Making of The Modern World
In collaboration with academics from the Faculty of Humanities, the Library has arranged for electronic access to the complete Making of The Modern World database, a rich collection of digitised primary source material centring on the dynamics of Western trade and wealth from the last half of the fifteenth century to the first half of the twentieth century. Through the lens of industries such as coal, iron, steel, cotton, railways and banking and financial systems, areas as diverse as the rise of the modern labour movement, the evolving status of slavery, the condition and making of the working class, colonization, the Atlantic world, Latin American/Caribbean studies, social history, gender, and the economic theories that championed and challenged capitalism in the nineteenth century can be re-examined. Sourced from a variety of major historical library collections – including those of Senate House, Goldsmiths’, Yale, Columbia, and Harvard’s Kress Library – much of this material is rare and often unique. Whilst topics can be conveniently and readily traced across the database as a whole, MOMW is also grouped into 4 themed collections:
The Making of the Modern World, Part I: The Goldsmiths'-Kress Collection, 1450–1850 offers new ways of understanding the expansion of world trade, the Industrial Revolution, and the development of modern capitalism.
The Making of the Modern World, Part II: 1851–1914 documents the progress of the nineteenth century nations' rapidly changing economies through a wide variety of local reports, broad overviews, abstract analyses, reports on the financing of railways, economic textbooks, social polemics, and political speeches.
The Making of the Modern World, Part III: 1890–1945 deepens holdings into the twentieth century and moves beyond the study of economic thought to incorporate resources for the study of social and political forces unleashed by economic transformations and the upheaval of international conflict.
The Making of the Modern World, Part IV: 1900-1890 offers extensive coverage of the “Age of Capital,” the industrial revolution, and the High Victorian Era. The core of this collection (1850s-1890s) offers rich content in the high Victorian period, the apogee of the British Empire. It is especially strong in “grey literature” and non-mainstream materials rarely preserved by libraries - including pamphlets, plans, ephemera, and private collections.