24 August 2023
Stampa Migrante: a Window on Multi-Lingual Egypt
ستامبا ميجرانتى : نافذة على مصر المتعددة اللغات
Stampa Migrante: una finestra sull’Egitto multilingue
So much unfolding on a single page. I wandered and wondered in the past just by leafing through the holdings of the Centro Archeologico Italiano (CAI) in Cairo, managed by the Italian Institute of Culture (IIC) in the same city. In a relatively good state yet vulnerable, this historical collection of daily newspapers published in Italian in the late 19th and 20th centuries in Egypt provides an exceptional window on the history of Italian migration to and through Egypt as well as the larger migratory movements through the Mediterranean and the Middle East of the time. A mix of political convenience and economic opportunity made nineteenth-century Egypt attractive to underemployed Italian labour and others (Gorman, 141).
هكذا يتكشف الكثير في صفحة واحدة فقط. بينما كنت اتصفح مقتنيات المركز الإيطالي للآثار في القاهرة، والذي يديره المعهد الثقافى الإيطالي بالمدينة نفسها, حيث من الممكن التجول بين الماضى و التسأل عنه و اكتشاف الكثير عن خباياه, وجدت هذه المجموعة التاريخية من الصحف اليومية التي نُشرت باللغة الإيطالية في أواخر القرنين التاسع عشر والعشرون في مصر. هي في حالة جيدة نسبيًا ولكنها معرّضة للتدهور. وتمثل هذه المجموعة نافذة استثنائية على تاريخ الهجرة الإيطالية إلى مصر وعبرها بالإضافة إلى حركات الهجرة الأكبر عبر البحر المتوسط والشرق الأوسط في ذلك الوقت. مزيج من الفرص السياسية والاقتصادية جعل من مصر في القرن التاسع عشر بلداً جاذباً للعمالة الإيطالية وغيرها التي تبحث عن فرص عمل
Così tanto si dispiega in una sola pagina. Sfogliando i volumi in possesso del Centro Archeologico Italiano (CAI) del Cairo, gestito dall’Istituto Italiano di Cultura (IIC) con sede nella stessa città, è possibile girovagare nel passato e scoprirvi meraviglie. Conservata in uno stato relativamente buono, anche se di vulnerabilità, questa collezione storica dei quotidiani pubblicati in lingua italiana nel tardo Ottocento e inizio Novecento in Egitto costituisce una finestra eccezionale da cui osservare la storia della migrazione italiana verso e attraverso l’Egitto nonché dei movimenti migratori nel Mediterraneo e nel Medio Oriente del tempo. La presenza di un insieme di opportunità politiche ed economiche rese l’Egitto del diciannovesimo secolo particolarmente attraente per lavoratori italiani e di altre nazionalità che erano alla ricerca di impiego (Gorman, 141).
Lucia Carminati reading (Photograph taken by Sebastiano Mussi, 2015)
Entrance of CAI in Cairo (Photograph taken by Raffaele Pentangelo, IIC)
I was immediately struck by the richness of these sources when I encountered them for the first time in 2015-2016, following the generous lead of then-fellow PhD adventurer Joseph Viscomi- during doctoral fieldwork in Egypt and across Europe. I kept mulling over ways to preserve and make this collection available beyond Egypt’s fickle attitude towards academic researchers, capricious access rules to the CAI holdings, and unpredictable travel restrictions. The discovery of the British Library’s Endangered Archives Programme (EAP) came at a fortuitous if yet chaotic time, as I transitioned from Texas to Norway. I quickly found out that similar efforts had already been under way by Helwan University’s Dr. Wafaa El Beih and Dante Campioni of Alexbank, both of whom I thank.
أدهشني على الفور ثراء هذه المصادر عندما قابلتها أول مرة بين عامي ٢٠١٥ و٢٠١٦, بناء على النصائح السخية من زميلى طالب الدكتوراه آنذاك جوزيف فيسكومي أثناء بحثي للدكتوراه في مصر و أوروبا. ظللت أفكر في طرق للحفاظ على هذه المجموعة وإتاحتها بما يتجاوز موقف مصر المتقلب تجاه الباحثين الأكاديميين و بما يتجاوز قواعد الوصول المتقلبة إلى المقتنيات وبما يتجاوز قيود السفر غير المتوقعة. جاء اكتشاف برنامج المحفوظات المهددة بالانقراض التابع للمكتبة البريطانية في وقت مناسب وإن كانت الظروف مضطربة الى حد ما, حيث كانت فترة انتقالى من تكساس إلى النرويج. سرعان ما اكتشفت أن جهود مماثلة قد بذلت بالفعل من قبل الدكتورة وفاء البيه من جامعة حلوان ودانتي كامبيوني من بنك الإسكندرية واوجه لهما جزيل الشكر
La ricchezza di queste fonti colpisce immediatamente. Ne fui catturata per la prima volta nel 2015-2016, seguendo il generoso consiglio dell’allora compagno di avventure e collega dottorando Joseph Viscomi, durante il mio lavoro di ricerca sul campo in Egitto e in Europa per la preparazione della tesi di dottorato. In seguito, ho continuato a rimuginare su come poter conservare e rendere disponibile questa collezione a prescindere dall'atteggiamento volubile dell’Egitto nei confronti dei ricercatori accademici, dalle mutevoli regole di accesso ai materiali CAI e dalle imprevedibili restrizioni di viaggio. La scoperta dell’Endangered Archives Programme (EAP) della British Library è capitata in un momento fortuito anche se caotico durante la mia transizione accademica dal Texas alla Norvegia. Ho subito scoperto che sforzi simili erano già in corso da parte di Wafaa El Beih dell'Università di Helwan e di Dante Campioni di Alexbank e ringrazio entrambi.
