The George Macartney Mission to China, 1792–1794

The Earl George Macartney Collection launches this month in Archives Unbound. It is a new digitisation of a fascinating resource – letters, books, sketches and journals relating to the important Macartney mission from George III to the Chinese Emperor Qianlong in 1792–1794. The Charles Wason Collection at Cornell is the largest collection of material on this event held in one place, covering a period from 1784 to 1916. This valuable piece of Anglo-Chinese history is now available in Gale’s Archives Unbound programme, where it sits alongside collections such as Papers of the British Consulates and Legation in China (1722–1951), the Chinese Recorder and the Protestant Missionary Community in China, 1867–1941. Below Dr Liren Zheng, curator of the collection at Cornell University Library, explains the importance of both the eighteenth-century mission and the accumulation of this material into one holding.

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Exploring Arabic Periodicals in Early Arabic Printed Books from the British Library

By Becky Wright, Gale Content Researcher

Gale’s digital collections include a wealth of newspapers, journals and periodicals. From The Times Digital Archive to the newspapers in the 17th and 18th Century Burney Collection, and from the International Herald Tribune to Missionary, Sinology and Literary Periodicals published in China, researchers have access to a vast array of English-language journalism, spanning centuries and continents. With the inclusion of early newspapers and periodicals in the resource Early Arabic Printed Books from the British Library, this archive offers researchers the opportunity to trace the development of Arabic print journalism as well. While the digital collection was being created, I was lucky enough to see some of the originals at the British Library. I was struck by the diversity of the journals, both in subject matter and appearance, but such variety is not so surprising considering the titles span more than thirty years (1861 to 1899) and were produced in several different countries.

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The Rise and Fall of Space Invaders in the British Press

“In the spring of 1978, Taito approached Midway about distributing a new arcade game in the United States. The game had originally been invented as a hexadecimal test used for evaluating computer programmers. Someone decided to convert the test into a video game that Taito distributed in Japan, despite the unenthusiastic blessing of company executives. The game was called Space Invaders.”
Kent, Steven L. The Ultimate History of Video Games, New York: Three Rivers Press, 2001, p. 116

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Not on the Ball: England’s Top Three World Cup Blunders

By Megan Murphy

With excitement for the World Cup 2018 building, I’ve been looking back to some of the most memorable moments from World Cups throughout the years. From England’s infamous victory in 1966, to their disastrous loss against West Germany in Italy 1990, Gale’s newspaper archives provide an invaluable tool for exploring these unforgettable (although sometimes we may wish they were) moments. I’ve featured my favourite three below…

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