Confidential Print: Latin America, 1833-1969

Confidential Print: Latin America, 1833-1969. AM. ISBN Contact publisher for pricing (based on Carnegie Classification and JISC); includes nominal hosting fee, payable annually.

This latest offering in the Confidential Print digital series comprises several groups of primary documents issued by the Colonial and Foreign Offices of the government of Great Britain as treaties, dispatches, and investigation results relating to Latin America over 136 years. The title refers to the coding given to important papers created within the government, which were then printed out and circulated to officials in the cabinet and heads of British missions worldwide.

Chronological Coverage for the set begins in the 1830's and extends to the Cold War, with no additions planned. Formats included are biographies of notable individuals, statistical reports and economic studies, maps, correspondence, and the texts of significant treaties. The Nature and Scope section of the main page is useful for quickly comprehending the organization of the documents. In addition to this section, the database features a list of items included, a general introduction, an essay (forthcoming at the time of this review), and a reference chronology of important events in Latin America between 1833 and 1969. Editorial board members are listed, and links to maps and to nine databases of Latin American historical texts are offered.

Search options include keyword and advanced (e.g., standard Boolean and proximity functions), with search tips provided.

One issue is that the approach to the contents is more by region or continent than by specific countries or political units. Also, the descriptive language used reflects the usage current at the time the various documents were produced. Some of this terminology may be unknown to researchers not already familiar with the details of Latin American political history, e,g., the use of the phrase "River Plate countries" to refer to Uruguay, Paraguay, and Argentina. While most countries of the Latin American region are represented in this body of documentation, only Mexico, Chile, and Brazil have separate files under their names.

The contents of this resource overlap significantly with the print product titled British Documents on Foreign Affairs-Reports and Papers from the Foreign Office Confidential Print, issued by University Publications of America beginning in 1989. Series D of the print set, edited by George Philip, is devoted to Latin America, with the collective coverage of parts l and 2 encompassing 1845-1945; treaties are not included. Many large, research libraries may already have Series D in their collections. This online database will be most useful for college and university libraries that did not acquire the earlier print publication.

Summing up: Recommended. Libraries supporting upper-division undergraduates through researchers/faculty in history, political science, and economics; general readers.

Reprinted with permission from CHOICE http://www.cro2.org, copyright by the American Library Association.

The following excerpts are reproduced from Reference Reviews 27.6 item RR 2013/243.

"The broad range of items in the collection coupled with the clear, high-resolution scans of the documents make Confidential Print a very user-friendly product that will appeal to scholars and students alike."

"The search interface is simple and allows users to perform full-text keyword searches within the digital documents. Each item has an extensive list of subject terms for countries, places (cities, geographical regions, rivers, etc.), people, and topics (such as industrialization or sugar production). For full-text keyword search results, there are links to the page images on which the keywords occur, and users have the option to download the page or the entire document as a PDF file for printing or saving. The scans are all sharp and can be magnified or rotated for easier reading. Results can also be exported to either the EndNote or RefWorks bibliographic management software platforms."

"...for a large academic or special library focusing on British and/or the history of the Americas, it forms an important body of primary source documents that will save researchers time and travel money."

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