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New advances in computer science address problems historical scientists face in gathering and evaluating the now vast data sources available through the Internet. As an example we introduce Dacura, a dataset curation platform designed to assist historical researchers in harvesting, evaluating, and curating high-quality information sets from the Internet and other sources. Dacura uses semantic knowledge graph technology to represent data as complex, inter-related knowledge allowing rapid search and retrieval of highly specific data without the need of a lookup table. Dacura automates the generation of tools to help non-experts curate high quality knowledge bases over time and to integrate data from multiple sources into its curated knowledge model. Together these features allow rapid harvesting and automated evaluation of Internet resources. We provide an example of Dacura in practice as the software employed to populate and manage the Seshat databank.

This article analyses the views of British travellers of the Belgian past for the period 1830–70. The article explores how the Belgian Revolution of 1830 and the closely intertwined rise of contemporary British sympathy for Belgium led to a reinterpretation of the ‘Belgian’ past. After 1830, the British interpretation of the Belgian past was increasingly centred on the sixteenth century and the ‘true’ Belgian national identity was believed to have been oppressed by a chain of foreign oppressors. Furthermore, the travellers saw the Belgian past and national identity as very similar to the British past and national identity. The view of the Belgian past was an integral part of the view of the Belgian future; a future that, so it was believed, would justify British claims that Belgium was a ‘little Britain on the Continent’ and that the Belgian and British national identities were highly similar. Finally, the article also explains why the interpretation of the Belgian past did not change once more af...