Documents the dynamics of Western trade and wealth that shaped the world from the last half of the fifteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century

The Making of the Modern World is extraordinary for research into the history of the dynamics of Western trade, including the Industrial Revolution in Great Britain, encompassing the coal, iron, and steel industries, the railway industry, the cotton industry, banking and finance, and the emergence of the modern corporation. It is also strong in the rise of the modern labor movement, the evolving status of slavery, the condition and making of the working class, colonization, the Atlantic world, Latin American/Caribbean studies, social history, gender, and the economic theories that championed and challenged capitalism in the nineteenth century.

In addition, The Making of the Modern World offers deep resources in the role of finance and taxation and the growth of the early modern monarchy. It features essential texts covering the function of financial institutions, the crisis of the French monarchy and the French Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century, and the connection between the democratic goals of revolutionaries and their legal aspirations.

Download the catalog to get all the details on newly released collections in Gale Primary Sources.

Get Access

Collections

The Making of the Modern World, Part I: The Goldsmiths'-Kress Library of Economic Literature, 1450-1850

The Making of the Modern World, Part I: The Goldsmiths'-Kress Collection, 1450-1850 is a core resource for scholars and students, both for its successive editions of works by preeminent thinkers and for its wealth of rare source materials covering the experience and consequences of world trade, exploration and colonization of the New World, the Industrial Revolution, and the development of modern capitalism.

The Making of the Modern World, Part II: 1851-1914

The Making of the Modern World, Part II: 1851-1914 traces the progress of the rapidly changing economies of the nineteenth century. The breadth and depth of the collection deepens researchers' access to international coverage of nineteenth-century social, economic, and business history as well as political science, technology, industrialization, and the birth of the modern corporation.

The Making of the Modern World, Part III: 1890–1945

The Making of the Modern World: Part III, 1890-1945 takes The Making of the Modern World series deeper into the twentieth century covering the key events that have shaped the modern world. Beyond the study of economic thought, the collection provides an invaluable resource for the studying of social forces unleashed by the economy.

The Making of the Modern World, Part IV: 1800 - 1890

The Making of the Modern World: Part IV offers definitive coverage of the “Age of Capital,” the industrial revolution, and the High Victorian Era, when the foundations of modern-day capitalism and global trade were established. The collection includes hard-to-reach formats such as plans and pamphlets. This technically challenging material is now surfacing and offering original study resources to researchers.

Platform Features & Tools

Term Frequency

Researchers can see the frequency of search terms within sets of content to begin identifying central themes and assessing how individuals, places, events, and ideas interact and develop over time.

Topic Finder

By grouping commonly occurring themes, this tool reveals hidden connections within search terms—helping to shape research by integrating diverse content with relevant information.

Cross-Search Capability

Search across the materials of complementary primary source products, including books, in one united, intuitive environment, enabling innovative new research connections.

Learn more about the Gale Primary Sources Platform »

Related Products

Eighteenth Century Collections Online: Part I

Eighteenth Century Collections Online contains 135,000 printed works comprising more than 26 million scanned facsimile pages of English-language and foreign-language titles printed in the United Kingdom between the years 1701 and 1800. While the majority of works in ECCO are in the English language, researchers will also discover a rich vein of works printed in Dutch, French, German, Italian, Latin, Spanish, and Welsh.

Nineteenth Century Collections Online: Asia and the West

Researchers can explore rare government reports, diplomatic correspondence, periodicals, newspapers, treaties, trade agreements, NGO papers, and more within this resource, which covers such topics as British and U.S. foreign policy and diplomacy; Asian political, economic, and social affairs; the Boxer Rebellion; missionary activity in Asia; and much more.

Nineteenth Century Collections Online: British Politics and Society

With this collection, scholars can research and explore primary sources covering such topics as British domestic and foreign policy, the working class, trade unions, Chartism, utopian socialism, public protest, radical movements, the cartographic record, political reform, education, family relationships, religion, leisure, and many others.

Nineteenth Century Collections Online: Europe and Africa, Colonialism and Culture

Nineteenth Century Collections Online: Europe and Africa, Colonialism and Culture presents a dramatic, gripping chronicle of exploration and missions from the early nineteenth century through the Conference of Berlin in 1884 and the subsequent scramble for Africa. Unique sources provide a wealth of research topics on explorers, politicians, evangelists, journalists, and tycoons blinded by romantic nationalism or caught up in the competition for markets and converts. These monographs, manuscripts, and newspapers cover key issues of economics, world politics, and international strategy.

Nineteenth Century Collections Online: Maps and Travel Literature

Nineteenth Century Collections Online: Maps and Travel Literature provides geographical images from all areas of the globe. The nineteenth century encompassed tremendous growth in maps and map making as the field of cartography gained visibility and professional standards. Mapping of the world during this time period was driven by massive industrialization and exploration. As people ventured further from traditional population centers, a new market for reliable maps was created. This collection supports studies on the evolution of travel and transportation and spans multiple disciplines, providing insight into societal values, interests, colonialism, and exploration.

Nineteenth Century Collections Online: Science, Technology, and Medicine, Part I

The “long” nineteenth century is an era characterized by industrial, technical, and social revolution. With a changing society came new approaches to the study of natural history, physics, mathematics, medicine, and public health. Boasting a wealth of curated primary sources, this collection helps researchers place essential subjects in the larger picture of historical study.

Nineteenth Century Collections Online: Women and Transnational Networks

The Nineteenth Century Collections Online: Women and Transnational Networks collection covers issues of gender and class, igniting nineteenth-century debate in the context of suffrage movements, culture, immigration, health, and many other concerns. Using a wide array of primary source documents, including serials, books, manuscripts, diaries, reports, and visuals, this collection focuses on issues at the intersection of gender and class from the late eighteenth century to the era of suffrage in the early twentieth century, all through a transnational perspective.

Sabin Americana: History of the Americas, 1500–1926

Based on Joseph Sabin's famed bibliography, this digital archive provides a firsthand account of 450 years of history in the Americas, including discovery and exploration, slavery and European colonization, native peoples, wars of independence, religion and missionary work, social and political reforms, economic development, westward expansion, notable individuals, and much more.

The Times Digital Archive, 1785-2019*

The Times Digital Archive is an online, full-text facsimile of more than 200 years of the Times, one of the most highly regarded resources for eighteenth-, nineteenth-, and twentieth-century news coverage, with every page of every issue from 1785 to 2019.