee met on a regular basis. During emergency situations it was convened weekly or even daily, and minutes make evident the fact that its members were in constant contact with each other and with third persons upon whose expertise they could call. The records paint a picture of ongoing policy making, of fund allocations to the JRC for assistance to refugees in transit or those hoping to rebuild their lives in the United Kingdom, of grants to community agencies in Europe and of ongoing allocations to Zionist organisations for agricultural training, the purchase of tools and equipment, assistance for immigration to Palestine and the construction of housing there. Also revealed is the CBF’s handling of political and religious pressure groups within Anglo-Jewry and representatives of European Jewish communities, as well as the relationship with the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (AJDC), a philanthropic organisation created in 1914 for the relief of Jews in Russia and in Palestine. In post- World War II years, the AJDC would become the world’s major Jewish philanthropic organisation, raising hundreds of millions of dollars for the relief and rehabilitation of Jews in need. However, the record reveals that in the years from 1933 to 1939 the CBF was the world’s major Jewish fundraising agency for assistance to Jews in Germany and the one to which refugees and communities caring for them turned.

Within days of its inception in May 1933, the Allocations Committee of the CBF set aside funds for the Jewish Refugees Committee to aid refugees reaching the United Kingdom and allocated monies to German Jewish communal agencies for the vocational training of young people and the retraining of adults, for immigration assistance, and for the provision of housing for immigrants to Palestine in accordance with its emerging policy: priority funding for emigration. In addition, funds were made available to the non-sectarian academic Assistance Council, whose appeal for funds was headed by Sir William Beveridge. The CBF’s Academic Committee, forerunner of the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning, held its first meeting 4 May 1933. That Committee’s minute book lists a number of distinguished academics, Jews and non-Jews alike, who served as members in helping to place their refugee peers in British institutions of higher learning.

Palestine: Major Hope for Resettlement

Evident from minutes of the CBF’s Executive Committee is a very early appreciation of the political situation affecting Jews in Germany and a realisation that resettlement in Palestine was German Jewry’s only hope of large-scale immigration. An undated memorandum relating to the organisation of the first fundraising appeal in 1933 addresses the special position of the Zionists and makes clear how Anglo-Jewry’s leaders were able to set aside personal political biases and respond in a meaningful way to help Jews in Germany immigrate to Palestine. Nonetheless, the strong Zionist influence of Chaim Weizmann and Nahum Sokolow and of Simon Marks on the Executive Committee is especially evident and was doubtlessly a major factor in the rescue and resettlement in Palestine of numbers far greater than might otherwise have been achieved.

The minutes of the 1930s suggest that this kind of synergy was sorely lacking among Jewish organisations in the United States. Distance from Europe appears to have dulled American Jewry’s early recognition of the tragedy besetting German Jewry.

International Jewish Conference: The Gravest Problem

A conference for the relief of German Jewry attended by representatives of Jewish communities throughout the world was held in London from 29 October to 1 November 1933. The entire proceedings have been preserved among the CBF’s records. A statement of CBF’s activities for the year are succinctly outlined in Document No. 2 of the conference. It is one of several submitted by a variety of organisations in the United Kingdom and overseas. Reports, resolutions and recommendations issued by the Conference emphasised the determination of participants to cooperate ‘to meet the gravest problem which has faced (Jews] for centuries’.

The CBF maintained close contact with communities in Europe whenever possible. Several members of the Executive and others nominated to do so visited Germany, Austria, France, Belgium, and Holland and returned to London with firsthand knowledge of conditions and needs. In pre-war years, their concern was that monies be raised locally in Europe to cover the cost of relief and organisational administration so that funds allocated from Britain could be used in their entirety for training, retraining and emigration. The Executive did not wish the CBF to serve Europe as a relief agency, but rather as one offering constructive alternatives for those forced to flee their homes.

CBF Seeks Help from the Dominions

Norman Bentwich and Sir Wyndham Deedes were appointed Honorary Directors of the CBF. Wyndham Deedes was a non-Jew active on behalf of non-Aryan Christians. Both men had seen service in the government of Palestine under Sir Herbert Samuel. At the request of the Executive they travelled to the Dominions of Australia and South Africa to apprise Jewish communities there of the deteriorating situation in Europe and to urge greater fundraising efforts on their behalf. These communities were also asked to approach their governments with a view to securing entry permits for refugees. But Dominion governments were not disposed to respond positively to such requests. Landing permits for Australia continued to be issued only on an individual basis to persons sponsored by relatives or friends. South Africa was even less cooperative. A meeting on immigration held in London on 13 January 1938 to discuss worldwide possibilities makes poignantly clear the paucity of opportunity for Jewish refugees.

On his visit to the United States in 1936, Sir Herbert Samuel met U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and requested that consuls in Germany be instructed to speed visa issuance to eligible applicants. From available evidence it may be assumed that no such change was effected. Other countries responded no differently as evident from the individual country files and from minutes of the Executive. Over the years a number of immigration schemes were proposed, but because of their cost, location, or the advent of war, they proved abortive.

The file for Austria, for example, holds two detailed reports submitted by Norman Bentwich on conditions in Vienna following his visit there in 1938 and again in August 1939 shortly before war was declared. On the second occasion, Bentwich met with Hauptmann Adolf Eichmann, and his report carries their discussions regarding future emigration. Also in the Austria file are applications from older persons seeking emigration assistance. They are rated on a points system: those with children overseas, with funds available, with employable skills or other assets were given a greater number of preferential points, a grim reminder of desperate choices that were made.

The Nuremberg Laws, September 1935

In September 1935 Germany enacted the ‘Nuremberg Laws’, which deprived Jews of all civil rights. The need to speed immigration to countries of safety was now paramount. The CBF’s Executive concluded that although the board of the AJDC in New York was kept fully advised on events in Europe and its representatives were invited to attend Executive and Allocations Committee meetings whenever they were in London, a delegation should proceed to the United States to heighten awareness on the part of the AJDC and anyone else who would listen, of the gravity of the situation in Germany and seek cooperation from the AJDC for a coordinated rescue effort.

To this end, Sir Herbert Samuel, Simon Marks, and Lord Bearsted travelled to the United States in January 1936. On his return to London, Sir Herbert reported to the Executive that they had visited Chicago, Illinois; St Louis, Missouri; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Washington, DC; and New York. They had made thirty speeches, five of which were broadcast by radio. As noted earlier, This was when Samuel met Roosevelt, as well as Frances Perkins, the U.S. Secretary of Labor; James G. McDonald, then High Commissioner for Refugees; and representatives of non­Jewish agencies, all of whom, Samuel reported, had shown concern for the position of Jews in Germany.

Council for German Jewry

As a result of this visit to the United States, the AJDC agreed to join forces with the CBF in forming a new organisation, the Council for German Jewry (CGJ). Its members were the CBF, AJDC and the American United Palestine Appeal (UPA). It was hoped that the CGJ, which was to meet in London, would serve to coordinate activities between the tripartite agencies and provide evidence worldwide of the solidarity of effort among major Jewish philanthropic organisations on both sides of the Atlantic. In the United States at this time fundraising was conducted separately by the AJDC and the United Palestine Appeal, whereas in the United Kingdom this political division affecting fundraising had been resolved when the CBF was first organised in 1933. At that time, the Zionist organisations agreed to raise funds with the CBF, an arrangement maintained until early in the war. Chaim Weizmann was appointed a member of CBF’s Executive. Lavy Bakstansky, appointed a joint secretary to the CBF with Meyer Stephany, was nominated by the Zionists.

A major thrust of the Council for German Jewry was the training and orderly emigration from Germany over a three-year period of 80,000 to 100,000 young adults and children, a majority of whom would go to Palestine. Provision was to be made for training suitable emigrants within Germany and in Holland, France, and Belgium. Resettlement overseas and loans and relief, where necessary, would be accomplished through the machinery of existing agencies. Much discussion ensued on whether Jews still in Germany or those already outside its borders should be the first recipients of available certificates for Palestine. A sense of urgency in regard to emigration remained paramount throughout these exchanges.

American Support for CBF Emigration Plan Disappointing

It was envisaged that to achieve the CGJ’s goals $5,000,000 would be subscribed in Europe and $10,000,000 in the United States and other countries around the world. Representatives of the AJDC attended meetings of the Executive of the CGJ in London, but despite hopes of its British members for financial cooperation from the AJDC, none was forthcoming. In the end the CBF was to prove the major contributor to programmes undertaken. Dr. Stephen Wise and Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver, representatives of the American United Palestine Appeal, attended several meetings of the CGJ’s Executive. Great disappointment was recorded following their report to the Executive of monies which might be expected from the UPA. The emigration goal set for young persons in Germany could not be achieved at this level of support. Minutes of the Executive suggest that political rather than humanitarian considerations were paramount among American Jewish lay leaders. Only after the ‘Anschluss’ of Austria in 1938, did the AJDC agree to work more closely with the CBF for the benefit of Austrian Jews.

Throughout 1936 members of the CGJ travelled abroad to encourage fundraising efforts in support of its programme of rescue. They also visited agricultural training sites in Germany, France, Holland, and Belgium, to which funds were allocated through communal agencies. Wyndham Deedes and Peter Scott, the latter a member of the Society of Friends, an agency that worked closely with the CBF in its rescue efforts, were asked by the Council to accompany Norman Bentwich on his visit to Germany, where they would review agricultural training programmes and report to London on their progress. Peter Scott was an expert in the field of agriculture. The report on training would emphasise the gravity of the situation confronting Jews in Germany and the need to hasten emigration.

Activities of the Jewish Refugees Committee

Until early in 1936 the JRC’s several committees responsible for meeting the varying needs of the refugees were able to function in a relatively orderly manner. Friends and relatives in the United Kingdom were approached by or made contact with the Emigration Committee in regard to provision of guarantees of support for individuals or families seeking entry into the United Kingdom that the Committee helped to secure. On arrival, refugees received assistance in obtaining third country visas and outbound shipping; the Welfare Committee found placement for students in British institutions of higher learning and apprenticeships were obtained for young men in skilled trades and for agricultural pursuits. The Resettlement Committee, which operated throughout the period under review, provided a large number of loans to businessmen after their ventures had received Home Office approval, and the Professional Committee secured employment for professional men and women. The Domestic Bureau meanwhile secured job placements for women, some of whom were accompanied by a child, and occasionally for married couples. The Bureau’s records testify that several thousand refugees were able to secure entry visas to the United Kingdom in the immediate pre-war period as a result of its efforts.

