Americas and Oceania Collections blog

Exploring the Library’s collections from the Americas and Oceania

3 posts from September 2022

28 September 2022

E-resources: magazines and comics

This month’s e-resources blog explores five wonderful resources offering full-text access to a wide variety of magazines and comics. 

Please note: all of these resources can be accessed remotely with a British Library Reader Pass.

Entertainment Industry Magazine Archive, 1880-2015 covers the history of the film and entertainment industries, from the era of vaudeville and silent movies through to the 21st century. It includes numerous trade magazines which have effectively provided the main historical record for their subject areas throughout the 20th century – Variety (1905-2000), The Hollywood Reporter (1930-2015), Billboard (1894-2000) and Broadcasting (1931-2000) – as well as more specialist titles, such as American Cinematographer (1930-2015), Backstage (1961-2000) and Emmy (1979-2015). The inclusion of consumer and fan magazines enables researchers to retrieve industry news items, features on technological breakthroughs and in-depth interviews with major artists, together with photographs and illustrations, gossip columns, listings, reviews, charts and statistics. Items such as advertisements, covers and short reviews of films, music singles or other works have been indexed as separate documents enabling researchers find all the relevant material for their search topic.

Men’s Magazine Archive contains a handful of US titles, with two being particularly notable. Founded in 1845, the tabloid-style National Police Gazette was in print for over 120 years and initially covered matters of interest to the police – in particular, lurid murders and Wild West outlaws. It also focused on sport, and its plentiful images of burlesque dancers and strippers meant it was a fixture of nineteenth and early twentieth century barber shops. In many ways, the Gazette was a forerunner to illustrated sports weeklies, girlie magazines, celebrity gossip columns, and sensational journalism. Published in New York, The Argosy/Argosy was one of the “big four” pulp (all-fiction) magazines. It had many different iterations, and its writers included Upton Sinclair, Zane Gray and the former dime novelist William Wallace Cook. From the early 1940s, much of its fiction content was replaced by “men’s magazine” content. The magazine ceased publication in 1978.

Amidst a magazine page with two columns of text and a large headline there is a an image of man standing in a river wearing jeans, a jacket and a hat while holding a couple of large fish with his right hand
Argosy. New York, Vol. 376, Issue 3, (1 March 1, 1973). Included in the Men's Magazine Archive, published by ProQuest and available at the British Library.

Trench Journals and Unit Magazines of the First World War contains over 1,500 journals and magazines written and illustrated by service personnel in the infantry, artillery, air force, naval, supply and transport units, military hospitals and training depots of all combatant nations. Not only did these magazines create a sense of esprit de corps and raise the spirits of the unit through humorous stories, poems, jokes and parodies, but they also documented the unit’s unique circumstances and experiences. The vast and previously unrecognised corpus of war poetry, written by a multitude of hitherto unknown poets, offers a vital counterpoint to the more established authors who emerged from the Great War. NB – a similar resource, Service Newspapers of World War II, was covered in our e-resources blog in November 2021.

Breather o Heather

Underground and Independent Comics, Comix and Graphic Novels is the first-ever scholarly online collection for researchers and students of adult comic books and graphic novels. From the first underground comix of the 1960s, to the work of modern sequential artists to the present day, it covers the full spectrum of this visual art form and offers 200,000 pages of original material alongside interviews, commentary, criticism, and other supporting materials. Please note that it contains graphic material that some may find offensive.

Vogue Archive contains the entire run of US Vogue, from its founding to the present day and includes all text, graphics, ads covers and fold-outs, indexed and in colour. Vogue was founded in New York in 1892 as a weekly society paper catering for Manhattan's social elite. After being purchased by Condé Nast in 1909, not only did the quality of the paper, printing and illustrations all improve, but there was a new focus on fashion and the magazine quickly became one of the icons of the modern age. The Archive’s contents represent the work of the greatest designers, photographers, stylists and illustrators of the 20th and 21st centuries and are a primary source for the study of fashion, gender and modern social history.

