“More than just a shiny toy”

Thanks to Jeremy Caradonna for being the latest scholar to deliver a public verdict on the FBTEE database. It is ‘a hugely useful research tool that will aid future research on the eighteenth century’, ‘exactly the kind of sexy project that … granting agencies would like to finance’, ‘an excellent learning tool’ and ‘one of the best and most cutting-edge digital tools that historians of early modernity now possess. Furthermore, it contributes to bringing the ‘historical profession into the age of interactive digital technologies and GIS’. Clearly this is one historian who appreciates our work in the round. And yet he concludes with a warning: the test for such projects will be the use historians make of them. It is a salutary thought: so if you are reading this, please go spread the word. For those with preview access to French History, the review is already available here.