At a meeting of the Executive of the CGJ in 1936, Otto Schiff noted that in earlier years refugees generally had sufficient funds with which to support themselves, but that since passage of the Nuremberg laws in September 1935, those entering the United Kingdom were often in need of financial assistance. At the same meeting Schiff reported that the Home Office had ruled that German children would no longer be admitted for educational purposes unless a Home Office-approved family  in the United Kingdom guaranteed that they would not become a public charge. In this regard Wyndham Deedes was already at work to organise a committee that would assist such children.  The CGJ made a substantial grant to this agency, the Inter-Aid Committee for Children from Germany, which helped all children regardless of religious affiliation.

Aid Continues Despite Financial Crisis

Calls upon the funds of the CGJ and services of its constituent agencies by unprecedented numbers of refugees reached a breaking point in the spring of 1939. The Executive reported that its funds were exhausted. No alternative remained to the Executive but to authorise substantial bank overdrafts so that the work of rescue could continue. The CGJ’s position was so desperate that for the first time since its inception, approaches to the government for possible loans to the JRC were considered.

The Executive thus agreed that in view of the financial crisis and the dire situation of Jews in Europe a delegation should call upon Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. Lord Bearsted, who led the deputation, asked that the Government request that facilities be made available in countries of the British Empire for immigration of refugees from Germany and Austria. In response, Chamberlain observed that his government was already investigating immigration possibilities outside of the United Kingdom. Bearsted then stressed the tremendous financial burden the refugees reaching the United Kingdom were placing on the limited resources of the Anglo-Jewish community and suggested that if emigration on a larger scale were to ensue, government funding for voluntary agencies activities would be needed. In reply, Chamberlain stated that these matters would be placed before the conference at Evian. Bearsted requested also that the Prime Minister authorise unaccompanied children be granted less restrictive entry to the United Kingdom.

Chamberlain noted that this last request was a matter for the Home Secretary, but he would support any programme that the Home Office department approved. Thus, another deputation, one led by Lord Samuel of the CGJ’s Executive, together with representatives of the Inter-Aid Committee, the Society of Friends, and JRC called on the Home Secretary, Sir Samuel Hoare. Following their presentation Hoare agreed to lift earlier Home Office restrictions on accommodation for children and allow entry to all of those for whom maintenance was guaranteed, either by individuals or by voluntary agencies.

Birth of the Refugee Children’s Movement

A major easing of the documentation of children was assured when Hoare ruled that unaccompanied children no longer had to secure national passports in Europe or entry visas from British consuls; they would be granted entry on the basis of identity cards, which the Inter-Aid Committee was authorised to issue. This was a major breakthrough. Children who might otherwise not have been rescued were saved by this ruling. The Inter-Aid Committee and JRC then agreed to coordinating their efforts in the interest of children and together established the Refugee Children’s Movement (RCM). Despite its precarious financial position, the CGJ agreed to sponsor the movement to Britain of a first contingent of 5,000 children with others to follow.

The RCM’s goals were widely publicised and offers of hospitality for children poured in from concerned persons throughout the United Kingdom. Members of the Society of Friends helped Jewish communal organisations select children in Berlin and in Vienna. As a result of all these efforts 9,354 children, almost a thousand of whom were Christian non-Aryans, found refuge in Britain, the last of them being allowed to land a few days after war was declared. Records of the RCM divulge a myriad of problems with which the agency was called upon to cope, some of which multiplied when children were evacuated from London and other strategic areas when war was declared. Concern for the religious education of children and realities of proselytization efforts among non-Jewish hosts was also a continuing theme and source of concern in the RCM records.

The Plight of Austrian Jewry

In March 1938 when Germany annexed Austria, funds of the Israelitischen Kultusgemeinde Wien (literally Jewish Community in Vienna), where a majority of Austrian Jews lived, were impounded and its buildings occupied. CGJ Executive minutes and other materials provide detailed reports on the incarceration, spoliation, and resulting desperate situation of Jews in Vienna. Not only were Austrian Jews now in dire straits, others fleeing Czechoslovakia or expelled from Burgenland (an eastern state in Austria that bordered the western edge of Hungary)  swelled their numbers. The Reichsvertretung der Deutsche Juden (the Reich Representation of German Jews) in Berlin sent individuals to Vienna to render assistance. It is evident that Jews in Berlin still had some freedom of movement whereas action against those in Austria was immediate and vicious.

AJDC representatives in Vienna were authorised by the CGJ to spend monies on their behalf and between the two agencies they fed thousands of the destitute at soup kitchens. Drs. Loewenthal and Alois Rothenberg of the Kultusgemeinde came to London to report to the Executive on the situation in Vienna and to request additional financial aid, especially for young persons in agricultural training centres preparing to depart to Palestine. The Executive agreed also to send a representative to Vienna for a three-month period to assist the community and Captain B.M. Woolf, secretary of the West London Synagogue, was given leave of absence to take this assignment.

Evian-Les-Bains, July 1938

The United States had distanced itself from Europe and showed no signs of easing its own restrictive immigration laws. Nonetheless, President Roosevelt convened a conference on emigration and refugees for July 1938 at Evian-les-Bains, France. Although it was clear at the outset that no government was to be asked to change its immigration laws or to finance the movement of refugees, the conference was viewed with hope, and Norman Bentwich was asked to attend at Evian as CGJ observer.

Much time at Executive meetings was spent in discussion on how to present the plight of German and Austrian Jews at the conference. It was agreed that the CGJ and the AJDC would submit a joint statement on their concerns to the Secretary General of the Intergovernmental Committee on Emigration and Refugees, at the American Embassy in London. The statement supplements several memoranda presented to the conference at Evian. It outlined the work of the two agencies on behalf of German and more recently Austrian Jews and reminded the Secretary General of the desperate situation of Jews in those countries. In the aftermath of the conference it was obvious that hope in its deliberations had been misplaced. None of the participating countries agreed to modify their stance on immigration and alleviate the plight of refugees.

S.S. St. Louis, June 1939

In June 1939, Otto Schiff, Paul Baerwald, and Harold Lindner, the latter two representatives of the AJDC on the Council for German Jewry, called at the Home Office to seek permission for three hundred passengers aboard the S.S. St. Louis to land in the United Kingdom. They were part of a complement of 907 passengers destined for Cuba whose landing permits had been revoked by that country’s government after the ship set sail from Hamburg, Germany, in May. No country in the Americas was prepared to offer sanctuary to those aboard, even though substantial financial guarantees for their support had been assured by philanthropic agencies. The alternative was for them to be returned to Germany.

While en route to Europe, Belgium, Holland, and France together agreed to take two thirds of the passengers. At the Home Office, Baerwald and Lindner added the assurance of the AJDC to Schiff’s on behalf of the CGJ that those admitted to the United Kingdom would not be allowed to become a public charge. Despite government misgivings related to security, permission was granted for the passengers to disembark in the United Kingdom. A number were able to secure visas and leave for the United States before war was declared.

Refugees and Transmigrants after Kristallnacht

The growing numbers of refugees arriving at the JRC’s offices following Kristallnacht in November 1938 again created a dilemma for the CGJ and its constituent agencies. The guarantee given to the Home Office in 1933 that no refugees would become a public charge was backfiring. Refugee numbers were now very much greater and their economic condition more dire than could possibly have been anticipated six years earlier. Those reaching the United Kingdom as transmigrants without means had to be supported when war was declared and shipping to countries overseas was curtailed.

The men among them were housed in a disused army camp at Richborough, Kent, rented by the CGJ, which was then home to several thousand teenage and adult men while they awaited shipping to overseas countries. Earlier in the year a number of men released from the concentration camp at Dachau had been accommodated there. In the early days of the war many at Richborough, and others in the community, were interned on the Isle of Man as enemy aliens; some were deported to Australia and Canada. Most were later released and many served in the British armed forces, while others served on the land, in industry, medicine and science. As shipping became available, even during the war years, a number were able to join relatives and friends overseas. From 1933 to 1939 some 20,000 were able to emigrate from the United Kingdom.

Financial Guarantees and Appeals

Throughout the latter months of 1939, the Executive held discussions and meetings with government officials on the future financial support for refugees. Funds of the CGJ were depleted and a massive loan had been secured in August, on the guarantee of Nathan Mayer Rothschild and Marcus Samuel (of Samuel & Co.), against expected income from government tax refunds and covenants. This infusion of cash helped only for a few months. In Executive meetings fear was expressed that if the JRC allowed refugees to become a charge on local rates, such action would stir anti-Semitism. Members of the Executive of the Central Council for Jewish Refugees (CCJR), the name by which the CGJ came to be known after war was declared, were under great strain. It took much persuasion, including threats that the JRC would cease operating, to convince the government that the refugees were not solely a Jewish problem and that the Anglo-Jewish community alone could no longer shoulder responsibility for their welfare. The Christian Council for Refugees from Germany and Central Europe added its voice in support of the CCJR in meetings with government officials. Tangible evidence of this is seen in a substantial short-term loan to the CCJR to help it continue to finance the JRC during the period of negotiation.

A transcript of minutes of a meeting of Anglo-Jewry called in February 1940 by the Central Council for Jewish Refugees to launch an emergency appeal for financial support reveals some of the anxiety felt in the immediate pre-war period and the need to find means of support for refugees when war was declared. Anthony de Rothschild expressed appreciation to the Christian Council for the loan, which had enabled CCJR’s work to continue until, with their support, the government had agreed to share the financial burden.