IIC materials (Photographs taken by Raffaele Pentangelo, IIC)
The CAI/IIC collection of daily newspapers that EAP1474 “Stampa Migrante” will finish to digitise and broadcast by September 30, 2023, are the following:
Il Messaggero Egiziano (the issues tentatively comprised between July 1926 and March 1930), born as Lloyd egiziano in 1875 in Alexandria, then morphed into Messaggiere or Messaggere; L’Imparziale (March 1892 - December 1929), founded in 1892 in Cairo; Il Giornale d’Oriente-L’Imparziale of Cairo (April 1930 - June 1940); Il Giornale d’Oriente-Messaggero Egiziano in Alexandria (July 1930 - June 1940). Thanks to EAP, more than 70,000 pages will go live instead of gathering dust in locked cabinets.
مجموعة الصحف اليومية التي سينتهي المشروع ستامپا ميجرانتي -الصحافة المهاجرة- من تحويلها رقميًا وبثها عبر الإنترنت بحلول ٣٠ سبتمبر ٢٠٢٣ هي كالتالي
تقريبا بين يوليو ١٩٢٦ ومارس ١٩٣٠, تأسست في عام ١٨٧٥ في الإسكندرية Il Messaggero Egiziano
تقريبا بين مارس ١٨٩٢ وديسمبر ١٩٢٩, تأسست عام ١٨٩٢ في القاهرة L’Imparziale
تقريبا بين أبريل ١٩٣٠ ويونيو ١٩٤٠ في القاهرة Il Giornale d’Oriente-L’Imparziale
تقريبا بين يوليو ١٩٣٠ ويونيو ١٩٤٠ في الإسكندرية Il Giornale d’Oriente-Messaggero Egiziano
بفضل هذا البرنامج سيتم نشر أكثر من ٦٠٠٠٠ صفحة بدلاً من تجمع الغبارعليها في الخزانات المغلقة
La collezione di quotidiani del CAI/IIC che il progetto EAP1474 “Stampa Migrante” finirà di digitalizzare e diffondere entro il 30 settembre 2023 comprende i seguenti: Il Messaggero Egiziano (i numeri contenuti provvisoriamente tra il luglio 1926 e il marzo 1930), nato come Lloyd egiziano nel 1875 ad Alessandria d’Egitto, poi trasformatosi in Messaggiere o Messaggere; L’Imparziale (marzo 1892 - dicembre 1929), fondato nel 1892 al Cairo; Il Giornale d'Oriente-L'Imparziale del Cairo (aprile 1930 - giugno 1940); Il Giornale d’Oriente-Messaggero Egiziano di Alessandria (luglio 1930 - giugno 1940). Grazie al programma EAP, più di 70.000 pagine acquisiranno nuova vita invece di continuare ad impolverarsi in armadi chiusi.
More IIC materials (Photographs taken by Raffaele Pentangelo, IIC)
It may be confusing to determine whether the collection is made of three or four newspapers. This is due to the fact that, in April 1930, L’Imparziale and Il Messaggero Egiziano merged under the name of Il Giornale d’Oriente. But they continued to coexist in two different editions, respectively based in Cairo and in Alexandria, apparently so that the Italian community in each city could have its own paper (Petricioli, 293; Marchi 2010, 115). But why did the Alexandrine and Cairine communities want or need two separate dailies? Here is where questions running deep below the surface of this project burst forth: for whom and by whom was the Italian language press printed at the time? Who was writing it? Who was financing it? What perspectives and biases transpire through its pages? Who was reading it? Why and how were people reading it? Are such Italian-language sources circumscribed to the history of Egypt-bound migration from the Italian peninsula or do they reach much farther away?