 

 

26 September 2022

The Haldimand Papers: The British Empire in North America

Patrick J. Jung is a professor in the Department of Humanities, Social Science and Communication at the Milwaukee School of Engineering, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and was a 2021 Eccles Centre Visiting Fellow at the British Library. 

As an Eccles Centre Visiting Fellow, I had the honour of spending five weeks at the British Library engaged with the Haldimand Papers during the summer of 2022. This sizeable collection presented a daunting task as it consists of 249 volumes, many of which contain hundreds of original manuscripts. Nevertheless, it was time well spent with one of the most important manuscript collections for understanding the history of the British Empire in North America.

Frederick Haldimand was a Swiss-born British army officer who arrived in North America in 1756 during the opening years of the French and Indian War. Except for a hiatus in Britain from 1775 to 1778, Haldimand remained in North America until 1784. In addition to serving as the military commander of East and West Florida from 1765 to 1773, he served as the commander of Quebec from 1778 to 1784 and was responsible for the colony’s military defense, particularly during the American Revolution. Haldimand also commanded British installations in the Great Lakes region. His papers often provide the only record of the events that transpired in this vast expanse, which included posts in the eastern Great Lakes such as Fort Niagara (Fig. 1) and Fort Detroit (Fig. 2), and the sole installation in the western Great Lakes, Fort Michilimackinac.

Sparse, hand-drawn map of Fort Niagara.
Fig. 1: [Author unknown], Rough Plan of Fort Niagara, &c., 31 July 1760, Haldimand Papers, Add. Mss. vol. 21686/32.

Originally, I planned to focus on those documents related to the American Revolution in the Trans-Appalachian West, but in the course of my research, I noticed a distinct contrast between the British officer class serving in North America and the American colonials concerning their attitudes toward Native societies. Whereas colonials sought to expand their settlements westward beyond the Appalachian Mountains at the expense of the Indigenous societies, British army officers strove to preserve Native lands for Native people. The reasons for this sentiment shifted over time, but it was a surprisingly consistent policy goal from the 1750s onward. The Haldimand Papers proved to be an essential resource for investigating this ideological divide as they span three crucial decades and preserve a record of British imperialism in North America that is unparalleled in scope.

Hand-drawn map showing Fort Detroit and villages along a river which is shaded in orange; there are several islands in the river.
Fig. 2: [Author unknown], Fort Detroit and Its Environs, n.d., Haldimand Papers, Add. Mss. vol. 21686/72.

During the 1750s and 1760s, British officers endeavoured to prevent American colonials from settling on the Native lands of the Trans-Appalachian West to mollify the Indigenous societies and prevent uprisings such as that of Pontiac’s Rebellion from 1763 to 1766. In the aftermath of this insurrection, British military administrators reestablished the earlier system of trade instituted by the French that extended political, economic, and cultural autonomy to Native people. The advent of the American Revolution witnessed both the British and their Native allies working toward the common goal of defeating the American colonials and pushing the tide of White expansion eastward back across the Appalachian Mountains. When the Treaty of Paris ended the conflict in 1783, Haldimand gave this policy a more structured form when he proposed establishing a Native barrier state north of the Ohio River as a means of preserving the land base of Britain’s Indigenous allies. In a letter dated 27 November 1783, Haldimand advised that “the intermediate country between the limits assigned to Canada by the provisional treaty…should be considered entirely as belonging to the Indians, and that the subjects neither of Great Britain nor of the American States should be allowed to settle within them” (Haldimand Papers, Add. Mss. vol. 21716/73-75). The idea of a North American Native barrier state remained a British objective for the next three decades.

The Haldimand Papers make clear that American colonials exhibited what Patrick Wolfe (2006) has labeled “settler colonialism,” or the “logic of elimination” (387-388) whereby they sought to eliminate Indigenous peoples from their homelands. Through the voluminous correspondence preserved in the Haldimand Papers, the patient researcher can discern the development of British policies designed to counter American settler colonialism and preserve Native autonomy during the latter half of the eighteenth century. British policymakers ultimately failed to achieve this policy goal, and thus, it remains a neglected aspect of British imperial history. As I continued my examination of the Haldimand Papers, I became determined to correct this historiographic oversight in the future.