Rome Office Financial Support

Closure of the CCJR’s operations was averted at the last moment when the government agreed to a series of grants-in-aid shared in part by the Christian Council. At a later date the Home Office undertook the total cost of support for those refugees whose jobs had been lost as a result of the war. A major part of the administrative costs of the voluntary agencies was also underwritten by the government. A Central Committee for Refugees was appointed by the Home Office to distribute and supervise expenditure of the months provided in accordance with government guidelines. Its members were representatives of the several Jewish and Christian refugee agencies. Sir Herbert Emerson, High Commissioner for Refugees, was appointed chairman. A Central Office for Refugees, co-chaired by Anthony de Rothschild and the Reverend Henry Carter, head of the Christian Council, served as the principal channel of communication between government departments and refugee organisations throughout the country. It also provided contact between them and served as a bureau of general information on refugee matters. The Committee’s Executive included representatives of the Central Council for Jewish Refugees, the Christian Council, and the Refugee Children’s Movement. A substantial body of material pertaining to these agencies, including minutes, correspondence and financial activity, is preserved in the CBF archives, providing a view of voluntary agency administration of government funds.

The provision of partial funding by the government of the CCJR in 1940 relieved tensions, enabling the Executive to continue its policy making role. Almost £3,000,000 in cash had been raised by the CBF and its successor organisations since 1933 and former Prime Minister Earl Stanley Baldwin’s national appeal in 1938 had provided a further £250,000, most of which financed the rescue and care of children. When war was finally declared, it was estimated that 65,000 refugees, many thousands of whom were awaiting shipping to third countries, had found asylum in the United Kingdom.

The Young, The Old and the Frail

All during the war the CCJR, the JRC and the RCM continued to carry responsibility for the well-being of refugees. Some who were aged or mentally ill were placed in sheltered housing for their lifetime. Representation by the JRC to the government was ongoing on behalf of internees, deportees, persons seeking employment and others. Contact was maintained with young adults trained in agriculture who joined various branches of the armed forces and with others who took up nursing and essential war work while awaiting immigration to Palestine.

Jewish Committee for Relief Abroad, 1943

Although the CBF had been created in response to the plight of German Jews, it was with prescience and an unflinching sense of responsibility that the Executive of the CCJR agreed to finance the activities of a new organisation, the Jewish Committee for Relief Abroad (JCRA), established in 1943.

Its purpose was to recruit suitably qualified persons who would volunteer their services to travel overseas and care for concentration camp and other Jewish survivors when they were liberated by Allied armies. The JCRA joined major voluntary agencies in the United Kingdom under the umbrella of the Council of British Societies for Relief Abroad (COBSRA).

Almost two hundred volunteers including doctors, nurses and social workers served in Europe. During the war some of them in Egypt, destined to enter southern Europe, helped care for several thousand Yugoslav women and children evacuated from the Dalmatian coast. Others entered liberated towns and concentration camps on the heel of Allied armies with whom they worked for the benefit of survivors. Reports and correspondence in the records of the JCRA provide in graphic detail descriptions of conditions in Europe at the time of liberation and the service rendered by volunteers to survivors and nascent Jewish communities in the years from 1944 until the JCRA’s closure in 1952.

In 1944 with knowledge that there were Jews in hiding in occupied Europe and in the hope that they and others would survive incarceration in concentration camps, the Central Council for Jewish Refugees underwent a name change to the Central British Fund for Relief and Rehabilitation. Anglo-Jewry was now committed to aid all Jews who survived the Holocaust in Europe. That same year, with government approval, monies were made available to the High Commissioner for Refugees for transmittal to Jews in occupied Europe.

Liberation, Rescue and Rebuilding

As countries in Europe were liberated, the CBF gave encouragement and financial support to emerging communal leaders in their efforts to re-establish Jewish institutions. In an effort to learn of problems facing Jewish communities in Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, Greece, Holland, Poland, and Switzerland, a meeting of representatives from these countries was held in London in August 1945. All those present noted that anti­Semitism remained a key issue. They all expressed concern for the future of Jewish children who had survived the war in the care of non-Jews and who were now in danger of being lost to the Jewish community altogether. They asked that assistance be provided to enable survivors to join relatives overseas. While help in this regard was forthcoming, the reuniting of families took many years. Countries that had not welcomed refugees during the war years still had not changed their stance in the aftermath of war.

The CBF made funds available for treatment in sanatoria of survivors who had contracted tuberculosis. Together with the Society of Friends, permission was obtained to bring to the United Kingdom as many as one thousand children who had survived incarceration in concentration camps. 732 children became wards of the CBF. Some eventually joined relatives overseas, while others were adopted. Minutes and correspondence of the Committee for the Care of Children from the Camps provide information over a number of years on the diverse activities on behalf of these children.

Other survivors aided by the JRC included a thousand ‘distressed persons’, individuals with close relatives in the United Kingdom for whom in November 1945 the government granted the right of entry on special ‘Q’ visas. In addition, a small number of Jews living in displaced persons camps in Germany, Austria, and Italy were also resettled in Great Britain.

The Kultusgemeinde in Vienna was again a centre of activity and a recipient of financial and personnel aid following the Hungarian uprising in 1956. Two thousand of the Jews who fled to Vienna were granted visas for the United Kingdom, where the JRC assisted them in completing plans to join relatives overseas. Stateless Jews living in Egypt were given asylum in the United Kingdom when the CBF guaranteed that they would not become a public charge.

Restitution

As early as 1939, comments in Executive Committee minutes relate to restitution to those spoliated when they were forced to flee Germany. During the latter part of the war restitution of property and compensation to refugees took on greater significance.

It is fitting that the records hold minutes and correspondence of the Jewish Trust Corporation, which was created in 1948 by the CBF, AJDC and Jewish Agency for Palestine to cover identifiable heir-less property of victims of the Nazis and of former Jewish communities. Monies received from the sale of such properties was used to provide housing and sheltered accommodations, synagogues and schools for former refugees and their progeny. The task of recovering property was undertaken by teams of lawyers, many of them German Jews, working within restitution laws enacted in Germany. The laws ensured that an attempt was made to uphold principles of morality and those for which the war had been fought.

CITATION

Gottleib, Amy Zahl: “Central British Fund for World Jewish Relief: An Introduction to and Overview of Its First Ten Years”, Refugees, Relief, Resettlement: Gale, a Cengage Company (2021)

The PDF version contains additional topic search links: DOWNLOAD THE PDF VERSION HERE

Introduction

Goldsmiths’ Library of Economic Literature at Senate House Library, University of London, contains more than 70,000 printed books, pamphlets, periodicals, manuscripts, broadsides, and proclamations from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries. Along with the Kress collection at Harvard University, Goldsmiths’ forms the basis of the 356-reel microfilm product first published in the mid-1970s by Research Publications in New Haven, Conn. For an appreciation of the groundbreaking impact of this publication, see the September 1978 issue of Journal of Economic Literature, which features the essay “Democracy Returns to the Library: The Goldsmiths'-Kress Library of Economic Literature” by David O. Whitten.

In 2004, Gale released the digital version of the database as The Making of the Modern World, 1450-1850 (MOMW). Since MOMW’s initial appearance, thousands of unpublished or newly acquired titles have been identified at the University of London, and these titles form the basis of the third and fourth modules of the digital archive at your fingertips. The Making of the Modern World: Part IV, 1800 – 1890 comprises over 8,000 items.

Goldsmiths’ is based on the original collection in the library of the academic economist and bibliophile at Cambridge University, Herbert Somerton Foxwell (1849-1936). Foxwell described his library of approximately 30,000 items as “a collection of books and tracts intended to serve as the basis for the study of the industrial, commercial, monetary and financial history of the United Kingdom, as well as of the gradual development of economic science generally.”

The Foxwell library was purchased by the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths and presented to the University of London in 1903. Gifts from the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths have enabled Senate House Library to augment the collection ever since. Additions have included the purchase of the Sabatier Collection (1906), Sheffield Collection (1907), Rastrick Collection (1908), Temperance Collection (1930), and Reform Club pamphlets (1964). Further enhancements include periodicals, biographies, and bound pamphlet collections, such as the Aldenham bound pamphlet collections, the Gray, the de Grey, and the Ludlow bound pamphlet collections. The Gray, de Grey, and Reform Club pamphlet collections are unique to MOMW: Part IV. Also specific to MOMW: Part IV are 686 Reform Club pamphlets dated 1800-1860.

Senate House Library remains an active acquiring institution, whose future purchases will present new avenues of research. Major subject fields include economic thought, financial and monetary policy, the British Empire and its colonial history, slavery, railway and transport history, the history technology, travel writing, temperance, poverty, poor laws, socialism, and the condition of the working class.

Central to the collection is the evolution of modern economic thought. The orthodox “classical economics” of Adam Smith and David Ricardo did not metamorphose into neoclassical economics overnight. The recasting of perspectives occurred gradually, over the course of the nineteenth century, and this change can be traced throughout the archive. For example, the idea of marginal utility had existed in economic literature for centuries, in writings from Aristotle to Jeremy Bentham, as documented in texts in Gale’s Eighteenth Century Collections Online and MOMW, Part I: The Goldsmiths'-Kress Collection, 1450-1850. However, in the 1870s three academic economists stand out as having influence on the early development of marginal analysis. Working independently, they showed that the value, or price, of a commodity depends upon the marginal utility of the commodity to the consumer. In 1871 W.S. Jevons published his Theory of Political Economy in English. Carl Mengers published Principles of Economics in German. Three years later, the French economist Léon Walras published Elements of Pure Economics in French.

In 1890, Alfred Marshall, who taught with Foxwell at Cambridge University, the nerve center of the new economic thinking, published what is considered the original overarching synthesis of the new marginal concept that forms the basis of modern microeconomics. Marshall fused all of the developments of the previous decades into a well-rounded theory of household, firms, and markets in his seminal, Principles of Economics. These texts are to be found here and in MOMW: Part III.

The Making of the Modern World fills out – in unexpected ways – the field of Victorian Studies. It helps to uncover the changing mentality and attitudes of Victorian writers across the social sciences and across various locations. The topic searches that follow, some of which focus on a single year or event or policy debate or language other than English, illustrate the broad range and depth of the collection.

TOPIC SEARCHES

* “Catholic Emancipation”
Catholic Emancipation was the major political issue in Great Britain in the 1820s. The campaign for it had gone on in Ireland since the act of Union in 1801. The Catholic Emancipation Act passed by parliament in 1829 was the culmination of a long political process that brought civil rights to Catholics. The subsequent history of developments in Ireland throughout the nineteenth century may be traced in searching “Roman Catholic Relief Act” (1829); or by searching the Catholic Question
and Ireland.