قد يكون من المربك تحديد ما إذا كانت المجموعة مكونة من ثلاث أو أربع صحف. هذا يرجع إلى حقيقة أنه في أبريل ١٩٣٠ اندمجت "الميساجيرو" و"ليمپارزيالي" تحت اسم "الجورنال دوريينتي". لكنهم استمروا في التعايش في نسختين مختلفتين في القاهرة والإسكندرية ، على ما يبدو بحيث يمكن للجالية الإيطالية في كل مدينة أن يكون لها صحيفتها الخاصة. ولكن لماذا أرادت جاليات الإسكندرية والقاهرة أو احتاجتا إلى صحيفتين يوميتين منفصلتين؟ هنا حيث تتوارد بعض الأسئلة المُلحّة التي تدور بعمق تحت سطح هذا المشروع: لمن ومن قام بطباعة الصحافة الناطقة باللغة الإيطالية في ذلك الوقت؟ من كان يكتبها؟ من كان يمولها؟ ما هي وجهات النظر والتحيزات التي تظهر من خلال صفحاتها؟ من كان يقرأها؟ لماذا وكيف كان الناس يقرؤونها؟ هل هذه المصادر باللغة الإيطالية مقيدة بتاريخ الهجرة المتجهة إلى مصر من شبه الجزيرة الإيطالية أم أنها تصل إلى أبعد من ذلك؟
Stabilire se la collezione sia composta da tre o quattro giornali può creare confusione. Ciò è dovuto al fatto che, nell’aprile del 1930, L'Imparziale e Il Messaggero Egiziano si fusero sotto il nome di Il Giornale d'Oriente, ma continuarono a coesistere in due edizioni diverse rispettivamente con sede al Cairo e ad Alessandria, a quanto pare perché la comunità italiana di ciascuna città potesse avere il proprio giornale (Petricioli, 293; Marchi 2010, 115). Ma perché la comunità alessandrina e quella cairota volevano o necessitavano di due quotidiani separati? È qui che emergono prepotentemente alcune delle domande che scorrono appena sotto la superficie di questo progetto: per chi e da chi veniva prodotta la stampa in lingua italiana dell’epoca? Chi vi scriveva? Chi la finanziava? Quali prospettive e pregiudizi trasparivano dalle sue pagine? Chi la leggeva? Perché e come la si leggeva? Queste fonti in lingua italiana sono circoscritte alla storia della migrazione verso l’Egitto dalla penisola italiana o hanno il potenziale di spaziare oltre?
Example pages from the newspapers (Photographs taken by Irina Schmid, AUC)
The potential of the CAI/IIC collection goes beyond Egypt’s strictly defined “Italian” community to embrace at the very least all those who could speak and read Italian. Sure, as I suggest in my book Seeking Bread and Fortune in Port Said: Labor Migration and the Making of the Suez Canal, 1859-1906, Egypt’s foreign-language newspapers tended to divide the public along linguistic and political lines. Retracing their history is useful to understand the process by which immigrant communities tried to settle down, imagine their identity, shape their boundaries. Yet, a study of the contents of these very same newspapers reveals how deeply fractured these foreign communities were along -for example- fault lines dictated by class and education (Gorman, 146). Even beyond the communities they apparently targeted, these mono-lingual newspapers are windows into a multi-lingual world. More research on language politics and multi-lingual practices is necessary and ongoing, as in Olga Verlato’s exciting dissertation work. I will only provide one example here: one third of Alexandria’s readers of Il Giornale d’Oriente were Maltese and Greeks; two thirds of its readers in Port Said were originally from Malta (Petricioli, 297).
يتجاوز تأثير مجموعة الصحف اليومية الجالية "الإيطالية" في مصر ليضم على الأقل كل أولئك الذين يمكنهم التحدث باللغة الإيطالية وقراءتها. بالتأكيد ، كما اقترحت في كتابي البحث عن الخبز والثروة في بورسعيد: هجرة العمالة وصناعة قناة السويس ١٨٥٩ـ١٩٠٦، تميل الصحف المصرية الصادرة باللغات الأجنبية إلى تقسيم الجمهور على أسس لغوية وسياسية . يعد تتبع تاريخهم مفيدًا لفهم كيف حاولت جاليات المهاجرين الاستقرار وتخيل هويتهم وتشكيل حدودهم. ومع ذلك تكشف دراسة لمحتويات هذه الصحف نفسها عن مدى انقسام هذه الجاليات الأجنبية بعمق على طول خطوط الطبقة الاجتماعية والتعليم . حتى خارج الجاليات التي استهدفتها على ما يبدو فإن هذه الصحف أحادية اللغة هي نوافذ في عالم متعدد اللغات. المزيد من البحث حول سياسة اللغة والممارسات متعددة اللغات ضروري ومستمر كما هو الحال في بحث الدكتوراه لأولغا فيرلاتو. سأقدم هنا مثالاً واحداً فقط: ثلث قراء الإسكندرية للجورنال دوريينتي كانوا مالطيين ويونانيين. ثلثى قراءها في بورسعيد كانوا من اصول مالطيه
Il potenziale della collezione del CAI/IIC va oltre la comunità “italiana” d’Egitto. Come minimo, arriva a includere tutti coloro che potevano parlare e leggere l’italiano. È vero che, come suggerisco nel mio libro Seeking Bread and Fortune in Port Said: Labor Migration and the Making of the Suez Canal, 1859-1906, i giornali egiziani in lingua straniera tendevano a dividere il pubblico lungo linee linguistiche e politiche. Ripercorrere la loro storia è quindi utile per comprendere il processo attraverso il quale le comunità di immigrati cercarono di insediarsi, di immaginare la propria identità, di delineare i propri confini. Tuttavia, uno studio dei contenuti di questi stessi giornali rivela quanto queste comunità straniere fossero profondamente fratturate, ad esempio lungo linee di faglia dettate dall’appartenenza di classe e dal livello di istruzione (Gorman, 146). Anche al di là delle comunità a cui apparentemente si rivolgevano, questi giornali monolingui sono finestre su un mondo multilingue. Sono necessarie e in corso ulteriori ricerche sulle politiche linguistiche e sulle pratiche multilinguistiche, come nell'appassionante lavoro di dottorato di Olga Verlato. Mi limito qui a fornire un esempio: un terzo dei lettori alessandrini de Il Giornale d'Oriente erano maltesi e greci; due terzi dei lettori dello stesso in Port Said erano originari di Malta (Petricioli, 297).
