Fun with Hansard

Francis Bernard Beamish, of the Cork brewing family, served from time to time as MP for Cork in the mid-1800s, and when I was doing my research masters on the history of Beamish & Crawford, I dug his contributions out of the printed volumes of the House of Commons Debates. He didn’t have a lot to say, speaking mostly on local issues, but occasionally making brief comments on more general matters. Finding his contributions wasn’t too hard, because I was looking for one MP from one constituency, but it would be even faster now because all of the debates back to 1800 are online.  I have a number of questions which are driving me back to the parliamentary debates, and the more I rummage in the archives, more interesting issues crawl out. 

Locally, since modern Irish politicians are accused of being mired in ‘parish pump’ politics, I wonder how far this is a new development, or has it always been the case? I suspect that comparing the contributions of all MPs at Westminster in the 1800s with modern MP and Irish TDs in our own Parliament, we would find the localism has been a constant in politics but I’m interested in proving it. Since all the Westminister debates to 1800 are online, and all the Dail Eireann Debates since Independence are online, there is a pile of “Big Data” to go at if it can be coded to answer the question.

I also know that leading Irish emigrant politicians wrote about domestic Irish political issues in the nineteenth century, and participated in political developments which closely matched issues which arose in Irish politics – Charles Gavan Duffy was involved in constitutional developments that effectively gave a form of Home Rule in Victoria, and as Minister for Agriculture there was involved in the land wars between squatters and selectmen, as well as debates on education. Similarly, in Canada, Thomas D’arcy McGee, revered as one of the “Fathers of Confederation”, held the agriculture portfolio (so for a brief period the sun never set on an Irish minister for agriculture!). Irish emigrants must have held elective office in states like New York where there was such a large emigrant population. If all those debates were available, it should be possible to do some interesting work on the themes, topics and discourse of the global Irish political diaspora (and indeed the nature of political discourse in Parliamentary assemblies across the C19.)

Having been used to having all the Dail Eireann Debates since 1921 online, and all the Westminister Debates as far back as I need (1800 – but there are older debates) also online. I assumed most other major parliamentary assemblies would be digitised by now. Sadly, this is, as far as I can see, not the case.

What I have found onlines far, with help from folk on Twitter (thanks @Airminded and co ) are:

Hansard Debate archives for Westminster

http://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/parliamentary-archives/archives-electronic/parliamentary-debates/

Historic Hansard – Westminster debates in very user friendly format (the work, as far as I know, if a few dedicated volunteers – thanks folks!)

http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/

Dail Eireann Debates (the Seanad is also online)

http://debates.oireachtas.ie/dail/

New South Wales (not all verbatim, pdf files)

http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/web/common.nsf/V3HHBListDate?open&refnavid=HA2_1

New Zealand

http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=nzparldebates

Canada 1867-72

http://www.parl.gc.ca/about/parliament/reconstituteddebates/Nav/Hoc/1/HOCSession1-e.asp

United States (Annals of Congress, Register of Debates, Congressional Globe and Congressional Record for the period 1774-1875)

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amlaw/
I will add to this list as I find more, but more importantly, I will write up some notes on how these are structured on paper, how they are marked up in XML so far, and how we might discuss a common shape for XML markup to make it easier to work across the different archives.