• The English poor laws and the Catholic poor by John Morris (1860)
• Les institutions politiques, judiciaires et administrative de l'Angleterre: par Charles de Franqueville (1863)
• The Roman Catholic churches, schools & glebes Bill: a proposal for the establishment of the Roman Catholic church in Ireland, rejected by the House of Commons … July 3, 1867: Speech … thereon by Charles Newdigate (1867)
• A letter to the Right Hon. Chichester Fortescue, M.P. on the state of Ireland: by John Earl Russell (1868)
• The Irish union: before and after. being a popular treatise on the political history of Ireland during the last two centuries. [by A. K. Connell] (1888)

* “The Peculiar Institution.” The Slave Power in the United States and Cuba

In the nineteenth century slavery increasingly repulsed the moral conscience of parts of the Western world. It was abolished in the British colonies in 1833 and in the French colonies in 1848. Yet in the American South, whose economy was completely dependent on slave labor, there was no appetite to let go of “the peculiar institution.” For an examination of American slavery in the years prior to the American Civil War search “peculiar institution” or “slave power.” Esclavitud -- slavery in Spanish – renders good results on Cuba.

• Report of Select Committee on Slavery and Affairs in Kansas: submitted Thursday, October 30, 1856. Author: Vermont. General Assembly House of Representatives Select Committee on Slavery and Affairs in Kansas (1856)
• Slavery doomed: or, The contest between free and slave labour in the United States: By Frederick Milne Edge (1860)

Slavery in Spanish – esclavitud – uncovers the debate in Cuba, which is inextricably linked to the sugar trade:

• La supresion del trafico de esclavos africanos en la Isla de Cuba examinada con relacion a su agricultura y a su seguridad by José Antonio Saco (1845)
• Memoria sobre la esclavitud en la isla de Cuba: con observaciones sobre los asertos de la prensa inglesa relativos al trafico de esclavos by Mariano Torrente (1853)
• La Crisis Azucarera y la Isla de Cuba by Gaston Descamps (1885)

* “The Great Boom”
The period of the 1850s and 1860s experienced unprecedented growth. Investors took advantage of cheap capital and the rapid rise of prices. At one point in this period, the rate of profit on paid-up capital of the Crédit mobilier of Paris, one of Europe’s leading finance companies, reached fifty percent. During the boom employment skyrocketed. The bottom fell out in 1873 and two decades of depression followed. Search: “Crédit mobilier” in the period 1848-1875.

• A history of prices, and of the state of the circulation, during the nine years 1848-1856: by Thomas Tooke and William Newmarch (1857)
• La liberté de l'argent: par Clément Laurier (1858)
• La Bourse, ses opérateurs et ses opérations appréciés au point de vue de la loi, de la jurisprudence et de l'économie politique et sociale: Suivie d'une indication des réformes les plus urgentes, avec un appendice contenant les principaux règlements adoptés par la Compagnie des Agents de Change de Paris, etc. by Jules François Jeannotte-Bozérian (1859)
• The Credit Foncier and Mobilier of England, Limited: First report to 8th April, 1865, to be presented to the shareholders

* “Great Exhibition of 1851”
The economic triumph and industrial progress at midcentury brought about new rituals for the display of wealth -- the industrial trade show or world’s fair. The Crystal Palace in London (1851), featured 14,000 firms. It was followed by Paris (1855), London (1862), Vienna (1873), and the Philadelphia Centennial (1876) in the Unites States. Each exhibition attracted tourists in astronomical numbers. Search Great Exhibition of 1851.

• R. & W. Hawthorn's first-class passenger locomotive engine, "The Hawthorn", sent to the Great Exhibition of 1851: [A description] (1851)
• An earnest plea for the reign of temperance and peace as conducive to the prosperity of nations, submitted to the visitors of the Great Exhibition … accompanied by documents in proof of the statements and principles involved: [by J. S. Buckingham] (1851)
• The glass and the new crystal palace: by George Cruikshank; with cuts (1853)
• Trade museums, their nature and uses: Considered in a letter addressed, by permission, to H. R. H. the Prince Albert, K. G. by Edward Solly (1853)

* Imperialism: Britain and China. “Treaty ports, Hong Kong, and the opium trade”

British involvement in wars in China in the late 1830s and 1840s originated in the clash of two irreconcilable policies. The Chinese were determined to maintain their isolation, and the British were determined to break it down. The immediate issue was the opium trade from India to China, a trade that helped the British balance its trading account with China, when Britain sold little to China and imported large amounts of silk and tea. The Treaty of Nanking in 1842 ceded Hong Kong to Britain. Search “Hong Kong” and “Opium trade.”

• The Chinese: a general description of China and its inhabitants: by John Francis Davis, Esq., F.R.S., &c. governor of Hong-Kong (London, 1844)
• Observations on our Chinese commerce: including remarks the proposed reduction of the tea duties our new settlement at Hong Kong and the opium trade by George Thomas Staunton (1850)
• The Opium Trade; Including a Sketch of its History, Extent, Effects, etc., as Carried on in India and China. By Nathan Allen, M.D. 2d ed. (1851)
• China, political, commercial and social: in an official report to Her Majesty's government by Robert Montgomery Martin (1847)

* “Imperialism: India in the mid-Victorian Era”
For the British presence in India around the time of the Indian Rebellion of 1857 select a geographical area, such as “Hyderabad,” for rich results.

• A Gazetteer of the territories under the government of the East-India company, and of the native states on the continent of India: Compiled by the authority of the Hon. Court of Directors, and chiefly from documents in their possession, by Edward Thornton, Esq. (1854)
• Indian irrigation: being a short description of the system of artificial irrigation and canal navigation in India, with a proposal for carrying the same into effect by private enterprise by Charles William Grant (1854)
• The Punjaub Railway: a selection from official correspondence regarding the introduction of railways into the Punjaub, with [folded] map of Scinde and the Punjaub: Report of proceedings of an extraordinary general meeting of the Scinde Railway Company, held on … the 24th July, 1857 by William Patrick Andrew (1857)
• The government of the East India Company, and its monopolies: or, The Young India Party, and free trade?: by Malcolm Lewin (1857)
• East India (coinage): Returns for the last ten years of the amount of the precious metals, coined and uncoined imported into India and entered at the Custom House at each of the three Presidencies; and the amount of coined money issued by the Calcutta Mint for the same period; also copies of acts or ordinances of the Governor-General in Council for regulating the currency of India … Ordered … to be printed 27th April. Calcutta India Mint (1860)
• Report to the Secretary of State for India in Council: On Railways in India for the year 1870-71. By Juland Danvers (1871)

* “John Stuart Mill”
The mid-Victorian liberal consensus was most clearly distilled in the life and works of John Stuart Mill (1806-1873). Mill, a highly original thinker, contributed significantly to the fields of economics, political science, and philosophy. Although a gifted economic theoretician, Mill’s intellectual background led him toward a social philosophy that aimed to improve the role of the individual in society. In Principles of Political Economy (1848) he offered a synthesis of the major doctrines of classical political economy. His work was translated into multiple languages. Search “Mill” as author and/or J.S. Mill as keyword.

• Extract from Mill's History on the double government: and Observations on the evidence given before the parliamentary committees in 1852: by John Sullivan (1853)
• Liberty and the liquor traffic: reply to J. S. Mill by Dawson Burns (1859)
• Observations on the report and proceedings of the select committee on the income and property tax: In a letter to John Stuart Mill, Esq. by John Gellibrand Hubbard (1861)
• The unity of Comte's life and doctrine: a reply to strictures on Comte's later writings, addressed to J. S. Mill: by J. H. Bridges (1865)
• A refutation of the wage-fund theory of modern political economy as enunciated by Mr. Mill, M.P. and Mr. Fawcett, M.P. by Francis Davy (1869)

This archive explores the role and development of a variety of conservative political movements and groups by showcasing unique materials that examine right-wing ideology. Building on the successful platform created by Part I, this next installment gives researchers access to more essential materials that support the study of extreme political viewpoints throughout history. Sourced from eminent libraries, including the University of California, Santa Barbara; the University of California, Davis; the University of Iowa, Idaho State University; and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Far-Right Groups in America provides scholars with a better understanding of American conservative political movement from multiple angles.

DATE RANGE:
1850–2010

DOCUMENT TYPES:
monographs, manuscripts,  periodicals, pamphlets, and ephemera

SOURCE LIBRARIES:
University of California, Santa Barbara; University of California, Davis; University of Iowa; Idaho State University; and The Federal Bureau of Investigation

SUBJECTS SUPPORTED:
history, politics, American history, sociology, anthropology, social history, social sciences, and government

User note: Boldfaced terms within paragraphs deliver search results.

Heaven sent! Is that too strong a descriptor to use? That, at least, is what Public Health in Modern America (PHMA) affords students, researchers, and faculty across multiple disciplines. It is an enormously useful digital library for the discovery of primary source materials on hundreds of topics related to the history of public health as practiced in the United States.

As a public historian and health sciences librarian, I regularly answer reference questions on the history of the health sciences, prepare public exhibits on the history of medicine, and work in concert with faculty, undergraduate and graduate students associated with the University of Wisconsin in Madison’s Department of Medical History and Bioethics.

Such work with students and faculty includes targeted resource workshops that incorporate the rich primary print collections within the Rare Books and Special Collections division of the University of Wisconsin’s Ebling Library, as well as the fine-tuning of their navigation skills with our campus’s primary and secondary full-text databases. It is not uncommon to provide resource instruction that has been heavily informed by the syllabi of requesting faculty members, who routinely ask their students to investigate the development of public health in America. Course work then will focus on studying the clinical and ethical issues, as well as gender and race concerns characteristic of the evolution of medical, pharmaceutical, and health care enterprises as we know them today.

Students produce research papers on complementary subjects, regularly incorporating primary documents into their research. Along the way, students meet with me, one on one, for tips on which print and online resources to use, how to optimize the available databases, and how to uncover the unheard “voices,” so often difficult to locate in conventional sources.

