Slavery and Revolution - new resource partly based on our archives

We're pleased to promote a new resource, developed by Dr Christer Petley, Senior Lecturer in History, University of Southampton

Slavery and Revolution, is an internet resource for research about Jamaica and Atlantic slavery in the Age of Revolution, which uses a blogging format to showcase excerpts from letters written by Simon Taylor (1738-1813), a slaveholder and plantation owner who lived in Jamaica during a period characterised by revolution, war, and imperial reform.   Taylor wrote from Jamaica to friends, family members, business associates, and political allies in Britain. The letters showcased were written between the 1770s and Taylor’s death. These were years of uncertainty and change for all the inhabitants of the British Caribbean, enslaved and free. They included rebellions and resistance by enslaved people, hurricanes, drought, disruption to trade, the rise of the British abolition movement, the French and Haitian Revolutions, war between Britain and France, the Second Maroon War, civil rights campaigning by free people of colour, and the abolition of the slave trade.
Taylor’s worldview was that of a slaveholder. He perceived Africans as inferior to Europeans and believed that it was his right to treat Africans and their descendants as property, as slaves who he could buy, sell, and put to work as he pleased. He generally saw enslaved people not as human beings but as a source of labour. His comments can make for uncomfortable reading. Nevertheless, his letters are important sources for historical research because of the new light that they can shed on a number of themes, including transformations to empire and slavery during the Age of Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century.

The original copies of these letters are held in the UK at Cambridge University Library and the Institute of Commonwealth Studies Library. The transcriptions appear here with the kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library and of the Institute of Commonwealth Studies Library. Each excerpt is accompanied by the full reference to the item from which it has been drawn in the Vanneck-Arcedeckne collection in Cambridge University Library or the Taylor Family Papers in the Institute of Commonwealth Studies Library

The website is a free resource, open to anyone. Its contents are intended for use by academics, students, and others to use in their research, teaching, and learning.
Web address: http://blog.soton.ac.uk/slaveryandrevolution/

Follow Slavery and Revolution on Twitter: Slavery & Revolution @SlandRev

Email: c.petley@soton.ac.uk

website survey

We are currently taking feedback regarding the Senate House Library website.

Please help us with this process by completing a printed questionnaire available from the Library's Circulation Desk or completing the online survey, which is available at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/2S522N3
Your comments will help our redesign of the website which will take place later this year.

The Black Atlantic Resource

The Black Atlantic Resource:


http://www.liv.ac.uk/csis/blackatlantic

http://blackatlanticresource.wordpress.com/

Follow us on Twitter: @blackatlantic1

This exciting new resource is a collaborative project between the University of Liverpool and Tate Liverpool originally constructed on the occasion of Tate Liverpool's exhibition "Afro Modern: Journeys through the Black Atlantic". This resource seeks to promote the study of black Atlantic cultures by providing a hub for access to current research, debates and online materials and a space for scholarly exchange.

The Black Atlantic Resource provides free access to current research, artworks, chronological and bibliographic information in this area. They are happy to publish posts about new publications in relevant fields of study, as well as book reviews, and information about other online resources. If you would like to contribute your research or take advantage of this opportunity to publicise please contact Wendy Asquith: w.j.asquith@liv.ac.uk
The resource also provides information on key historical and current figures working within the flows of the Black Atlantic, including recent profiles on Marcus Garvey: http://www.liv.ac.uk/csis/blackatlantic/information/people%20D-J/Marcus_Garvey.htm

and Renee Cox:
http://blackatlanticresource.wordpress.com/2010/08/14/renee-cox-if-you-dont-ask-you-dont-get-then-you-get-kicked-to-the-curb/

There are a number of platforms through which to access the Black Atlantic Resource. The main site is updated with new content regularly: http://www.liv.ac.uk/csis/blackatlantic

Alternatively you can subscribe to the blog and receive updates each time new material is posted:
http://blackatlanticresource.wordpress.com/

Or you can follow on Twitter, to be kept updated with new online research, resources and debates as well as updates on  new material. Find us: @blackatlantic1.

New New Zealand digital resource - Appendices to the Journal of the House of Representatives

The Speaker of the NZ House of Representatives recently launched a website containing the first 24 volumes of the Appendices to the Journal of the House of Representatives. Covering the 1860s and 1870s, it includes more than 1600 reports, and it is just the start.

The Speaker noted:

"We have only just begun to lift the curtain on the hidden treasures in the A to Js. We now need to digitise the whole period 1854 to 1999 when the modern-day Parliamentary Papers begin. It is hoped that this pilot website will provide a launching pad through which further digitisation of the A to Js can be achieved with the support of other stakeholders, and to date, some have indicated their financial support to enable this to happen.

