The Prize Papers of the High Court of Admiralty are a unique and fascinating collection which is held in the UK National Archives. A result of the early modern practice of capturing enemy ships and confiscating all papers travelling aboard them during wartime, they are an extraordinary combination of juridical documents relating tothe captures, and a vast “accidental” early modern global archive of all documents and objects that were part of the captures: trading and maritime papers, doodles, books and notebooks, keys, playing cards, colonial administration papers and around 160,000 undelivered letters intercepted on their way across the seas, many of which remain unopened to this day. This accidental archive provides matchless insights into the global entanglements of early modern worlds and lives, representing men, women, and children from a multitude of social and cultural backgrounds – so far, documents in at least 19 different languages have been identified (Dutch, French, English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Italian, Danish, Swedish, Russian, Basque, Yiddish, Ladino, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic, Persian, Armenian, Mandarin, Hindi), and we expect to discover more languages as the project progresses.
The aim of the Prize Papers project is the complete digitization of the Prize Papers including the Preservation of the collection’s material dimension, the initial and in-depth cataloguing, the creation of research-oriented metadata and finally the presentation of the digital copies and the metadata in an open access research database. The project also pursues various research projects and cooperates with numerous international researchers and research institutions working on the Prize Papers and in project-related areas.
The Prize Papers trace back to the practice of prize-taking on sea which was part of the early modern sea powers‘ war strategy. Martial Law required that the lawfulness of a capture be established in front of a Prize or Admiralty Court; to that end, the entire shipload (including private and commercial documents, ship’s papers, newspapers, personal effects, trading registers etc.) had to be seized by the capturing party. In the High Court of Admirality (HCA) collection at the National Archives, Kew, London, these captured documents and objects from the period between 1664 and 1817 have been preserved, together with the corresponding process files, largely untouched and unsorted as the only surviving collection of its kind in Europe.
This accidental preservation stretching over more than two centuries has created a global archive which has not been subjected to any selection or revision by the historical writers themselves, their descendants, or archivists. Thus, the Prize Papers allow unique insights into past worlds and cosmologies, historical self-concepts and interpersonal relationships, language acquisition, knowledge transfer, political and economic practices and processes of juridification in the context of the global interweaving of Europe and the world.
The Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg was founded in 1973, making it one of Germany‘s young universities. Its goal is to find answers to the major challenges society faces in the 21st century – through interdisciplinary, cutting-edge research. Distances on the Oldenburg campus are short: the University‘s academic and administrative staff work closely together. Many are integrated into special research areas, research groups and European clusters of excellence.
TNA was formerlyfour separate organisations: the Public Record Office (PRO), the Historical ManuscriptsCommission, the Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI) and Her Majesty’sStationery Office (HMSO).
The GHIL is the German Historical Institute based in London. It is part of the Max Weber Stiftung’s programme for centers of advanced studies abroad.
The Gemeinsamer Bibliotheksverbund (GBV) is the common library network of the seven German federal states Bremen, Hamburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, LowerSaxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Schleswig-Holstein, Thuringia and the Foundation of Prussian Cultural Heritage. The GBV head office is situated in Göttingen.