Based on the collection of materials that it brings together in one place, Public Health in Modern America widens the door for these students by delivering access to previously hard-to-find resources and presenting full-text searchable content not available anywhere outside of a small handful of institutions.  The breadth and depth of the collection is represented through the four thoughtfully indexed digital collections that have been brought together:

• the records of the U.S. Children's Bureau, with its focus on maternal and child health from the years 1912 to 1969;
• the work of the Committee on Public Health of the New York Academy of Medicine, and its dedicated collection of correspondence and reports;
• the remarkable Library of Social and Economic Aspects of Medicine from Michael M. Davis, a lifelong public health researcher, advocate and collector, who had been intimately involved in the campaign for a national health care plan;
• and a selection of publications on public health—all rare pamphlets unavailable from another digital source—from the New York Academy of Medicine.

In my own review of the four collections, my search on the role of race and public health made clear right away that there was not to be any sort of pre-designed subset on the topic—not as a eugenically informed ideal or as a collection of content amassed specifically around the issue of patients and practitioners of color and their relationship to the delivery of health care services, disease occurrence and treatment, or preventive care. Nor did any of the collections specifically supply a dedicated subset on gender and its relationship (whether as practitioner or patient) to health care or disease occurrence.

Counterintuitively, the very fact that such subsets are not so readily found is exactly what makes Public Health in Modern America so valuable. An essay prepared for the Ebling Library’s exhibit Staggering Losses: World War 1 and the Influenza Pandemic of 1918 notes how commonly surveys of U.S. history skip over the involvement, the contributions, or concerns of people of color or women. Over the last 40 years, historical treatments have included the unheralded, unacknowledged, oppressed, or maligned place of people of color and women in the making of a modern America. The occurrence of provocative topics like eugenics and racially informed health care decision-making are evident throughout the digitized resources assembled in Public Health in Modern America.

Within this digital archive, one can experience a far more representative version of the historical place of marginalized groups. It offers a more complete narrative, one that points out the marginalization or disenfranchisement of women even as it highlights the influential contributions people of color and women nonetheless made as patients and professionals

Through vigorous indexing and the power of the platform’s search engine, it is far easier to look up heretofore hidden subjects and themes, even when those subjects are not immediately evident from the title of the resource. Researchers and students can pose questions—and get answers—about people of color and health care delivery, from public health education within the African American community to disease demographics with respect to America’s many communities of color.

So for a study of the prevention of tuberculosis among African Americans, a long list of results appears when a search is properly run. Doing so requires using the advanced search and entering the period-specific term colored (or negro) and tuberculosis. Public Health in America will retrieve over 200 “monograph” publication (all rare pamphlets) result and 806 “manuscript” (each one a folder’s worth of content) results. Among the monographs—all from the sub-collection “Selected Publications on Public Health from the New York Academy of Medicine”—the first title The Movement against Tuberculosis in Washington, D.C. (1907) includes no mention of people of color in the pamphlet title.  But a search within the document on the word “colored” delivers 10 relevant page results. Of particular interest on page 14 (“relevant page 16” in the digitized version) are the lectures that the Associated Charities presented on tuberculosis prevention to both white and black teachers. Here is the paragraph in full:

Lectures.—These have been found especially effective in this field. During the first season forty-four public meetings were held, at most of which the subject was illustrated by stereopticon views, besides forty meetings in connection with the Associated Charities, through all of which more than 20,000 people received some knowledge of the nature of tuberculosis. Similar courses have been kept up since, though there has seemed to be less demand for them this last season; and talks on the subject have also been given to all teachers, both white and colored, as well as in all the high schools, and to labor organizations, one of which showed its appreciation by sending the Committee a substantial check. [Italics added.]

This 1907 publication by William H. Baldwin (and published by the Journal of the Outdoor Life) is not available from the Ebling Library or elsewhere at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. In fact, only two copies are available in the United States (one of them the copy from the New York Academy of Medicine digitized here). The work does not appear on Google Books, the Hathi Trust Digital Library, or the Internet Archive.  Without this digital copy, there is no knowing if such is even worth the obtaining through interlibrary loan, if available at all by that means. And even if available, why run the risk of handling a potentially fragile document when it is already part of the Public Health in America?

But leaving questions of access aside, the uncovering of this document—and even the topic within it—is no small matter. This little, but not insignificant paragraph, helps me and my students identify one publication, with one entity (Associated Charities) from which they can start to build a historical inquiry.

Once they have such an inquiry in hand, they can then proceed to other monographs or manuscripts within PHMA, looking for additional mentions of Associated Charities (29 monographs; 40 manuscripts), other incidences of adopting teachers within a public health movement (school teachers delivers 108 monograph and 426 manuscript results), other public health initiatives with black patients (negro patients provides 11 monograph and 108 manuscript results) to educate them about any number of topics, including tuberculosis prevention (a search on negroes and spitting offers 9 monograph and 28 manuscript results, many related to preventing tuberculosis within the Black community).  Public Health in Modern America can thus serve as a springboard as students look further afield among other sources like contemporary newspapers, education journals, social hygiene publications—all from the unearthing made possible by the small mention in a previously obscure publication.

But let’s change gears. After recent work assembling an exhibit at the Ebling Library on World War I, I decided to pursue the topic of women health care providers. A search on women and physicians produced 800 monograph and over 2,000 manuscript items. I then narrowed the search to dates of publication to the years when World War I raged from 1914 to 1918 (even though America’s direct participation would not occur until April 1917).  Once filtered down to 98 monograph and 47 manuscript results, I then scrolled the list of available titles, each more thought-provoking than the next. Consider An Appeal to the Men and Women Engaged in Medical Practice and the Advancement of Medical Sciences (1915) from the Medical Brotherhood, just five years after the “Flexner Report” on medical education by Abraham Flexner (researchers can find a 33-page folder devoted to Abraham Flexner in the Michael Davis collection) and the eventual closing of many women’s medical colleges. Would this document mention Flexner’s report? Might it address the many physicians then heading to Europe to help in the war effort and the women who remained behind to take care of patients?

While neither subject is directly addressed, this appeal nonetheless offers a fascinating glimpse into wartime sentiment regarding medical men and women (physicians, nurses, researchers) and their role as stalwart, upstanding volunteers. It includes a call for them to be part of “The Medical Brotherhood for the Furtherance of International Morality” and “to sign their names as (moral) humanitarians.” Women as part of the Brotherhood?  How unusual!  And then there are the several notable women medical doctors whose names appear among the committees presumably affiliated with the Brotherhood. From here, one might begin to research those women and their roles. They include, for example, S. Josephine Baker (11 monograph and 27 manuscript results) and Alice Hamilton (14 monograph and 108 manuscript results).

Those of us who have worked as librarians and historians for decades have seen the pendulum swing from print to online in ways that can sometimes seem alarming. Limiting one’s research in print, particularly within a single institution, may see pivotal primary materials missed. On the other hand, sticking to just online resources can prove as limiting. Responsible researchers ideally use print and online resources in concert to craft definitive arguments, especially in previously unmined territory.

In either case, the goal is to have access to resources—those documents with their tables, images, footnotes, references, and names of pivotal players in the public health arena—that can provide scholars with hints and clues for further research. This domino effect in the gathering of evidence for any study, whether an article intended for publication or a term paper, is what makes searchable digital primary source collections like Public Health in Modern America so valuable. The “rabbit holes” that graduate students so often worry about are often what shine a light on new corners of research.  Such necessary rabbit holes are spread throughout Public Health in Modern America, making the possibilities for research in the history of public health endless.

CITATION

Sullivan-Fowler , Micaela: “Public Health in Modern America: A Research Experience”, Public Health Archives: Gale, a Cengage Company (2021)

From the international machinery of espionage and twentieth-century warfare to personal surveillance and Cold War intelligence, this uniquely broad view of the interests of the British government, her allies and her enemies is sourced from five government departments and totals around 500 000 pages.

Twentieth-Century British Intelligence, An Intelligence Empire brings together files from the UK National Archives covering intelligence and security matters from 1905-2002. Material has been sourced from the UK Ministry of Defence, the Cabinet Office, the Colonial Office, MI5 (British Domestic Security Service) and the SOE (Special Operations Executive), reflecting an intelligence network that reached from the UK and Europe to Africa, the Middle East, Canada, Asia and Australia during a century of global conflicts, high-stakes diplomacy and political upheaval. These documents cover the development of British intelligence and its impact on policy from its earliest days, through Room 40 in the First World War and the activities of the Security Services throughout the British Empire during WWII, to the geopolitics of the Cold War and decolonisation.

Intelligence files, previously closed to scholars, represent an under-studied aspect of our recent past and provide exciting opportunities for new research. 

Declassified Documents Online: Twentieth Century British Intelligence, An Intelligence Empire brings together files from five UK government departments to provide researchers with access to detailed, previously classified information on the intelligence services of Britain and her Empire throughout the twentieth century.

The Security Service (MI5): KV 2, KV 3 & KV 4

Personal, Subject and Policy files dating from 1905-1978. MI5 handled intelligence gathering within the British Empire and the Commonwealth. The selected subseries of KV 2 holds personal files on subjects of Secret Service enquiries, whilst KV 3 contains subject files on espionage activities of groups or other intelligence organisations, including the only subject files known to have survived from the First World War period. KV 4 holds section histories and policy files.

The Ministry of Defence: Communications and Intelligence Records: DEFE 21, DEFE 26, DEFE 28, DEFE 31, DEFE 41, DEFE 44, DEFE 60, DEFE 62, DEFE 63 & DEFE 64

These series include registered files, reports and memoranda of the Directorate of Scientific Intelligence, the Defence Intelligence Staff and the Defence Signals Staff focused on the technical and scientific interests of the British government from the Second World War to the decades of the Cold War and the Atomic Age. The intelligence assessments and reports include those gathered post-war in Allied-occupied Germany, such as interviews with German scientists. With files dating from 1912-2002, these series bring the coverage up to the end of the twentieth century, and include defence records on the Falklands, the Middle East, UFO incidents and details of Soviet weapon systems.