In his synthesis of the history of the British Empire, Bernard Peters (2004) asserts that British military commanders on the ground and imperial authorities in London often found it necessary to “protect…indigenous subjects from maverick Britons” (6). Certainly, this was the case in British North America from the 1750s onward. Historians researching this phenomenon will find the Haldimand Papers an essential source of historical information.

Sources

Anderson, Fred. (2000). Crucible of War: The Seven Years’ War and the Fate of Empire in British North America, 1754-1766. New York: Vintage Books.

Berkhofer, Robert F., Jr. (1969). “Barrier to Settlement: British Indian Policy in the Old Northwest 1783-1794.” In The Frontier in American Development: Essays in Honor of Paul Wallace Gates. Pp. 249-276. David Ellis, ed. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Dendy, John O. (1972). “Frederick Haldimand and the Defense of Canada, 1778-1784.” Ph.D. diss., Duke University.

Haldimand, Frederick. Papers. (1750-1790). Additional Manuscripts, vols. 21661-21895. British Library.

Porter, Bernard. (2004). The Lion’s Share: A Short History of British Imperialism, 1850-2004. Fourth edition. Harlow, United Kingdom: Pearson.

Sutherland, Stuart, Pierre Tousignant, and Madeleine Dionne-Tousignant. (1983). “Haldimand, Sir Frederick,” In Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Vol. 5, pp 887-904. Francess Halpenny, ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1983.

Wolfe, Patrick. (2006). “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native.” Journal of Genocide Research 8:387–409.

 

01 September 2022

Electronic resources for research in Oceania studies

Our monthly series on the electronic resources available to support your research at the British Library has so far covered topics from Women in the United States and Caribbean Studies to African American History and US Politics. This next post will focus on some of the Oceania e-resources available for research on the history and culture of Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands. All resources can be accessed from our Electronic Resources page, and some are available remotely once you get your free Reader Pass. 

1. AustLit (Australian Literature Resource)

Image showing the homepage of the AustLit website
AustLit homepage

Description: AustLit is many things, but in its simplest form it can be described as an authoritative record of Australian writers and writing. This scholarly resource is the result of an impressive collaboration between multiple universities and libraries in Australia and provides bibliographic information (with links to full-text where available) on creative and critical Australian literature works including fiction, drama, poetry, children's and young adult literature, travel writing, autobiography, memoir, biography, essays, Indigenous life stories and oral history, and biographical information on Australian authors and the history of publishers, literary organisations and awards. In addition to its role as a database, AustLit provides a rich research environment for Australian literary, print, and narrative cultures, and you can explore the results of research projects on topics from the reverse diaspora of Australian writers to silent film in Australian newspapers.

Scope: Print coverage spans from the arrival of European print culture in Australia (c.1788) to the present, but also references the continuing storytelling culture of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians which precedes this date. The database is continually growing but the most recent count of entries show 991,019 works, 187,519 agents (people/organisations), and 30,100 subjects recorded. Although AustLit is Australia focused, one research project has explored Māori and Pasifika connections in the region to compile resources on Young Adult Fiction of Oceania.

Navigation: For those looking to explore general topics, the homepage showcases various research projects which are easily navigable and invite browsing. As well as a basic search box, there is a very thorough advanced search page with multiple filters (including limiting to full-text results) for those with more specific research questions. Slideshows and written tutorials are also available to guide searches.

Highlights: One of the most significant research projects available on AustLit is BlackWords which provides information about the lives, careers, and works of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander writers and storytellers, including a comprehensive listing of works in an Indigenous language and translations to and from other languages. 25,187 works and 7,258 authors and organisations have been recorded in BlackWords thus far.

