British History Online: Review of 2008
British History Online’s AHRC-Funded Project
British History Online has been funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council to complete the digitisation of the Calendars of State Papers. The first volumes appeared online at the end of 2007 and the first complete series began to be available online in 2008. Other series will be completed throughout 2009. Thanks to the AHRC funding all of these series will be freely available without charge or registration.
These series have the added benefit that we have enabled annotations to allow users to propose scholarly annotations, to correct, update, and amplify these key historical resources. See an example annotation at the bottom of this page.
Complete AHRC-funded series which went online in 2008 included:
- Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII (21 volumes)
Covering the whole reign of Henry VIII, the calendars give direct access to key events, such as the divorce from Katherine of Aragon, the Henrician Reformation, and the fall of Thomas Cromwell.
- Calendar of State Papers, Foreign (25 volumes)
These calendars start at the beginning of the reign of Edward VI, and cover the reigns of Mary and Elizabeth I up to July 1589 (when calendaring stopped).
- Calendar of State Papers, Venice (38 volumes)
This series covers the period 1202-1675, and calendars papers in the Venetian archives which relate to English affairs. Covering a period in which Venetian diplomacy was central to European politics, these calendars offer a rich external view of English history.
- Calendar of State Papers, Spain - Simancas (4 volumes)
These volumes, calendaring the papers in Spanish archives that relate to English affairs, cover the whole of the reign of Elizabeth I. They illuminate, from the Spanish perspective, events such as the Babington Plot, the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, and the Spanish Armada.
- Journals of the Board of Trade and Plantations (14 volumes)
Covering the period 1704-1782, the journals provide many details of colonial administration.