The Special Operations Executive: HS 7 & HS 8

These are records of the Ministry of Economic Warfare and the Special Operations Executive (SOE), which functioned during WWII to promote sabotage and subversion, and assist resistance groups in enemy occupied territory, famously directed by Winston Churchill to ‘set Europe ablaze!’. Records date from 1935-1988 and include histories & war diaries in HS 7, and headquarters records in HS 8.

The Colonial Office: Intelligence and Security Departments: Registered Files (ISD Series): CO 1035
This series contains registered files of the Colonial Office relating to the security of British colonies, and intelligence on colonial matters and decolonisation, including reports by Security Intelligence Advisors throughout the British Empire, and assessments from the Joint Intelligence Committee. Running from 1954-1966, these files represent a vital piece of the intelligence picture of the global Cold War and decolonisation at the end of Empire.

The Cabinet Office: CAB 56, CAB 121, CAB 176 & CAB 301

The material in these series dates from 1936-1974 and shows how intelligence matters were considered, analysed, and processed through the Cabinet Office. Records from the Joint Intelligence Committee appear alongside Policy and Strategy files from the Special Secret Information Centre, and selected intelligence material from the Cabinet Secretary’s Miscellaneous Papers held in CAB 301.

The study of Intelligence and security casts light on international relations and politics, on social conditions and personal experiences in a time of conflict and shifting global alliances, on the running and dismantling of Empire and on the secret operations and planning of global conflicts. The politics of today are a direct result of the events of the twentieth century, and the depth and breadth of information gathered by British intelligence agencies revealed in this product, from British communists to African independence leaders and German Abwehr agents, allows scholars to follow the decisions and events that formed the world we live in. 

British Foreign Office correspondence from China on commercial, political, diplomatic, military and legal matters in nineteenth century Anglo-Chinese relations.

In this, the first of two parts of British Foreign Office correspondence from China, scholars will find material relating to the internal politics of China and Britain, their relationship, and the relationships between other Western powers keen to benefit from the growing trading ports of the Far East. 

From Lord Amherst’s mission at the start of the nineteenth century, through the trading monopoly of the Canton System, and the Opium Wars of 1839-42 and 1856-60, Britain and other foreign powers gradually gained commercial, legal and territorial rights in China. These files provide correspondence from the Factories of Canton (modern Guangzhou) and from the missionaries and interpreters who entered China in the early nineteenth century, as well as from the later Consulates and Legation and from the envoys and missions sent to China from Britain.

After 1842 when the Treaty of Nanking was signed, the precedence of Canton declined as the treaty ports of Shanghai, Ningpo (Ningbo), Foochow (Fuzhou) and Amoy (Xiamen) were established. These were later joined by more trading posts, with British merchants and Consuls established at Swatow (Shantou), Chefoo (Yantai), Formosa (Taiwan) and more.

As well as matters of trade and commerce, the correspondence in this archive covers local uprisings including anti-foreign riots and the Tientsin Massacre of 1870, piracy, judicial and legal matters, and the activities of Russia, the US, France and other Western powers in the region. It also covers British interests and ambition in Japan, Thailand, Burma (Myanmar), Malaya (Malaysia) and Korea (particularly Seoul).

These hand-written documents have been opened up to scholars with the use of Handwritten Text Recognition (HTR) technology, as well as item-level information drawn from the Foreign Office Indexes in series FO 605.

SUBJECTS COVERED

• Asian Studies
• Chinese Studies
• Colonialism
• History
• Political Science & Diplomatic Studies

ADVISORS:

STEPHEN R. PLATT, Professor of History, University of Massachusetts at Amherst

DAVID FAURE, Professor of History and Director of Center for China Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong

EIICHI MOTONO, Professor of Economic History, Waseda University

EI MURAKAMI, Associate Professor of Economic History, Kyoto University

HANS VAN DE VEN, Professor of Modern Chinese History, Cambridge University

HUANG KO-WU, Distinguished Research Professor, Institute of Modern History, Academic Sinica, Republic of China (Taiwan)

ISABELLA JACKSON, Assistant Professor in Chinese History, Trinity College Dublin

The fifth part of Gale’s Archives of Sexuality and Gender series, L’Enfer de la Bibliothèque nationale de France, provides access to one of the most storied and sought-after private case collections in the world. The name alone invokes visions of damnation and moral ruin. L’Enfer (which translates as “Hell” or “Inferno”) refers to the shelf mark given to the collection which was created in the 1830s to protect and isolate works that were considered contrary to the morals of the time. As with other private cases, the entire collection was kept in a locked section of the library because of the erotic or pornographic character of the works, as well as their rarity and value. 

While the content in the collection was withheld from many readers in the past, the creation of this private case is to society’s benefit today, as it meant the content, dating from the 1530s to 2010s, was safeguarded for posterity. Today, L’Enfer is one of the most famous Private Case collections in the world.

COLLECTION CONTENTS

L’Enfer is made up of more than 2,400 printed works. Around 950 additional items come from an appendix to l’Enfer called Flagellation. Between the 1880s and the 1930s, an editorial subgenre flourished in France: the novel de flagellation, a specialised branch of erotic literature. In this context, "passionate flogging" is a sexual perversion consisting of experiencing an erotic pleasure to be whipped. The Flagellation collection in this archive consists of literary works on spanking, caning, and whipping.

LANGUAGES

Documents will mainly be in French, with some titles in English, German, Spanish, and a smattering of other languages.

VALUE OF THE ARCHIVE

As one of the premier private case collections in the world, l’Enfer is much sought after. In an article about an exhibition of l’Enfer at the BnF, Elaine Sciolino of the New York Times wrote the following about the significance of these items:

The ability to digitally cross-search and compare l’Enfer with the British Library’s Private Case (the third part of Gale’s Archives of Sexuality and Gender series) will be of significant benefit to researchers. Both private cases are extremely important to this research area, expanding our understanding of sexual history, developing views on sexuality, the policing of sexuality and the nature of titillation throughout history.

This archive explores the role and development of a variety of conservative political movements and groups by showcasing unique materials that examine right-wing ideology. Building on the successful platform created by Part I, this next installment gives researchers access to more essential materials that support the study of extreme political viewpoints throughout history. Sourced from eminent libraries, including the University of California, Santa Barbara; the University of California, Davis; the University of Iowa, Idaho State University; and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Far-Right Groups in America provides scholars with a better understanding of American conservative political movement from multiple angles.

DATE RANGE:
1850–2010

DOCUMENT TYPES:
monographs, manuscripts,  periodicals, pamphlets, and ephemera

SOURCE LIBRARIES:
University of California, Santa Barbara; University of California, Davis; University of Iowa; Idaho State University; and The Federal Bureau of Investigation

SUBJECTS SUPPORTED:
history, politics, American history, sociology, anthropology, social history, social sciences, and government

The third module in Gale’s Women’s Studies Archive series, Rare Titles from the American Antiquarian Society, 1820-1922, gives researchers unprecedented access to over one million pages of female-authored work across a diverse range of both fiction and non-fiction. Sourced from and curated by the American Antiquarian Society, the pre-eminent collector of pre-twentieth century Americana, this archive includes around 5,700 monographs published between 1820 and 1922 in the United States and authored by women.

An official bibliography of female-authored texts published in the United States during this period does not exist. In its absence, this assembly of monographs, expertly curated by the American Antiquarian Society, serves this purpose for scholars.

Composed of rare and unique titles and covering over a century of female writing, the collection will enable new scholarship into feminist perspectives and the discovery of female-authored works that have been previously overlooked. Providing users with a canon of women’s literature, the archive helps to answer questions about women’s cultural contributions, provides insight into the female experience, and represents exciting new opportunities for the digital humanities. Although several of the authors found within will be highly recognisable, such as George Eliot and Louisa May Alcott, many of them will be completely unknown, allowing scholars to make new connections as well as rediscovering lost or ignored works from the past. The vast majority of monographs have never been scanned before and are not available on the open web.

ARCHIVE CONTENT

Curated by the American Antiquarian Society, the monographs in this archive were selected from across the library’s collection, primarily because they were authored or edited by women, to provide users with a canon of women’s literature. By maintaining a wide scope in the selection of material, this artificial collection supports a diverse variety of research areas, both answering questions on women’s cultural contributions and providing insight into the day-to-day lives of both upper-class and working-class women.

Encompassing more than one hundred years of female authorship, the material in Rare Titles from the American Antiquarian Society, 1820-1922  includes a diversity of fiction genres and non-fiction subjects such as poetry, personal letters, recipe books, memoirs, histories, pamphlets, leaflets, instructional guides on domesticity and etiquette, biographies, autobiographies, personal papers, children’s literature, commentaries on fashion, diaries, religious tracts, legal accounts, oration, political ephemera and fiction, although there is no overlap with Gale’s American Fiction archive.  These titles are united in that they are all texts written by women, not just documents about them, with the wide variety of genres supporting multiple avenues of research into women’s history, in women’s own voices.

A de-duplication analysis has been conducted and none of the content overlaps with other Gale archives, and there is a minimal amount available via open access platforms.

A MULTIDISCIPLINARY ARCHIVE

The deliberately broad nature of the selected titles included in Rare Titles from the American Antiquarian Society, 1820-1922 means it contains a wide variety of materials that will appeal to a range of disciplines, such as:

• Women’s History
• Gender Studies
• American Literature
• Cultural Studies
• Critical Theory and Analysis
• History / American and Canadian History
• Media and Journalism
• Politics
• Sociology

OPPORTUNTIES FOR DIGITAL SCHOLARSHIP

As an archive of exclusively female-authored works, Rare Titles from the American Antiquarian Society, 1820-1922 presents an exciting opportunity for text and data mining. By providing a unique corpus of material that has clear definition and boundaries, the module forms a perfect data set for digital humanities research, enabling new scholarship into feminist perspectives.

DATE RANGE:
1820-1922

DOCUMENT TYPE:
Monographs

SOURCE LIBRARY:
American Antiquarian Society

State Papers Online transforms early modern historical research at top UK universities.