Ahmed Wali Al Din Series - Two men walking on the beach, 1937 [ref931] (Copyright Al Akkasah)
In sum, EAP1474 provides a privileged yet accessible gateway into underexplored aspects of the history of modern Egypt, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East. But it also opens up a broad-ranging conversation on the ways in which we study the history of migration and the history of the press. As any archive, it houses and excludes; it has its cracks and silences. It will need yet other ideas and resources to complete its gaps by retrieving missing issues from the public library of Alexandria; Italian libraries and archives; even private collections. It will have to follow in the steps of the experts who have pioneered this field at Transfopress, at the ΕΛΙΑ archives, and at the Centre d’Etudes Alexandrines, now looking up from Egypt’s francophone press to embrace the multiple shapes of the Mediterranean’s allophone press. That is a welcome and promising new opening.
باختصار، يوفر هذا المشروع بوابة متميزة ومتاحة في الجوانب الغيرمستكشفة من تاريخ مصر الحديثة والبحر المتوسط والشرق الأوسط. لكنه يفتح أيضًا نقاشًا واسع النطاق حول الطرق التي ندرس بها تاريخ الهجرة وتاريخ الصحافة. مثل أي أرشيف فإنه يضم ويستبعد ؛ له ثغرات ومناطق صمت. سوف يحتاج إلى أفكار وموارد أخرى لسد الثغرات من خلال استرجاع الأعداد المفقودة من مكتبة الإسكندرية العامة والمكتبات ودور المحفوظات الإيطالية وحتى المجموعات الخاصة. سيتعين اذا اتباع خطوات الخبراء الذين كانوا رائدين في هذا المجال في "ترانسفوپريس" وفي دار المحفوظات ΕΛΙΑ وفي مركز دراسات الإسكندرية ، الذي ينظر الأن الى ابعد من الصحافة الفرنكوفونية في مصر لاحتضان الصحافة بلغات أجنبية متعددة في البحر الأبيض المتوسط. هذه بداية جديدة واعدة ومرحب بها
In sintesi, il progetto EAP1474 offre un punto d’accesso privilegiato ma accessibile ad aspetti poco esplorati della storia dell’Egitto moderno, del Mediterraneo e del Medio Oriente. Tuttavia, il progetto apre anche una conversazione di ampio respiro sui modi in cui studiamo la storia delle migrazioni e la storia della stampa. Come ogni archivio, ospita ed esclude; ha le sue crepe e i suoi silenzi. Avrà bisogno di altre idee e risorse per completare le sue lacune, recuperando i numeri mancanti dalla collezione della biblioteca pubblica di Alessandria, dalle biblioteche e dagli archivi italiani e persino da collezioni private. Dovrà seguire le orme degli esperti che hanno aperto la strada con Transfopress, con gli archivi ΕΛΙΑ e del Centre d'Etudes Alexandrines, dove ora si solleva lo sguardo oltre la stampa francofona dell’Egitto per abbracciare le molteplici forme della stampa allofona del Mediterraneo: una promettente e benvenuta apertura.
Today’s Egypt: man reading the newspaper in Zamalek (Photograph taken by the author, 2022)
I have discussed a few initial findings (in Italian) in the context of a conference at the Università di Pavia titled “Sguardi incrociati. Editoria e oltremare tra colonialismo e post-colonialismo” (9 June 2023).
لقد شاركت بعض الاعتبارات الأولية (بالإيطالية) خلال مؤتمر في جامعة بافيا بعنوان "النظرات المتقاطعة. النشر وما وراء البحار بين الاستعمار وما بعد الاستعمار" (9 يونيو 2023).
Ho condiviso alcune considerazioni iniziali (in italiano) durante una conferenza all’Università di Pavia dal titolo“Sguardi incrociati. Editoria e oltremare tra colonialismo e post-colonialismo” (9 giugno 2023).
For offering support and expertise throughout the project, I want to thank:
:على تقديم دعمهم ومشاركة خبراتهم أثناء المشروع, أشكر
Per aver offerto il loro sostegno e condiviso le loro competenze durante il progetto, ringrazio:
Atef Khalil; Francesca Biancani, Alessandra Marchi, Costantino Paonessa, Teresa Pepe. Grazie a Davide Scalmani; Raffaele Pentangelo; Isabella Bommarito (IIC); Mohamed Abdel Rehim, Heba Sayed, Irina Schmid, Stephen Urgola (AUC); Ingrid Stange Ytterstad (UiO); Alexbank; Helwan university; Marie-Delphine Martèlliere (CeAlex).
