The Chinese themselves were very indulgent towards us, and happy in the contemplation of a new people, opening to view a fresh source of commerce to their extensive empire. —From the journal of Major Samuel Shaw, as reported in Fowle’s New-Hampshire Gazette, 27 May 1785, and other historical newspapers To...
A biannual publication offering insights into the use of digital historical collections
Historical Newspapers
The "New People" in China: Using Historical Newspapers to Analyze America’s First Contacts with Asia
Locating Black Canada in the U.S. Periodical Press: A 19th-Century Network of Affiliations
In her time Charlotte Elizabeth Linden would have been called a “race woman.” From the 1890s to the mid-1910s, the Cleveland Gazette reported on her involvement in a wide array of African American causes. At various junctures she served as president of one of the many U.S. literary societies named...
Reporting the War of 1812: U.S. Newspaper Coverage of Naval Captain David Porter
During the recent bicentennial of the War of 1812, historians revisited America’s second war of independence in a spate of books that detailed the conflict on land, at sea, through cause and effect, and various other angles. One fact remains—the War of 1812, which lasted for two-and-a-half years, is as...
Lafayette's Return: An Early American Media Event
In summer 2015, a wooden frigate named the Hermione sailed from France to the United States. It was recreating one of the voyages that brought the Marquis de Lafayette to fight in the American War of Independence. The new Hermione was a painstaking replica of Lafayette’s ship, built with authentic...
Reading between the Lines: Exploring Postbellum Plantation Memoirists through Digitized Newspaper Collections
Late nineteenth and early twentieth-century plantation memoirs and reminiscences are an important, though often overlooked, genus of Lost Cause apologia. Printed by some of the nation’s leading publishing houses, these narrative sources tend to foreground a conspicuous nostalgia for the plantation-era South, adopting literary strategies that connect with discourses of...
