ABOUT THIS PROJECT

Whereas historical American and European newspapers are increasingly available, in digitized form, to a global readership, the English-language periodicals published in South America remain virtually inaccessible to most scholars. At the same time, these newspapers provide invaluable data for researchers in a wide range of fields: they bring to life the strong historical ties between Britain and Latin America and offer insights into early globalization; trade routes and commodities exchanged between the global North and South; the history of travel, migration, and exchange; the development of the foreign-language periodical press; and much more, enabling exploration of the longstanding interconnections between the global north and south. Since the papers were produced by distinct subsets of the Anglophone colony–principally English, Scottish, and American publishers–it is not surprising that both national and regional identities, as well as other intersectional identities including religion, ethnicity, and gender, are consistent themes.

Through our project, we hope to bridge the divide separating South American from European and North American collections, while also contributing to the growing digital collection, the Biblioteca Digital, created by the Biblioteca Nacional de Chile. Our project thus seeks to connect siloed databases in order to expand research possibilities for both scholars and the general public.

Launched in 2016, the project is currently in its first phase, focused on the newspapers published by the British colonists in Valparaíso, Chile from 1838 and 1906. In collaboration with the Biblioteca Nacional de Chile, the Universidad Católica de Valparaîso and Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, and the College of Wooster, we have followed current best practices in scanning the original newspapers and editing the resulting images. To date, we have digitized and created limited metadata for approximately 460 total issues of four different newspapers (amounting to 3,953 total pages), spanning the years 1843 to 1906. We continue adding to the collection as our resources permit, and it is our goal to continually expand this resource. We hope soon to be able make full, searchable text of the newspapers available alongside the images.