Fin­an­cial Times His­tor­ic­al Archive 1888-2021

Financial Times is an international business newspaper headquartered in London and known for its distinctive pink paper. The newspaper focuses primarily on economics, finance, the business community and international politics, but also covers areas such as technology, markets, management, energy and culture. It is read globally by decision-makers, investors, academics and students who want insight into economic and political trends.

The historical archive contains articles and issues that go all the way back to the newspaper’s founding in 1888. The archive offers a rich source of primary material.

The archive goes back to the mid-1800s and is a valuable source if, for example, you want to explore:

• how an economic concept has been used and developed
• the historical financial situation in a specific country
• how an event was described at the time

Browse all issues or search

Under the Browse menu, you can access each individual issue of Financial Times and read the newspaper as it was published. You can of course also search across dates to find relevant articles that way.

Explore the use of specific words

The archive allows you to investigate when a term was used most frequently. For example, the word borders appeared often in 1929, followed by many years where it hardly appeared at all. It resurfaces in 1970 for a few years before increasing significantly from 1987 onwards. This feature is called Term Frequency.

There is also a Topic Finder, which helps you expand your vocabulary and identify new keywords for your searches.

When is the Financial Times archive useful?

As a primary source with extensive history, it can be used to:

• analyse how companies and markets reacted to historical events
• explore economic and financial patterns over time
• put current issues into context by comparing them with past crises or reforms
• support academic work with authentic newspaper articles as documentation