Written by Dr Lucia Carminati (University of Oslo), Project Lead for EAP1474
A short bibliography on this topic includes:
ببليوغرافيا موجزة:
Offro di seguito una breve bibliografia sull’argomento:
ʻAbduh, Ibrāhīm. Taṭawwur al-ṣiḥāfah al-Miṣrīyah, 1798-1981. Cairo: Muʼassasat Sijill al-ʻArab, 1982.
Baldinetti, Anna. Orientalismo e colonialismo: la ricerca di consenso in Egitto per l’impresa di Libia. Roma: Istituto per l’Oriente C.A. Nallino, 1997.
Bigiavi, Edoardo D. Noi e l’Egitto. Livorno: Arti Grafiche S. Belforte E C., 1911.
Briani, Vittorio. Italiani in Egitto. Roma: Istituto poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, 1982.
Danovaro, G. B. L’Égypte à l’aurore du XXème siècle. Alexandrie: J.C. Lagoudakis, 1901.
Degli Oddi in Società Dante Alighieri. Calendario Nazionale Della Società Dante Alighieri. Firenze: R. Bemporad e Figlio, 1904.
Empereur, J.-Y., and Marie-Delphine Martellière, eds. Presses allophones de Méditerranée. Etudes alexandrines. Alexandrie: Centre d’études alexandrines, 2017.
Gorman, Anthony. “The Italians of Egypt: Return to Diaspora.” In Diasporas of the Modern Middle East: Contextualising Community, by Anthony Gorman and Sossie Kasbarian, 138–70. Edinburgh: University Press, 2015.
Marchi, Alessandra. “La presse d’expression italienne en Égypte, de 1845 à 1950.” Rivista dell’Istituto di Storia dell’Europa Mediterranea, no. 5 (2010): 91–125.
———. “La presse italophone d’Egypte. Un long siècle d’histoire.” In Presses allophones de Méditerranée, edited by J.-Y. Empereur and Marie-Delphine Martellière. Etudes alexandrines. Alexandrie: Centre d’études alexandrines, 2017.
Munier, Jules. La presse en Égypte (1799-1900). Notes et souvenirs. Le Caire: Impr. de l’Institut français d’archéologie orientale, 1930.
Petricioli, Marta. Oltre il mito: l’Egitto degli italiani (1917-1947). Milano: Mondadori, 2007.
Rizzitano, Umberto. “Un Secolo Di Giornalismo Italiano in Egitto (1845-1945).” Cahiers d’histoire Égyptienne Série VIII, no. fasc. 2/3 (Avril 1956).
Sadgrove, Philip. “The European Press in Khedive Isma’il’s Egypt (1863-1866): A Neglected FIeld,” In P.C. Sadgrove (Ed.), Printing and Publishing in the Middle East, Journal of Semitic Studies Supplement 24, 2008, 109-128.
Sammarco, Angelo. Gli italiani in Egitto: il contributo italiano nella formazione dell’Egitto moderno. Alessandria D’Egitto: Edizioni del Fascio, 1937.
23 August 2021
The Backstory to Digitising the Barbados Gazette
Today is the International Day for the Remembrance of the Slave Trade and its Abolition. Today also sees the launch of the second crowdsourcing task of the Agents of Enslavement project. To coincide with these two events we are delighted to share this guest post by Dr Lissa Paul, a literary scholar at Brock University who specialises in children’s literature and Caribbean literary studies.
Part I
When Graham Jevon emailed just a day after launching 'Agents of Enslavement' on Monday 21 July 2021, to say that the project had hit over 23,000 views, I found myself suddenly close to tears. The early nineteenth century people in the fugitive slave ads of the Barbados Gazette were going to be as alive in the minds of those who accessed the site that day as they had been when I first encountered them in the National Library in Bridgetown Barbados on disintegrating microfilms ten years ago in 2011. My blog story is about how a community of readers, an army of readers, grows out of one reader reading.
At the recommendation of Alissandra Cummins, Director of the Barbados Museum and Historical Society, I had gone to the library in Bridgetown in search of the microfilm copies of the Gazette in order to look for the subject of my research, radical British author and teacher Eliza Fenwick (1766-1840). Between late 1814 and 1822, Eliza had run a school, a Seminary for Young Ladies, in Barbados with her daughter, Eliza Ann Rutherford (1789-1828).
The microfilms were stored in manilla cardboard boxes in a metal filing cabinet on the dimly lit second floor of the library. They had apparently not been disturbed in years and the only way to view them was on an ancient desk-sized microfilm reader with no copy function. A kind librarian set up a stool for my laptop so that I could at least take notes, but the films even then were fragile and had to be coaxed gently through the reader. The Gazette published twice a week, Tuesdays and Saturdays, and I simply started reading, issue-by-issue from 1812 as that is when Eliza's daughter (an unwilling actress at best) had arrived to join the Theatre Royal Company opening in Bridgetown in January that year. As soon as I began, I was immersed in the terrifying conflict zone of a slave-dependant community.