Research-projects
Some of the research projects available to browse on AustLit

Access: AustLit is a subscribed database which can be accessed on London Reading Room PCs. To give you a sense of what’s available, you can also view up to five records on your own device without a subscription by directly accessing the resource at https://www.austlit.edu.au/ 

Related e-resources: Researchers of Oceania literary culture may also be interested in the literary journals recorded in Index New Zealand (INNZ) which can be accessed directly without subscription. 

 

2. Papers Past

Image showing the homepage of the Papers Past website
Papers Past homepage

Description: Papers Past provides digitised full-text historical newspapers, magazines, and journals from Aotearoa New Zealand the Pacific, including those published in Māori or for a Māori readership. A selection of letters, diaries, parliamentary papers and books are also included. This digital collection of primary sources is part of the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa and is continually updated through collaboration with libraries, community groups, and private collections, and offers a fascinating insight into the history and culture of the country. The range of newspapers included in the resource means researchers can easily follow the development of Māori Niupepa (newspapers) including Te Hokioi (The War-Bird of New Zealand in Flight to You, 1862-1863), the first Māori-language newspaper produced entirely by Māori, or even investigate how the gold rush impacted the number of newspapers being published.

Image showing the first page of the newspaper, Te Hokioi
The first issue of Te Hokioi (The War-Bird of New Zealand in Flight to You, 1862-1863), the first Maori-language newspaper produced entirely by Maori. Available at paperspast.natlib.govt.nz

Scope: As of September 2022, newspaper coverage ranges from 1839 to 1979 (including titles from Samoa), whilst magazines and journals cover 1861 to 2017. To date, Papers Past contains 8,074,614 pages which includes 90,373,379 newspaper articles.

Navigation: The site can be navigated in both English and te reo Māori and is divided into five tabs: Newspapers; Magazines and Journals; Letters and Diaries, Parliamentary Papers; Books. Each tab offers slightly different search options but are easy to navigate. For newspapers and magazines you can limit your search to just the Ngā Tānga Reo Māori collection. This will limit your search to any titles printed in te reo Māori before 1901. When searching Letters and Diaries, you can select results by iwi/hapu (tribe/clan). Results can viewed in original formats or as text, and can be saved and printed. Instructions on the re-use of material is usually made clear on the page.

Highlights: The New Zealand Graphic and Ladies' Journal (1890-1913) has been recently added to the collection. This weekly publication was amongst the first to employ permanent artists which meant reports and commentaries on notable events, including the country becoming the first to give women the right to vote, were often accompanied by cartoons or illustrations which offer researchers today a unique insight into public sentiment at the time (or at least that of the editor!). Another highlight of this resource is the largest surviving series of nineteenth-century Māori letters included in The Papers of Sir Donald McLean collection. The letters, which total almost 3000, are searchable by iwi/hapu (tribe/clan) and were sent to the 19th-century politician and government official between 1840 to 1877. They have now been transcribed and translated through the E Mā: Ngā Tuhituhinga ki a Makarini project and discuss matters such as land issues and purchase negotiations. McLean was fluent in te reo Māori and played a significant, but often controversial role in negotiations between the settler government and Māori.

Four cartoons on women gaining the right to vote
Cartoons published following the event of women gaining the right to vote. Published in the New Zealand Graphic 14 October 1893. Available at paperspast.natlib.govt.nz

 

Access: Papers Past is a free resource available without subscription and can be accessed directly at https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/

Related e-resources: Researchers looking for further examples of primary sources from the region may also be interested in exploring Trench Journals and Unit Magazines of the First World War. This collection, which can be accessed on personal devices by Reader Pass holders, includes both printed and handwritten examples of magazines produced in trenches, ships, and hospitals by the ANZACs (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps). Another e-resource offering unique perspectives on historical events is Early Experiences in Australasia: Primary Sources and Personal Narratives 1788–1901. Reader Pass holders can access this on a personal device. 

All e-resources can be accessed through the Electronic Resources page. Look out for the next installment in this blog series focusing on our e-resources for research on colonial America. 

Lucy Rowland, Oceania Curator