The REPUBLIC team, consisting of employees of the Huygens Institute for the History of the Netherlands and our Department of Digital Infrastructure, has launched a web edition that offers online access to all printed resolutions (decrees) of the States General from the period 1703-1796. The central governing body of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands made decisions almost daily, covering everything from international politics to private requests from citizens. These resolutions can be searched at word level on the new website. Searches can be made in scans of the original resolutions, which are held by the National Archives, and in text files created by means of automatic text recognition (OCR).

The launch of this website is an important interim result of the REPUBLIC project, which aims to provide digital access to all resolutions of the States General (1576-1796). The now published prototype of the intended final web edition contains the eighteenth-century resolutions to the extent that they were available as a printed series. At a later stage, handwritten resolutions, mostly sixteenth and seventeenth century, will also be made available. The text recognition of both the printed and handwritten resolutions is being optimized, partly with the help of the crowdsourcing project Goetgevonden.

The REPUBLIC team is still working hard to improve the content disclosure of the resolutions. Nevertheless, the prototype that has now been published already offers ample possibilities for searching in eighteenth-century resolutions: for example, it is possible to search in court days, resolutions and attendance lists. It is also possible to search for persons who participated in the meetings of the States General in different roles. The prototype is therefore already suitable for many research purposes. The REPUBLIC team wants to leverage user experiences to make the final version of the web edition even better.

REPUBLIC is being carried out with a grant from NWO. The project involves collaboration between the Huygens Institute, the Digital Infrastructure department of the KNAW Humanities Cluster and the National Archives. Visit the web edition now!