Thanks to a request from a PhD student in HCA the Library currently has extended trial access to State Papers Online: Eighteenth Century, 1714-1782 Parts I-IV from Gale. This covers the final section of the State Papers series from the National Archives in the UK before the series was closed and replaced by the Home Office and Foreign Office series in 1782.

You can access State Papers Online: Eighteenth Century via the E-resources trials page.
Access is available on and off-campus.

Trial access ends 30th June 2020.

State Papers Online: Eighteenth Century comes in 4 parts and we have access to all 4 during this trial.

• Part I: State Papers Domestic, Military and Naval and the Registers of the Privy Council
  Part I focuses research on British domestic politics and society in an age punctuated by plots, rebellions, uprisings, and financial crises. Part I offers you online access to approximately 300,000 folios from the reigns of King George I, King George II, and part of the reign of King George III, plus military, naval, and plantation registers, sherriffs’ lists, and State Papers of Scotland and Ireland.
• Part II: State Papers Foreign: Low Countries and Germany
  Part II expands on the domestic papers in Part I and presents the first section of the foreign papers during the reigns of George I, George II, and George III until 1782, when the State Papers series ends.
• Part III: Western Europe
  Part III has papers relating to France, Portugal, Spain, Malta, the Italian States and Rome, Genoa, Tuscany, Venice, Savoy and Sardinia, Sicily and Naples. It also includes the Royal letters and Treaties series. Tehse are the papers written or received by the secretaries of state in their conduct of British diplomacy and intelligence gathering. They document the relationship of the Hanoverian monarchs with the rulers, governments and commerce of Western Europe. You will also find narratives of each country’s history running through the letters and reportt as events, debates, discussions, conversations and gossip are relayed back to London.
• Part IV: Scandinavia, Eastern Europe and Turkey
  Part IV covers nations and events at the borders of Europe and European power, through letters, memorials and treaties pertaining to Denmark, Sweden, Poland and Saxony, Prussia, Russia, Turkey and the Barbary States. It also includes papers sent to the British Secretaries of State from foreign ministers in England, and ‘confidential’ and intercepted letters, discussing wards, colonial ambitions and diplomatic alliances.

You can access these State Papers Online: Eighteenth Century via  E-resources trials.
Access is available on and off-campus.
Trial access ends 30th June 2020.
Feedback welcome.

The Library already has access to 2 collections from State Papers Online, Part II: The Tudors, 1509-1603: State Papers Foreign, Scotland, Borders, Ireland and Registers of the Privy Council and The Stuart and the Cumberland Papers from the Royal Archives, Windsor Castle. You can access both of these via the Digital primary source and archive collections guide.

The Library is also trialling all other parts of the original State Papers Online database. This can be accessed via the E-resources trials page and is also available until 30th June 2020.

Please note, trial access to a resource is an opportunity for our staff and students to try a resource out and give feedback on its quality and usefulness. However, if we trial a resource this is not an indication that we plan to or will be able to purchase or subscribe to the resource in the near future.

Caroline Stirling – Academic Support Librarian for History, Classics and Archaeology