Amongst the first UK institutions to offer students online access to the largest set of government documents from the Early Modern period, the Universities of York and Durham are taking 16^th and 17^th century historical research to a new level. State Papers Online, 1509-1714, from Gale, a Cengage Company, offers easy access to the full range of the Tudor and Stuart governments’ domestic and foreign activities in a searchable digital format. Dr John Cooper, history lecturer at the University of York, and Dr Natalie Mears, senior lecturer in early modern British history at Durham University, discuss how this resource is opening up new avenues of scholarship and transforming the field of early modern studies.

The University of York has one of the largest history departments in the UK and a very prestigious research culture, attracting students from all over the world. The university first implemented State Papers Online (SPO) Part I in 2008 and has purchased the fourth and final part, completing the collection. Parts I and II cover the State Papers for the Tudor period, while Parts III and IV complete the collection for the whole of the Stuart period. Combined, all four parts create an essential resource for understanding the socio-economic, political and religious issues of the Early Modern period that shaped the future course of Britain and the modern world.

DIGITAL ACCESS TO IRREPLACEABLE ORIGINAL ARTEFACTS

Previously, the university held selected printed volumes of the State Papers, some of which were only available as special collections as they were too fragile to be viewed on an open shelf. Staff and students would travel long distances to The National Archives in Kew and British Library in London, to access the originals. Even then, access was restricted as archivists would worry that the acid on peoples’ hands would deteriorate the collections and the ink on hand-written manuscripts would be smudged, making some documents unreadable.

Dr John Cooper, history lecturer at the University of York, comments: “State Papers Online is already having a significant impact on research by providing students from undergraduate to PHD level with unrestricted online access to almost three million original historical manuscripts. The manuscripts are linked to fully text-searchable Calendars, which provide a summary of contents in chronological order, thereby reducing the need to consult the originals.

“SPO has removed the cost and burden of travelling long distances to access these documents, as well as the complexity of searching for them. Now students and staff can spend more quality time on developing their research rather than fishing for the information. This can be done from their own PC, considerably speeding up the time it takes to reach the information they need.

“I have just completed a project on Sir Francis Walsingham - government administrator during the reign of Elizabeth I - which I initially struggled to complete as I could not spend all of my time in Kew since I am based in York. However, using SPO I am now able to access all the records from home, compare manuscript records and magnify the ones I want to study in more depth. The ability to access original manuscripts of foreign policy papers has made the foreign policy section of my book possible”.*

RAISING STANDARDS

Dr Cooper explains how SPO can take undergraduate studies to a whole new level, as it helps to improve the research base for dissertations: “What has surprised me the most is second year students using SPO with a great deal of enthusiasm to start to identify their dissertation subjects. They expect to use electronic resources and SPO is very much meeting their requirements.

“During my six years at York, the most interesting dissertation I have marked is from a third year undergraduate that used SPO to trace records on cultural minority groups, studying the experience of non whites and Irish immigrants and travellers – ‘gypsies’ or ‘Egyptians’ as they used to be called in Elizabethan times. It is very difficult to research this topic as gypsies rarely left records in their own voice. However, with SPO, it is possible to trace official attitudes, such as what the government thought of Irish travellers moving around, and how and why they worried about gypsies.

“This student made very imaginative and innovative use of traditional and political records, including the ‘Elizabeth I and Acts of the Privy Council’ volume, revealing a new area in historical research that was previously largely unexplored. The advanced skills this student displayed, by going beyond the minimum expectation of reading the Calendars to reading the actual manuscripts themselves, would normally be expected of an MA student, and so helped earn them a distinction”.

DIGITAL ARCHIVE SUPPORTS FLEXIBLE INDEPENDENT LEARNING

Dr Natalie Mears, senior lecturer in early modern British history, has been working at Durham University for seven years as part of a 30-strong history department, comprising British, European, American, African and Chinese historians. She explains how SPO supports the changing nature of the way students now work: “When I was a student 20 years ago, we would sit in a library and read through the documents. Now, students are more likely to sit in their room late at night to study; with SPO they can go online anytime and work how and where they want.

“Prior to SPO, students would read the printed Calendars, of which there are only three copies in the library, meaning only three students could access them at any one time. With over 600 students in the history department alone, this presented real challenges. Now, the ability to read the Calendars online means more students can work on the same topic, which is really important because there tends to be pockets of interest in particular topics such as Elizabeth I and women in politics – so many students are after the same resources.”

TRAINING STUDENTS TO READ 16^TH AND 17^TH CENTURY HANDWRITING

Dr Cooper goes on to explain the importance of accessing the original manuscripts, not only the Calendars: “We implement training courses for undergraduate and MA students on palaeography to help them with the study of 16^th and 17^th century handwriting so they are able to read the original documents. There are also online tutorials, available through the online archives. I introduce my MA and PHD students to the SPO site, teach them about links between calendars and manuscripts, and how to interpret them. I explain that there is more to the manuscripts than writing; there are often other clues. For example, if you turn a letter over you can see the original address and date received, a sentence about whether they thought it was useful or not, and whether it was dealt with. Students can trace the prioritisation of records online, which would be very difficult to do in real Calendars.”

Dr Natalie Mears comments: “Prior to the ^SPO palaeography tool, I would direct students to an English handwriting book, of which there is only one copy in the library, or to the Public Records Office (PRO) website. Undergraduates are normally daunted by original manuscripts but with SPO they are given tools to easily decipher them, meaning more students can now focus their dissertations on the early modern period”.

TEACHING FIRST YEAR UNDERGRADUATES ABOUT HOW HISTORIANS RESEARCHED THEIR STORIES

Although SPO is mainly used by third year undergraduates and above, first years at York University are also being introduced to it. As Dr Cooper explains: “Using SPO we have built in to our new first year undergraduate programme a series of York-based case studies to teach students how historians have researched the stories they are learning about – this is something they will not have learned at school. We ask students to read important works, compare articles and discuss the relative significance of York based stories. For example, Henry VIII’s visit to York in 1541 came about following the Pilgrimage of Grace rebellion of 1536-7 which generated enormous correspondence – all of which can be found in SPO.

“We encourage first year undergraduates to access the resource, view the calendars and manuscripts and see if they can decipher any of it. This introduces them to the idea of using stories to create historical records and teaches them that not all records are complete. The records that historians used were created for political correspondence and for legal reasons, not just for historians.”

DEVELOPING STUDENTS INTO YOUNG RESEARCHERS

Dr Mears comments: “Many of my students like studying Elizabeth I and marriage, looking at themes such as fashion and ‘did she control her own image?’ I also encourage them to look into other areas such as the Reformation and Henry VIII.

“One of my students completed a dissertation on the experience of religion change in Calais in the 16th century, focusing on religious change on the periphery border between England and France, where there were potentially different development of ideas. My student was able to go through the Calendar and read the whole document, rather than just the index, in order to glean more details. He got a First, which was helped by his use of SPO.

Dissertations are supposed to utilise original sources, not just Calendars, and SPO facilitates this.

“Students often use SPO to search for key words, as they would on Google, however, they are very receptive to the training we have given them on using proper research paths rather than just key word searchers. This is helping them to develop the skills that a proper researcher would deploy. SPO helps replicate the research process and enables them to discover manuscripts.

“At Durham we encourage students to look at primary sources, even for non dissertation teaching, at levels two and three. We show students original Calendars and manuscripts, we take them to the library so they can see them in real life as well as printing some off from SPO, making them feel more comfortable with the material. SPO helps our students tackle primary sources more confidently and independently. A couple of my students have been inspired to stay on to complete a Masters degree next year as they feel confident they will be able to do real research using SPO.”

BOOSTING POST GRADUATE RECRUITMENT AMIDST CUTS IN RESEARCH FUNDING

Dr Mears explains: “SPO has added real value to Durham University, especially for non established academic researchers. It is used by staff and students across the university, not just academics, to influence teaching and learning outcomes. Universities originally thought of SPO simply as a high end research tool but it is more than that.

“SPO has helped us to attract more postgraduate students, who can now access invaluable research material despite being situated hundreds of miles away from the Public Records Office in London. There was huge cross-departmental demand at the university to purchase SPO to help deliver value for money to students and attract postgraduate students. As a result, we have seen an increase in the number of MA and PHD applications in the last three years.

“As external research funding tightens and research grants disappear, SPO opens up access to a wider variety of original sources, helping students to complete their dissertations on a diverse range of topics without needing to leave Durham. Having SPO will also help us to secure external research grants, as it demonstrates our commitment to investing in top research resources. SPO has also been part of Durham’s investment in increasing our status as a top international research university.”

ATTRACTING INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS

Dr John Cooper comments: “York is very prestigious on account of its research culture and SPO helps us stand out both in the UK and internationally. For example, we have attracted students from Canada and Taiwan studying PHDs in 16^th and 17^th century English history – they would not have had access to SPO at their own institutions and they chose us over any other British institution because we have it.”

ADVICE FOR OTHER INSTITUTIONS

Both academics agree, the teaching of history in schools and universities has gone through a complete change in the last 20 years, moving away from history that is exclusively dominated by political narrative to other types of history such as social history, for which SPO is invaluable.

Dr Cooper enthuses: “My next research project will be on the history of 16th century Ireland, including Elizabeth I’s colonisation of Ireland. This has to be reconstructed from the English State Papers as the Irish equivalent was blown up by the IRA in the 1920s, so SPO is the main repository available today for the exploration of Irish history.”

He concludes: “We live in austere times and SPO is a considerable investment for a university, however, it is beneficial to have all four parts. SPO, alongside ECCO (Eighteenth Century Collections Online) and Early English Books Online, completes our online access to major early records. SPO has the potential to revolutionise the availability and usability of manuscript records, which are the principal records of the 16^th to 18^th century. Any university that is serious about recruiting PHD students in early modern British history should consider offering access to these records.”

* The Queen’s Agent – Francis Walsingham at the Court of Elizabeth I, Faber & Faber

The third module in Gale’s Women’s Studies Archive series, Rare Titles from the American Antiquarian Society, 1820-1922, gives researchers unprecedented access to over one million pages of female-authored work across a diverse range of both fiction and non-fiction. Sourced from and curated by the American Antiquarian Society, the pre-eminent collector of pre-twentieth century Americana, this archive includes around 5,700 monographs published between 1820 and 1922 in the United States and authored by women.