The political news in the papers—between 1812 and 1816—mostly consisted of objections by the colonial government in Barbados to Wilberforce's initial attempts to pass a slave-registration bill, the purpose of which was to enforce the 1807 ban on the slave trade. The official line was that Barbados was a profitable, well-run island and the slaves were perfectly happy and well-managed. The proposed bill, they argued, would destroy the peace and prosperity of the island, and, picking up the slogan from the American Revolution, they claimed that the bill was a form of taxation without representation.
In the fugitive slave ads, however, there was a completely different story, one that spoke to sustained resistance in the face of what now appears as appalling, incomprehensible brutality. In the ads were people—men, women and children—who were arrestingly alive: there were details of what they looked like, how they spoke, what they wore, distinguishing features, who their relatives were, and where they might have gone. As I approached the dates of what later become known as Bussa's Rebellion on the Easter weekend in April 1816, it was business as usual as far as the news was concerned, even on Saturday 13 April, the day before the rebellion began.
I couldn't wait to see what the paper would report on the following Tuesday, but, as the records show, there was no paper on Tuesday 16 April. There's a gap in the run. The Gazette, like the rest of the island, was shut down for two weeks. The next issue was published on Tuesday 30 April 1816 and there is nothing on the rebellion on the front page. On the top-left of the first column, there is an ad for the 5'3" Philley-Melia who had absconded. She might, the ad suggests, have gone to her mother in one parish or her husband in another (indicating that families maintained their networks despite all attempts to split them up) and that she might be using a 'false pass to move around the island (a sign that she had likely planned her escape with care).
Philley-Melia, I thought at the time, was a resistance fighter, and like so many others in the fugitive slave ads was a member of Bussa's de facto guerilla army. The brief report of the rebellion in the Tuesday 30 April issue was on page two, column one, under the ad for second-quality butter and it was only there to explain the publication gap to readers from other islands who might not have heard the news. Even in my first reading, I knew that the Gazette revealed important stories, ones that spoke both to the individual heroism of the enslaved and to the brutality and obliviousness of the enslavers. While Bussa (about whom little is known) received credit for the rebellion here were the people whose courage and persistence deserved recognition—which is why the Agents of Enslavement project stands as so important.
Part II
At this point I should probably say that I'm a white Canadian scholar, a professor at Brock University in the Niagara region of Ontario and that my research on Eliza Fenwick is generously funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada. I have no connection to the Caribbean except through my work. My biography, Eliza Fenwick: Early Modern Feminist, published by the University of Delaware Press, 2019 partly traces Eliza's move from the radical, abolitionist company of Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin and others in their circle, to Barbados and then via New Haven and New York to Niagara (where I work) and Toronto (where I live).
As I'd gone to the Gazette to find traces of Eliza's presence in Barbados after I'd returned home I did what scholars do: I ordered microfilm copies through my university library and expected that they would arrive eventually. They didn't. I tried several times and kept getting rejected. Eventually, after repeated requests for an explanation I received an answer from Stewart Gillis, the (long retired) British Library Reference Team manager who had been responsible for the (now closed) unit dealing with requests for copies of microfilms.
In 2012 he wrote to me, patiently explaining that because the films were 'pretty old', as well as 'badly scratched and damaged', they were 'not suitable for further reproduction'. The films were made, he explained, on 'diazo', something I later found out to be a non-preservation medium only used for 'disposable or frequently updated' material according to information provided by the American Library Association.
When I tried to access copies of the Gazette on microfilm in libraries closer to home, I found a few but all listed their holdings as partial (only much later did I realise that that the April 1816 gap in the issues caused by the rebellion, would have counted—without explanation—as simply missing from the catalog record). And when I tried to access the physical paper copies of the Gazette in the National Archives in Barbados I was told that they were locked and that 'it would take an act of Parliament' to release them. Although my SSHRC grant covered research trips to Barbados, as the microfilms were disintegrating and the papers locked, I was overwhelmed by a sense that unless the papers were digitised, the people in the ads would die.
Part III
This is the 'it takes a village' part of the story of the long road to the digitisation of the Gazette and later the Barbadian. As a scholar I know how to find and use archival material, but initially I had no idea how to go about accessing funding to digitise the papers or who might do it or how. On my trips to Barbados, I had, however, started to make friends with people at the University of the West Indies (UWI) in Cave Hill. Again, it was Alissandra Cummins who provided the key: she had invited Dr. Evelyn O'Callaghan--Caribbean scholar, UWI professor, and most recently the editor, with Tim Watson of Caribbean Literature in Transition: 1800-1920 (Cambridge UP, 2021)--to an early 'Eliza' talk I'd given at the Barbados Museum. It was Evelyn who eventually introduced me to Dr. Laurie Taylor and Dr. Leah Rosenberg of the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) based at the University of Florida.
When they found that I was going to be doing the first draft of my Eliza biography while on a fellowship in the autumn of 2014 at Lucy Cavendish College Cambridge, they put me in touch with Erich Kesse (who was there at the time but is now at the University of London). And it was Erich who suggested that the British Library Endangered Archives Programme Grant was the right body to approach for the digitisation project. On reading the application requirements I also realised, instantly, that I had no standing as I was, essentially, a tourist. Only the National Archives of Barbados, operating under the auspices of the Government of Barbados could apply. And so began what I regarded as a campaign to generate support for the application to the British Library Endangered Archives Programme. It would be, I knew, difficult.
