Just a quick plea for help: does anyone know where I can find good quality online newspaper archives for pre-WWII? Having trouble find that. I'm quite curious to know what people thought about the political situation without the "historical interpretation" that we put on it today.
There are a couple of sources
jinx+ on 2008-05-22T21:46:55
...out there but I don't have any handy, sorry. I know someone has blog which publishes 100 year old papers every day, you might be able to Google for it and narrow the search to your range.
I offer this though: newspapers have rarely, if ever, reflected reality. What we take for crackpottery in things the Enquirer were at times de rigueur. Go back and read some of what Jefferson had to say on the first US newspapers.
To know history: letters, art critics, real figures of real goods and flow are much more relevant. You won't find anyone too upset by 110,000 people put into prison camps for epicanthic folds by the US (and 22,000 by the ever-socially-superior Canadians) in the papers. Seeing the raw number versus the abject lack of risk it was meant to abrogate reflects what was really going on.
And you don't even need to look back. History is scratched record.
Re:There are a couple of sources
Ovid on 2008-05-22T22:01:40
I know that the quality of information from the media is pretty dubious, but the quality of historical reporting is also pretty dubious. Much of history is written from very biased perspectives. For example, many people are unaware that Neville Chamberlain was greeted as a hero in England after giving away part of Czechoslovakia to Germany (similar reactions existed in France). Not everyone had that reaction, of course -- Churchill was allegedly livid -- but today many people second-guess what happened yet have no desire to gain any insight into the perceptions of people at the time. In fact, many times I read about the past and it seems the author has a rather condescending view of people in the past and I'd like to try and get a better idea of what people actually thought about various events.
NY Times: TimesMachine
melo on 2008-05-23T01:50:36
I think this will do what you need, but I don't think its free:
http://open.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/21/the-new-york-times-archives-amazon-web- services-timesmachine/Best regards,
http://www.loc.gov/chroniclingamerica/index.html
dug on 2008-05-23T02:43:29
It's a work in progress and United States of America specific, but a nice piece of work so far.
-- Douglas Hunter
Re:http://www.loc.gov/chroniclingamerica/index.htm
dug on 2008-05-23T02:46:24
And now for the link in something other than the title bar: http://www.loc.gov/chroniclingamerica/index.html
Irish Times
link on 2008-05-23T09:48:31
The Irish Times are putting their archive online.
The interface isn't great and I'm not sure how much international news they did.
http://www.ireland.com/search/archive.htmlYou can view the articles via the interface or as PDF.
http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/archive/1933/0131/Pg007.html#Ar00701http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/archive/1933/0131/Ar00701_pf.html
Scotsman
cyocum on 2008-05-23T14:23:05
The Scotsman has their archive from 1817-1950 online now.