"The first 24 volumes will eventually become an estimated 600 volumes, though the speed at which that happens will depend on available funding. In a recent on-line poll, conducted by Digital New Zealand on candidates for digitisation, the A to Js were voted one of the top information source priorities."

 

The website for this resource is at: http://atojs.natlib.govt.nz/

The Appendix to the Journals of the House of Representatives (AJHR), sometimes known as "the A to Js", is a collection of government-related reports published every year from 1858. The reports cover many subjects, documenting the work of government departments and a wide range of other activities carried out by, or of interest to, the government of the day. The AJHR is one of the most valuable tools for understanding how New Zealand has developed from its earliest colonial beginnings to the present. It provides a wealth of information for researchers working across many fields.

 

All papers tabled before Parliament are considered appendices to the Journal. The House orders some of these papers to be printed, and these are published annually in a separate series of volumes as the Appendix to the Journals of the House of Representatives. The Legislative Council (or Upper House of Parliament) also published a separate volume of papers, the Journal of the Legislative Council (not included on this website), before it was abolished in 1951. The Council's Journal includes appendices at the end of some volumes.

 

The AJHR is arranged into broad themes. The following list provides a broad outline of the themes since the late nineteenth century:

 

•A: legislative, political, and foreign affairs

 

•B: public finance

 

•C: Crown lands, mines, forests, primary production, environment

 

•D: immigration, public works, energy

 

•E: education, welfare, and justice

 

•F: post office, broadcasting, communications

 

•G: Maori affairs

 

•H: miscellaneous, commissions of inquiry

 

•I: reports of select committees

 

•J: petitions

 

Each theme includes a series of reports grouped by "shoulder number" — a letter of the alphabet followed by a number. For example:

 

"General report on lunatic asylums in New Zealand (by Dr. Paley)", AJHR, 1874, H-1

 

This indicates that the report was published in 1874 and was the first document in the "H" theme that year.

 

What's in the AJHR?

• Annual reports of government departments
• Reports of commissions of inquiry
• Reports relating to broader government work
• Images and maps

 

  

New subject webpage

We now have a general webpage for Commonwealth Studies as part of the Senate House Library webpage. This page provides a general overview of the collection and a list of databases of interest. We're currently working on lists of internet resources to add to this page. Any suggestions please add as a comment to this post:

The subject webpages are avauilable at:
http://www.shl.lon.ac.uk/subjects/commonwealth/index.shtml

New Institute of Commonwealth Studies website

The Institute of Commonwealth Studies is pleased to announce the launch of its new website http://commonwealth.sas.ac.uk/



The new website, along with providing information about the Institute and its MA Human Rights and PhD programmes, has been expanded to include further information about the Institute’s fellows and more detailed information about upcoming seminar series and conferences.

Further content will be added to the website. An archive version of the old website's content on Library collections has been kept at: http://commonwealth.sas.ac.uk/libraries/library.htm
Over the next few months some of this content will be shifting to the Senate House Library website, reflecting the Library's new physical location.

Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database

Between 1514 and 1866 an estimated over 10 million people of African descent entered the Americas via the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Voyages: The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database was launched last year by the Emory University Digital Library Research Initiative, to help researchers, students and the general public  track and better understand this part of history.
The open access (free) online database offers information on nearly 35,000 voyages across the Atlantic - approximately 82 percent of the entire slave trade. Although not complete, Voyages provides a look at the contours of the trade, over four centuries, across four continents, and through these patterns allows insight into its impact. Researchers can look at particular voyages, examine estimates of the extent of the trade, and search by names. The website includes essays, introductory maps, a selection of images and lesson plans and links to other related resources.
The project is the result of collaborative research drawing on data in archives and libraries around the Atlantic world.
The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database is freely available online at http://www.slavevoyages.org/

Web archive of Singapore

With thanks to the Social Science internet update from Intute

The Web Archive of Singapore is maintained by the National Library of Singapore. It is creating an archive of snapshots of thousands of websites coveringculture, economics and politics. These are being preserved as a resource for the social history of the region. They include government department websites, coverage of specific events (such as SARS, political events, elections) educational and recreational websites. Each entry has an abstract of content and links to snapshots of the site taken on different dates. The database may be searched or browsed. Users should note that not all materials are offered in English.