As David Waldstreicher explains in a 1999 essay, 'Reading the Runaways' (William and Mary Quarterly 56:2), colonial papers have been read 'as rude reminder[s] of forms of unfreedom that were doomed' (246). The last thing anyone wants to do is circulate racist propaganda, so there were clearly strong arguments for keeping the papers locked up. But as scholars of slavery studies--Sir Hilary Beckles, Sir Woodville Marshall, and Dr. Pedro Welch among others--demonstrate, it is also possible to read against the grain.
The Gazette, I found when I checked, had not been accessed for new research in about thirty-five years, around the time the microfilms were made, and the papers locked. References in the scholarly literature were typically second-hand: a citation from someone who had used the physical papers when they had been available. One person who had done an early form of data analysis (of the kind at the heart of the 'Agents of Enslavement' project) was Dr. Gad Heuman. In his 1985 essay, "Runaway Slaves in Nineteenth Century Barbados," Abolition and Slavery 6:3, Heuman used an early form of data analysis—the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS)—to analyze fugitive slave ads in the Gazette. The new more powerful tools available to scholars working in digital humanities, I realised, could potentially reveal so much more and I wondered, for instance, if it might be possible to identify 'hot spots' of resistance from the ads.
It was Evelyn who helped me try to recruit support in Barbados for the digitization of the Gazette. She suggested to Dr. Rodney Worrell in the History Department at Cave Hill that I give a talk (in 2016) on what I'd found in the Gazette. That talk, as it happened, just preceded a trip to Barbados by Laurie Taylor, of dLOC, who was coming to launch the digitization of the Jewish archives in Barbados, a project recently completed by Amalia Levi, an accomplished archivist originally from Greece and founder of HeritEdge.
Though we missed meeting each other on that occasion it was Amalia, who, in the company of Laurie, convinced the archivist at the National Library of Barbados, Ingrid Thompson, that digitising the Gazette was a worthwhile project. And that's how the application to the Endangered Archives Programme began. Ingrid, as the head of the Archives, became the principal applicant and took overall responsibility, Amalia, with her expertise as an archivist, took on the role as co-applicant and project manager. I was the other co-applicant. Given that I had the grant experience and the scholarly credentials, I was able to explain why the project was important. Laurie, through dLOC provided the technical expertise. The grant to digitise the Gazette was awarded in 2017, and it was the first won for Barbados.
After its completion in 2018, I was asked by Amalia to consult on a second application, this time for the Barbadian. It was again, successful. And now, in the summer of 2021, with the fully digitised versions of the Gazette and the Barbadian available, Graham Jevon has launched 'Agents of Enslavement', and the people of the fugitive slave ads in the Gazette and the Barbadian are, at last, on the verge of being recognised for their heroic resistance.
As I think back to that first day reading the microfilms in the National Library, I also remember being approached by two little boys, about ten, who were curious about what I was doing. At the time I was too embarrassed to tell them, so I turned the question and asked what they were doing. Their faces fell as they told me that they were researching slavery for school. One asked, pointing to his own ribs, if I knew that slaves had been poked in the ribs with cattle prods. I did, though in the moment I asked if they knew about the British children in the 1790s who had given up sugar in support of the movement to abolish the slave trade. They had not known, but they brightened when they realized that they had a positive story to take back to their class, one about children supporting children. While that story served its purpose at the time, it wasn't the story they needed. With 'Agents of Enslavement' now up and running, however, wonderful stories of courage and active resistance will be available for future generations of children.
11 August 2021
New online - July 2021
This month's round-up of newly available collections features archives from Nepal, Serbia, and Ghana.
- Digitisation of the photographic collection from DirghaMan and GaneshMan Chitrakar Art Foundation [EAP838]
- Safeguarding the fragile collection of the private archive of the Lazic family [EAP833]
- Safeguarding the British Colonial and Regional Administrative Archive in Northern Ghana [EAP935]
EAP838 - The DirghaMan and GaneshMan Chitrakar Art Foundation photographic collection
This important and unique collection of photographs gives a fascinating insight into life in Nepal at a time when the country was under self-imposed isolation from the outside world. During this period cameras were still quite rare and only owned by the elites and court photographers. As a result, there are relatively few photographic records documenting late 19th and early 20th Century Nepal.
The collection consists of images taken by the Royal Painter and Court Photographer Dirgha Man Chitrakar (1877-1951), and his only son Ganesh Man Chitrakar (1916-1985), who took over the role in 1945. Dirgha Man was a skilled painter and employed in the palace from the age of 14. After his brother received treatment from the Court Physician, Dirgha Man presented him with a painted medallion as a way of thanks. Prime Minister Chandra Shamsher (ruled 1901-1929) saw this medallion and impressed with the painting skills, decided to employ him as Royal Painter and Court Photographer in his palace. This important role enabled him to capture court and local life, official events and state visits that otherwise would not have been recorded.