An official bibliography of female-authored texts published in the United States during this period does not exist. In its absence, this assembly of monographs, expertly curated by the American Antiquarian Society, serves this purpose for scholars.

Composed of rare and unique titles and covering over a century of female writing, the collection will enable new scholarship into feminist perspectives and the discovery of female-authored works that have been previously overlooked. Providing users with a canon of women’s literature, the archive helps to answer questions about women’s cultural contributions, provides insight into the female experience, and represents exciting new opportunities for the digital humanities. Although several of the authors found within will be highly recognisable, such as George Eliot and Louisa May Alcott, many of them will be completely unknown, allowing scholars to make new connections as well as rediscovering lost or ignored works from the past. The vast majority of monographs have never been scanned before and are not available on the open web.

ARCHIVE CONTENT

Curated by the American Antiquarian Society, the monographs in this archive were selected from across the library’s collection, primarily because they were authored or edited by women, to provide users with a canon of women’s literature. By maintaining a wide scope in the selection of material, this artificial collection supports a diverse variety of research areas, both answering questions on women’s cultural contributions and providing insight into the day-to-day lives of both upper-class and working-class women.

Encompassing more than one hundred years of female authorship, the material in Rare Titles from the American Antiquarian Society, 1820-1922  includes a diversity of fiction genres and non-fiction subjects such as poetry, personal letters, recipe books, memoirs, histories, pamphlets, leaflets, instructional guides on domesticity and etiquette, biographies, autobiographies, personal papers, children’s literature, commentaries on fashion, diaries, religious tracts, legal accounts, oration, political ephemera and fiction, although there is no overlap with Gale’s American Fiction archive.  These titles are united in that they are all texts written by women, not just documents about them, with the wide variety of genres supporting multiple avenues of research into women’s history, in women’s own voices.

A de-duplication analysis has been conducted and none of the content overlaps with other Gale archives, and there is a minimal amount available via open access platforms.

A MULTIDISCIPLINARY ARCHIVE

The deliberately broad nature of the selected titles included in Rare Titles from the American Antiquarian Society, 1820-1922 means it contains a wide variety of materials that will appeal to a range of disciplines, such as:

• Women’s History
• Gender Studies
• American Literature
• Cultural Studies
• Critical Theory and Analysis
• History / American and Canadian History
• Media and Journalism
• Politics
• Sociology

OPPORTUNTIES FOR DIGITAL SCHOLARSHIP

As an archive of exclusively female-authored works, Rare Titles from the American Antiquarian Society, 1820-1922 presents an exciting opportunity for text and data mining. By providing a unique corpus of material that has clear definition and boundaries, the module forms a perfect data set for digital humanities research, enabling new scholarship into feminist perspectives.

DATE RANGE:
1820-1922

DOCUMENT TYPE:
Monographs

SOURCE LIBRARY:
American Antiquarian Society

On Friday, December 18, 2020, the current ECCO interface was retired and existing ECCO links have been automatically redirected to a new interface, making ECCO look and feel like the other Gale Primary Sources archives.

The new ECCO experience is the culmination of extensive user research, including a widely distributed survey and an extensive series of usability tests and Zoom interviews. In response to observations during testing, as well as direct feedback provided by power users, we are making several impactful changes and enhancements, with more to come in subsequent software releases.

Will the migration affect usage data?
Yes. Because ECCO is comprised of monograph content, usage will be calculated according to stricter criteria and may decline as a result.

Will customers’ existing links redirect?
Yes. All A-Z list links, MARC records, and bookmarks will automatically redirect to the new experience. While you are not required to update your links, we encourage you to do so, if possible. This applies to MARC records which, while intended to redirect, do not always anticipate every possible redirect scenario. So we encourage you to obtain new MARC for their catalogues if they are open to it.

Which legacy features will be retained in the new experience?

• Most legacy functionality will carry over. However, due to low usage, “Browse Works” will not be carried over
• The Library of Congress Subject Headings that are currently available in legacy ECCO will not be carried over for the December release, but will be added as part of a subsequent release

The latest content update to U.S. Declassified Documents Online provides 5,000 documents from a variety of U.S. Government sources, including the Central Intelligence Agency, Department of Homeland Security, Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the White House.  Declassified materials include Department of Defense Cables on military conflicts, White House memoranda on foreign relations, security reports from the Central Intelligence Agency, and letters from Senators concerning domestic policy initiatives.  These documents reveal how the U.S. Government operates on many different levels, and allows researchers to better understand relationships between the various agencies.

Document highlights:

• U.S. House Resolution (H. Res.) on articles of impeachment against Donald John Trump, President of the U.S., for high crimes and misdemeanors: Article I: Abuse of Power; Article 2: Obstruction of Congress - 12/10/2019
• U.S. Air Force Fact Sheet no. 87-34 on the history of the Air Force's investigations into unidentified flying objects (UFOs) starting in 1948 under a program entitled "Project Sign." - 10/1/1987
• U.S. Air Force report entitled: "The Roswell Report - Case Closed." The focus of this probe has been to access if the U.S. Air Force, or any other government agency, possessed informed on the alleged crash and recovery of an extraterrestrial vehicle and its alien occupants near Roswell, New Mexico, in July 1947. It has been determined that the crashed object was a nuclear test surveillance balloon from Project Mogul - 4/25/1996
• National Security Council (NSC) staff member Fritz Ermarth provides Deputy National Security Adviser Colin Powell with talking points in preparation for a 2:00 p.m. Domestic Policy Council (DPC) meeting on acid rain. The NSC strongly endorses full federal research funding in an attempt to ease Canadian concerns over environmental problems associated with acid rain from American industrial plants. - March 9, 1987
• In a letter to President Barack Obama, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-California) provides information on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's study of the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) Detention and Interrogation Program - 12/30/2014
• Deputy Director for Central Intelligence (DDCI) Richard Kerr provides Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) William Casey with an assessment about the catastrophic nuclear accident that occurred on 4/26/1986 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukraine - 7/31/1986
• National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski provides President Jimmy Carter with an attached cable from General Robert Huyser, Deputy Commander in Chief, U.S. European Command (DCINCEUR), concerning his appraisal of the attitude of the Iranian military community toward the U.S. - 1/13/1979
• Commander William Anderson congratulates Rear Admiral Hyman Rickover for his vision on the importance of nuclear power and his vision's fulfillment in the completion of the first transpolar voyage from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean by the nuclear submarine, the USS NAUTILUS - August 8, 1958

ABOUT U.S. DECLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS ONLINE

U.S. Declassified Documents Online's greatest value lies in the wealth of facts and insights that it provides in connection with the political, economic, and social conditions of the United States and other countries. Materials as diverse as State Department political analyses, White House confidential file materials, National Security Council policy statements, CIA intelligence memoranda, and much more offer unique insights into the inner workings of the US government and world events in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. A significant resource for researchers in almost every discipline, this collection makes it possible for researchers to easily and quickly access and review selected previously classified government documents online.

We’re excited to share that Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive migrated to the Gale Primary Sources platform on Friday, November 20^th. Your current links now redirect automatically, and Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive is available exclusively in the new experience. 

In addition to the existing Gale Primary Sources functionality, there are also be some new options available for this archive:

• NEW! Related Resources feature: Legacy Slavery and Anti-Slavery collections include some older reference content, which will not be carried over: however, it has been replaced with something better: More Like This. This enables researchers to link out to related reference content in Gale eBooks. The feature is available in the document view Explore panel and is subscription-based, so users will only see links to reference content available to them through their library.
• Search by Collection: Between its four modules, Slavery and Anti-Slavery is comprised of dozens of rare and unique collections. However, legacy Slavery and Anti-Slavery does not allow the user the limit their search by a specific collection. This functionality is now available, and, like other collection-based GPS products, will feature the dynamic Explore Collections feature. 
• Cross-search ability: for the first time ever, Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive is available in the Gale Primary Sources cross-search, so researchers can compare their search results in one place with content from their institution’s other Gale archives.
• Gale Digital Scholar Lab availability: Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive is also available for the first time in the Gale Digital Scholar Lab, allowing researchers to apply natural language-processing tools to raw text data (OCR) from Gale Primary Sources in a single research platform.
• Enhanced product platform: the platform now has a modern look and feel, in-line with user expectations of modern websites. 
• Improved accessibility: maintained for web accessibility standards, the new user interface ensures access by users of all abilities.  
• Smarter search results: the user interface retains Advanced Search fields and limiters, but also include new search features, such as additional filtering options; Name and Subject Expansion, which looks for pseudonyms and synonyms of your search term; and access to our Topic Finder and Term Frequency textual analysis tools. 
• Streamlined user interface: consistent with other Gale products, the interface delivers an engaging experience that allows quick access to search tools, relevant content, and collaborative features like Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive. 
• Secure product access: HTTPS guarantees data between a patron’s browser and Gale products is encrypted, and the right to privacy for library users is protected.  

Bingham, Adrian (The University of Sheffield)

An Introduction to the Daily Mirror
The Daily Mirror and Left-Wing Politics
The Daily Mirror and Women

Conboy, Martin (The University of Sheffield)   |   Language in the Mirror: An Idiom for the Masses

Whitworth, James (The University of Sheffield)   |   The Daily Mirror and Cartoons

Pruitt, Lisa (Middle Tennessee State University)   |   “The Welfare of Children and Child Life”: Public Health and America’s Children

Wuebker, Erin (Queens College, City University of New York)   |   Social Hygiene in America

Gatrell, Peter (University of Manchester)   |   Forced Migration during the Second World War: An Introduction

Pistol, Rachel (The University of Sheffield)   |   Refugees from National Socialism Arriving in Great Britain 1933-1945

Gartrell, David (University of California at Santa Barbara)   |   American Religions: A Curator’s View

Baker, Joseph and McMillan, Brianna (East Tennessee State University)   |   Christian Identity and Religions of America

Melton, J. Gordon (Baylor University)   |   Western Esoteric Religious Traditions in America

Robins, Roger G. (The University of Tokyo)   |   The Holiness and Pentecostal Families in Religions of America

Walker, David (University of California at Santa Barbara)   |   “‘There Shall Be a Record Kept Among You’: On the Archives of Mormon History”