Gale in Farmington Hills has launched The American Civil War: The International Context, a new digital archive that demonstrates the far-reaching involvement of European nations in the American Civil War.
The archive is designed to help faculty and researchers explore and understand the transnational impact of the War Between the States. The first-of-its-kind collection gives researchers and students an “unprecedented” look into the global ramifications of one of America’s most pivotal conflicts, enabling scholars to analyze the war from a variety of international perspectives and its influence on political history worldwide.
“The American Civil War: The International Context represents a leap forward in understanding this critical historical period,” says Seth Cayley, vice president of global academic product at Gale. “By offering access to primary sources that illuminate the war’s global implications, we are enabling researchers and students to examine how this conflict influenced not only American history but also the trajectory of 19th-century international relations, the direction of democracy and the end of the institution of chattel slavery.”
With The American Civil War archive, researchers have access to a set of primary sources that offer a range of perspectives on the conflict, both in America and in Europe. Scholars can explore correspondence, newspapers, commercial and trade papers, manuscripts and personal papers, legal briefs, and other documents, gaining new insights for instruction and scholarship into the many viewpoints represented.
Key collections in the archive include items from:
- The National Archives, U.K.
- The British Library, U.K.
- Nationaal Archief Nederland
- Rigsarkivet, Danmark
The American Civil War archive is available on the Gale Primary Sources platform, enabling cross-archival searching to help users make new connections across topics. For those seeking to explore even deeper insights, the archive also is available for text-mining analyses within Gale Digital Scholar Lab. This allows researchers to apply natural language processing tools across thousands of documents from Gale Primary Sources and perform a variety of textual analyses. Now researchers can analyze and explore historical text more interactively, generating new research insights and content sets not previously possible.
For more information or to request a trial, visit here.
