State Library Victoria members can access hundreds of databases from home (if your home is in Victoria). That’s millions of articles, magazines, archives, ebooks, videos, songs, audiobooks and more, available through the catalogue anytime. We’re taking a closer look at new and/or interesting databases as well as hidden gems from our collections. Read on for top picks and tips from Librarians.
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This blog post explores another of our Gale databases — The Making of the Modern World — as it charts the spread of Western wealth, trade and colonial takeovers, and of knowledge and ideas.
The database consists of 4 modules covering varying time periods:
Part I, The Goldsmiths’– Kress Collection, 1450-1850: the development of the modern Western world through the expansion of trade, wealth and the development of capitalism
Part II, 1851–1914: the impacts of the industrial revolution on political and social conditions
Part III, 1890–1945: the development of political and philosophical thought
Part IV, 1850s–1890: foundations for the age of capital, growth of global trade, abolition of slavery, growth of nationalism and Marxism.
This diverse and substantial array of documents explores the lead up to and unfolding impacts of the industrial revolution and the myriad of complex intersections between economies and societies. Topics include the growth of commodity as an opportunity to improve living conditions, alongside its fueling of the hungry engines of capitalism, the campaign to abolish slavery, the imperatives to eliminate poverty, and the rights of the labour force. The profound impacts for the world of the cataclysms of the first half of the 20th century — two world wars and the Great Depression are explored from various perspectives.
Left: Wheeler, John, 1601, A treatise of commerce, wherin are shewed the commodies arising by a wel ordered, and rvled trade, Richard Schilders, Middelburgh; Right: Vaughan, Benjamin, 1788, New and old principles of trade compared, J Johnson and J Debrett, London
Wheeler was a merchant, and his Treatise was in defence of the national interests of English traders. Vaughan states ‘while the controversy respecting these systems [monopoly versus free trade] is of recent date, yet a just decision in it is doubtless as important an object in politics, as any than can engage us.’ 1 Theoretical works like these are complemented by the more practical, such as this below, with John Moxom writing in the preface of the first issue of his guide to handy works:
I see no more reason why the sordidness of some Workmen should be the cause for contempt upon Manual Operations than that the excellent invention of a Mill should be despised because a blind Horse draws in it. And through the Mechanicks be by some accounted ignoble and scandalous. Yet it is very well known that many gentlemen in this nation of good rank and high quality are conversant in Handy Works… if we ourselves were the first men, what branch of the Mechanicks we should first need… I I have considered and answer that without the invention of smithing primarily, most other Mechanick Invention would be at a stand. 2
The series continues, covering joinery, printing and other trades, and was published up until 1703. The collection includes drawings of refinements for machinery used in the increasingly industrialised agricultural sector — such as this thrashing machine:
Along with local workers, the workforce required to fuel these engines of industry and trade included slave populations, largely taken from African countries to plantations in the Caribbean and United States to produce commodities such as cotton, tea and sugar. Concerned and committed citizens worked for the abolition of slavery, documented here through reports, sermons, exhortations and tracts speaking of the moral imperative to bring forward its demise, and its incompatibility with Christianity:
…few subjects which more engage the attention of Christian and Philanthropist at the present time than that of slavery… I have thought proper to reprint the following Sermon… hoping that its perusal might under the blessing of God, encourage those who are engaged in the good work of endeavouring to emancipate the poor slave, to more determined perseverance in the holy cause, reminding them of the promise, “Ye shall reap if ye faint not.” 3
Left: Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery, [1788], The constitution of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery Francis Bailey [etc] (Philadelphia); Right: Sheffield Female Anti-Slavery Society, 1833, Concluding report of the Sheffield Female Anti-Slavery Society, Iris Office, Sheffield
The Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery operated from 1775 and is still active today as the Pennsylvania Abolition Society.
In England, the Abolition of Slavery Act was passed by the parliament in 1833, and shortly after the Sheffield Female Anti-Slavery Society was wound up. While the Act had been passed, members were disheartened at the power of the planters in pulling back on the government’s earlier commitments to emancipation and freedom. However, ‘with these anticipations we dissolve our society, among whose members some will doubtless be found ready to reassemble whenever a Society may be formed here for the instruction of the children of the Emancipated Africa.’ 4
This page from The Repertory of patent inventions, 1836 provides just a glimpse of the varied products and industries that inventors’ active minds were working on at the time. The age of invention witnessed a rapid growth in patent applications — and in 1852 the English Patent Reform Act came into force, to ‘diminish the expense and difficulty experienced at present in obtaining patents, and to make more certain to patentees the rights to which their inventions entitled them.’5
Material covering the rights of workers is well represented in the collection — discussions of various pieces of legislation, such as the Factory Act 1833, designed to improve conditions for workers and children — in mills and factories.
Still topical today, remuneration rates for women and men in Great Britain were investigated in the 1946 Royal Commission. The terms of reference were ‘to examine the existing relationship between the remuneration of men and women in the public services, in industry and in other fields of employment; to consider the social, economic and financial implications of the claim of equal pay for equal pay; and to report.’ As the title of this pamphlet published by the Fabian Society states: ‘the principle in the view of many organisations which have given evidence before the Royal Commission, including the Fabian Women’s Group should be the Rate for the Job, whoever, man, woman, boy of girl is doing the job.’
Right: Hutchinson, Zeph, 1928, Hands off our wages and hours! Observations on cotton trade depression: the strangle hold on cotton revealed, Bacup
Bacup, Lancashire flourished in the 19th century as a mill town, then suffered at the waning of the textile industry and as the Great Depression set in.
As the industrial revolution and growth of global trade spread social and economic change around the world, questions arose regarding the role of government in all these spheres — and views on what should be left to the market to regulate and provide unhindered. The Great Depression gave further impetus to this debate.
Right: Salter, Arthur, et al, 1932, The world’s economic crisis and the way of escape,
George Allen and Unwin Ltd, London
And lastly, in our brief tour, this photograph from the trade journal, The practical grocer, illustrating a shopping day from another age — a very different experience from today’s neon-lit aisles and trolleys:
From the above brief selection, you can see the breadth of this collection — with so much to dip into and explore on the economic and social history of the Western world, through publications and voices from the time.
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References
- Vaughan, Benjamin, 1788, New and old principles of trade compared, J Johnson and J Debrett, London p 3
- Moxon, John, 1677, Mechanick exercises, or, the doctrine of handy-works, p 5
- Robert, Robinson, Slavery inconsistent with the spirit of Christianity : a sermon preached at Cambridge on…the 10th of February 1788, [1840], Cambridge
- Concluding report of the Sheffield Female Anti-Slavery Society, p 9
- UK Parliament Hansard Lords: 19 March 1852 Lords Chamber Patent Law Amendment (No 2) Bill
