• Introduction
• Educational and Scholarly Sites
• Commercial Site
• Individual/Non-scholarly Site
• Museum Site
• Conclusion

Introduction
When Queen Victoria ascended the throne in 1837 Britain was a world-known trading power. In the mid-19th century Great Britain was seen as “the empire of free trade”, dubbed by 20th century historians as Pax Britannica to illustrate the strength and influence it projected.¹ A clear shift occurred between the mid-Victorian and late-Victorian (1870 and thereafter) years. While trade continued, it became less free and political control was the focus as new imperialism dominated Western European thought.²

Beginning to understand this time period in British history is not an easy task. The numerous colonies, events, people, literature, political beliefs and other issues involved in fully understanding the context of the time make an overview extremely difficult. What if it was possible to explore a particular person, colony, or event more in depth from one place without having to get another book? With the World Wide Web the ability to get more information through a “lexia” of electronic links in a multi-linear format allows exactly this to happen.³ Janet Murray’s assertion that “the encyclopedic capacity of the computer...make[s] it a compelling medium for narrative art” ⁴ is a good argument for doing history over the Web.

But does this information, when presented over the web, add anything new or do anything better than history in print? Is there anything that websites can add for studying the Empire under Queen Victoria that isn’t already available in another form of media?

Educational and Scholarly Sites
The Victorian Web, created by George P. Landow at Brown University, is a collection of mostly secondary sources on the Victorian era. Under political history users can access an overview on the British Empire. Three sections divide the material for the Empire: General, Individual Colonies, and Related Issues.

The general information includes a timeline and 5-6 other sources that explore topics such as imperialism and “Why did the British Empire expand so rapidly between 1870 and 1900?”. Each source contains embedded links to further information on specific topics discussed. Reading about imperialism can lead to a Disreali page and reading about the rapid expansion links to the Rudyard Kipling section.

The “Individual Colonies” and “Related Issues” sections lead to further resources as well. The overview on India leads to secondary and a few primary sources. Related issues include links to sections that contain secondary sources on specific prime ministers during the time period.

Clicking the numerous links to maneuver different ways through the material on the site make the experience quite the opposite of a linear book format. All of the secondary source content on the site is written by Landow and fellow scholars and students, and therefore provides sound scholarship. Footnotes, bibliographies and reading suggestions are found on most of the pages.

The numerous embedded links can, however, be frustrating. The overview page is set up like a table of contents, but getting back to that page, or the page you were at 4 pages ago, is not always easy. On the other hand, the site does succeed in creating a multi-linear overview of the Empire. Exploring a topic is as easy as a click away. Students new to the material should find this particularly useful in understanding the historical context. External links to other scholarly sites allow further exploration and different viewpoints.

Another educational web resource is the National Archives’ (UK) exhibition “British Empire.” Extremely hard to find (no search pulls up this site), primary sources from institutions such as the British Library are located here. The exhibition, a flash movie with 3 galleries, is geared at students. The second gallery, “Living in the British Empire”, contains information relevant to the Empire during the Victorian era and consists of 6 case studies with 5-12 primary sources each. Students answer questions about the primary sources and prepare conclusions based on their research (which can also be recorded online). Most of the sources are visual — maps, advertisements, and handwritten letters – and all have accompanying transcripts. For those looking for a specific source, a search can be done through the transcripts. However, in trying to cover so many varying sources and ideas (3 galleries that span the entire life of the Empire) the site has overlooked the addition of narrative to place these items in context for students.

Other scholarly sites for finding sources on the British Empire during the Victorian era include the Internet Modern Sourcebook’s section on imperialism and the AP European History site’s new imperialism section. Both sites are run by academic institutions and contain over 30 links each to mostly textual and a few visual primary sources. In addition, secondary sources and valuable external links to other scholarly sites and materials are located here. Already many teachers and college survey course professors are linking to this site from their syllabi. Unfortunately, neither site has implemented good searching capabilities as of yet.

Commercial Site
PBS hosts the companion site to a TV series it created called “Queen Victoria and Her Empire.” The website is aimed at teachers, students, and the general public. Four narrative sections, each divided into several subsections, make up the body of the site.

In providing an overview and discussion of the Empire, the site does a reasonable job presenting the information. In “History of the Reign”, two chapters provide material relating to Queen Victoria’s presence and character while the other two discuss her within the context of the Empire (“Passage to India” and “The Scramble for Africa”). Some statements boldly assert that Britain had always practiced exploitation of other races (instead of just trading with countries) and that Queen Victoria pressed Disraeli to make her Empress of India. Needless to say, these statements are not agreed upon by all scholars. It is therefore not surprising to find in the credits of the website that one historian wrote all of these narratives.

The site does a better overview presentation in “The Changing Empire” section, though not through the use of new media. A chronological timeline, a list of 7 character biographies and a brief narrative on the Great Exhibition of 1851 can be found here. In addition, 7 experts, interviewed in the original series, have portions of their transcripts posted. Three historians, 2 writers, a filmmaker, and the great grandson of David Livingstone express their views on Queen Victoria and the British Empire.

“Educational Resources” contains 4 teaching lesson plans for teachers that incorporate national standards for history at the middle and high school levels. These plans, while containing ideas for teaching the material in the classroom, rarely reference the website. Instead, time codes for showing different sections of the video series are included. A few other websites (1-5 per plan) are listed for further information. These 9 external sites, almost all of which are run by scholars and academic institutions, are compiled with short annotations under the “Web Resources” section of the site.