New online resources - 19th Century British Pamphlets

Members of the library now have access to the new 19th Century British Pamphlets collection. This collection, created by RLUK (Research Libraries UK), contains a number of the most significant British pamphlets from the 19th century held in UK research libraries. Pamphlets were an important means of public debate, covering the key political, social, technological, and environmental issues of their day. They have been underutilized within research and teaching because they are generally quite difficult to access – often bound together in large numbers or otherwise hard to find in the few research libraries that hold them. The digitization of more than 20,000 pamphlets from seven UK institutions will provide researchers, students, and teachers with an immensely rich and coherent corpus of primary sources with which to study the socio-political and economic landscape of 19th century Britain. This collection was created with funding from the JISC Digitisation Programme

Significant collections within the resource for colonial history include:

Earl Grey Pamphlets Collection

Still owned by the family, this collection was largely accumulated by the 2nd, 3rd and 4th Earls Grey. Charles was Foreign Secretary (1806-07) and Prime Minister (1830-34). Henry George was Under Secretary for Home Affairs (1830) and the Colonies (1830-34), Secretary at War (1835-39), and Secretary of State for the Colonies (1846-52). Albert Henry George was Administrator of Rhodesia (1896-97) and Governor-General of Canada (1904-11). The Greys were particularly interested in parliamentary reform, colonial affairs and Catholic emancipation.

Foreign and Commonwealth Office Collection

On deposit from the FCO, this collection comprises the earlier collections of the Foreign Office and the Colonial Office. Both include rare publications from overseas. The Foreign Office Collection consists largely of pamphlets sent back to London by British ambassadors to help with policy formation. It is particularly rich in material related to South America, the Near East, and to the various great European political "questions" of the 19th century. The Colonial Office Collection is chiefly comprised of pamphlets sent back from Britain's colonies, including some unique early material from Australasia.

Knowsley Pamphlet Collection

The Knowsley collection reflects the political careers of the Earls of Derby. Edward George, the 14th Earl, was successively Irish Secretary (1830-33), Colonial Secretary (1833-34, 1841-44), and three times Prime Minister (1852, 1858-59, and 1866-68). His son, Edward Henry, 15th Earl, was Colonial Secretary and later Indian secretary in his father's administration of 1858-59.

LSE Selected Pamphlets

LSE has a substantial number of 19th century pamphlets. Among its pamphlets are comprehensive collections of political party materials, including election manifestos and political cartoons. There are also collections from pressure groups such as the Fabian Society, Imperial Federation Defence Committee, Poor Law Reform Association, Workhouse Visiting Society, Liberal and Property Defence League, and from cooperative movements such as the Cooperative Women's Guild.

Wilson Anti-Slavery Collection

A collection of 19th-century anti-slavery pamphlets received in 1923 from the executors of Henry Joseph Wilson (1833-1914), the distinguished Liberal Member of Parliament for Sheffield. The collection is of particular importance for the study of the activities of the provincial philanthropic societies, such as the Birmingham and Midland Freedmen's Aid Association, the Birmingham and West Bromwich Ladies' Negro's Friend Society, the Glasgow Emancipation Society, the Manchester Union and Emancipation Society, and the Sheffield Ladies Female Anti Slavery Society. Of interest is the prominent role of women in the movement, who formed themselves into societies which lobbied MPs and printed pamphlets on the conditions of slaves. Here we have details of what was sold at their bazaars to raise funds and lists of names of subscribers, the minutiae which bring alive the history of the movement.

Electronic Journals on Africa

An initiative arising from the 2008 Paris-Nanterres meeting of the European Librarians on African Studies (ELIAS) is a Wikipedia listing of African Studies journals available online.

The initial list was compiled from lists held by four institutions: Uppsala, Leiden, Frankfurt and ASAUK, creating a comprehensive list of more than one thousand African studies journals.

Locating this list within the digital encyclopedia Wikipedia has two advantages:
-the list of African Studies Journals is now available for a wide audience
-the list can be expanded and improved by anybody with knowledge about e-journals on Africa.

The list can be accessed via http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_studies_journals

This is not a definitive list: it is work "under construction". The list will be expanded (ISBN etc) and updated in the future. It would be nice if all African Studies Journals would get their "own" page in Wikipedia, like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aequatoria and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Affairs

New on Intute - Pakistan Conflict Monitor

Intute is a free online service that helps you to find the best web resources for your studies and research. Recently added to Intute is the following resource, do check the website and its own blog for new resources.

Pakistan conflict monitor

The Pakistan Conflict Monitor is maintained by the Human Security Report Project at the School for International Studies at Simon Fraser University. It aims to highlight research about conflict and international security relating to Pakistan. This includes coverage of terrorism, Al-Qaeda, fundamental Islam, the links with the Taliban in Afghanistan and more generally government and development initiatives. The site summarises and links to key research data, press releases and reports. Information is generally available from 2009 onwards.

Remember to check the website for a complete list http://www.intute.ac.uk/