Using the web resources is necessary as reading through the narratives on this site since nothing else links to further materials. Long passages of text without any links to other information make reading them similar to a book. Because these narratives never link to other relevant information even on the same site (such as several mentions of Disraeli and no link to the section on him) the site is clearly not making effective use of the new media. In addition, no bibliography or footnotes are listed; someone wishing to find out where the numerous quotes from Queen Victoria came from is out of luck.

Overall, the site’s attractive design and layout does not make up for the bland narratives and general lack of new media components that could be used. The only attempt with a new type of media is a disappointing interactive game where the player guesses who said or did something. Further, it is painfully obvious that the intent of this website is to promote the series from the numerous time codes in each lesson plan to the “Shop PBS” section on the menu.

Individual/Non-scholarly Site
A specifically non-academic site (according to the introduction), The British Empire is for the general public. Resources on the site include timelines, articles, maps, art and culture, biographies, armed forces, science and technology, a place for discussion, and resources. Attempting to cover such a large amount of information and not including an internal search function makes navigating the site and finding specific information difficult. The alphabetized index for the site helps only a little; many of the links are broken.

The strengths of the site would include the amount of information the author is trying to present, the multiple perspectives from non-scholars available, and images. The “eclectic” collection of articles offers viewpoints from people who would otherwise go unnoticed in the publishing world. Articles include personal accounts as well as more traditional secondary source material. However, while some have footnotes or bibliographies, none have links embedded. In fact, most of the material on the site is presented in a traditional linear format without embedded links. Some of the narrative is written by scholars and contains a lot of good information, suggested further readings and galleries of images (for instance art and empire), but the text does not take advantage of new media. Another potential the site has for new media is the map room where the author created a clickable map of the world to explore colonies in the Empire. However, the lack of information on the colonies is disappointing. References to other sections of the site or external links would be useful.

Additionally, excellent media resources such as 12 Punch cartoons, 16 advertisements, and 9 cigarette cards, are not easy to find and often times do not list a title or date. The sections on art and empire and science and technology present a similar dilemma — many images with the narrative and little information about any of them.

The biggest weaknesses of the site are the lack of links in narratives, broken links, and the discussion board. Broken links are prevalent throughout and it’s unclear as to whether the site is still being worked on or not. The other weakness is the discussion board. The topics are not focused on the content of the site or on anything related to the Empire. This board is the perfect example for why some sites lose credibility. Since this site is also the first site to pop up on Google it is the most likely to be referenced despite the non-scholarly approach.

Museum Site
By far the best resource for material culture of the Empire during the Victorian era is the Victoria and Albert museum. The museum was originally built to house objects from the Great Exhibition of 1851, which included objects collected from all over the Empire. Its purpose was, in large part, to showcase the strength of British free trade.⁵

Exploring each of the 8 collections or 10 galleries leads to 3-12 sub collection descriptions and a sampling of the objects housed in each sub collection. After whetting the appetite here, heading straight to “Access to Images” will satisfy the historian. Here, the museum has created a database with over 10,000 images of objects in the collections. While performing a basic keyword search is available (“India” leads to 743 results), an advanced search will allow a more confined set of results (1850-1901 and India yields 157 results which can be further confined with keywords). Each image can be enlarged and contains minor details about it. The enlarged view of the image is high quality and appropriate for reusing in lectures and presentations. Teachers and professors should find this useful when pulling together slides for class and historians should be delighted of the easy access to beautiful photographs in the collection.

The “Learning” section of the site offers online resources to help teachers prepare activities and lessons using the materials in the museum. However, this section of the site is not well-developed as of yet and currently only includes one comprehensive digital resource on the British galleries. A teacher with little knowledge of items in the collection and/or with little time would find putting together a lesson plan difficult.

Online exhibitions supplemented by digital resources would be the way to solve problems of interpreting the materials and make them more accessible to students, teachers, and the general public. Currently, the only exhibition online covering Queen Victoria’s reign over the Empire lacks in depth information and contains just a few images of objects to illustrate the points made.

Conclusion
With the “expanding knowledge base” in the world today “digital media have been developed to perform tasks that were too difficult to do without them.”⁶ Digital media, therefore, would be the perfect way to tackle the large issue of explaining such a multi-faceted Empire during the reign of Queen Victoria. With so many topics to explore, traditional history textbooks tend to divide the time period into numerous chapters. Websites offer unlimited linking possibilities (including to databases) thereby eliminating the need for a linear chapter format to present the information.

Why is it then that most sites are not making effective use of this new media? Those that continue to implore the linear format of a book are missing an opportunity to offer more information and in different ways. On the other hand, those sites attempting new media face a dilemma Lev Manovich identifies: “database and narrative are natural enemies.”⁷ If this is the case, then how can the two co-exist? With more historical items being stored in databases every day an answer must come soon.

Even with this new technology, how scholarly is the history presented over the Web? While it is true that many sites do not offer scholarly historical analysis, those that do have the potential to be better than any book, even just by continually more resources over time. Even though the current state of the Web does not allow for in-depth historical research on the British Empire under Queen Victoria (or on many other topics) it certainly can offer an overview in a multi-linear format. What the future holds for history on the web seems more a matter of adapting to methodological change rather than to the technology that will accompany it.