After his father retired at the age of 71, Ganesh Man took over the role of Royal Painter and Court Photographer. After the country opened up to the outside world at the end of the Rana rule in 1951, Ganesh Man then worked for USAID as Chief Photographer where he documented the landscape of Kathmandu Valley and the surrounding cities. He made the first aerial photographs in 1955 and was the first person in the country to develop colour slides. He also opened a black and white photo studio, Ganesh Photo Lab., in 1971.
Their photographs are a rich resource that captures key moments in Nepal’s history. The photographs include portraits, diplomatic visits, landscapes, historic structures, and festivals. They capture images of urbanization, changes in the lifestyle and infrastructural transformation in Nepal. The collection is not only one family’s patrimony but also an account of Nepal’s history.
EAP833 - The Lazic family private archive
This project digitised and preserved valuable private archives and library collections owned by the Lazić family in Serbia, who for six generations have collected important and rare material. Aleksandar Lazić (1846–1916) was the founder and owner of the Library until 1910 when his son Luka Lazić (1876-1946) took over and enriched the collection with material documenting the Great War. He acquired much of the material in or around the battlefield and continued to purchase related material until his death in 1946. Along with his son and successor Milorad Lazić (1912–1977), they also accumulated a significant collection of law books. The majority of these were acquired between 1930-1950 and are crucial for theoretical and historical research of the Serbian state, law, and society. The collection has continued to grow as other members of the Lazić family care for this important archive.
Much of this material relating to the First World War is unique and not found in any other library or archive. The collection includes Serbian newspapers printed in exile in Corfu and Thessaloniki during the Austro-Hungarian occupation of Serbia. There are also copies of the rare journal ‘Pregled Listova’, published in Geneva for members of the Serbian government in exile.
EAP935 - Safeguarding the British Colonial and Regional Administrative Archive in Northern Ghana
This project continued the work of two previous EAP projects (EAP256 and EAP541) to digitise the material from the Public Records and Archives Administration (PRAAD) in Tamale, northern Ghana. During the earlier projects, the research team was able to assess PRAAD’s collection of rare historical records on the colonial administration and history of Northern Ghana, resulting in a comprehensive survey of the Northern Regional Administration Records and District Assembly Records collections. Subsequently, through the EAP541 Major project, the research team digitised five records series amounting to 126,239 images. The EAP935 project completed this work by digitising a further eight collections, adding over 212,000 images to the archive from three regions of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast: Northern region records collections, Upper West Region records collection and Upper East Region records collection.
20 July 2021
Help trace the stories of enslaved people in the Caribbean using colonial newspapers
We are excited to launch a new crowdsourcing project that explores the links between slavery and newspapers in late 18th and early 19th century Barbados: Agents of Enslavement: Colonial newspapers in the Caribbean and hidden genealogies of the enslaved.
This project will examine the extent to which newspapers facilitated and challenged the practice of slavery. It will also help to reveal the identities, networks, and acts of resistance of enslaved people hidden within these printed texts.
You can find details of how to get involved at the bottom of this blog post.
Focus on Barbados
Barbados is particularly significant in the history of Caribbean enslavement because this is where Britain’s trans-Atlantic slave plantation model began in the 17th century, before spreading throughout the region.
Other European empires had enslaved and transported Africans to plantations in the Americas since the 1500s, but it was in the 17th century that English capitalists industrialised this process and created what historian Hilary Beckles described as the ‘first black slave society’ in Barbados. English (and later British) capitalists purchased men, women and children enslaved in Africa, brought them to the Caribbean, forced them to work against their will, and then enslaved their children, grandchildren, and so on.
This model officially ended after the 1807 act to prohibit the trade of enslaved people and the 1833 act to abolish slavery altogether – though enslavement effectively continued until 1838 in the guise of transitional ‘apprenticeships’, which was essentially enslavement by another name. Even after this date, many people had little choice but to continue working for their former enslavers on very low pay.
While the British enslaved people for hundreds of years across the Caribbean, this project is centred specifically on the abolition and emancipation period of the late 18th and early 19th century in Barbados, the place where Britain’s barbaric colonial slave plantation system began.
The research material
This project will focus on two newspaper titles, which are already free to view online:
The physical copies of these newspapers are located at the Barbados Archives Department, where they were digitised by a local team thanks to funding from the British Library’s Endangered Archives Programme.
While these newspapers are already available to view online, this project will help researchers interrogate the content, assist family historians to trace their ancestors, and help to memorialise individuals who resisted enslavement.
Disturbing and offensive content
We are conscious that the material we are asking people to engage with is disturbing to read. The nature of this project means that users will see terms that are now considered discriminatory, harmful or offensive. The newspapers also contain graphic descriptions of how enslaved people were mistreated.
While this was a period in which calls to end slavery were eventually enshrined in law, racialised enslavement was nonetheless rife and accepted. Abolition and emancipation were far from unanimous and these newspapers reflect this. The way that these publications normalise slavery and abuse is particularly shocking.
We therefore strongly recommend that users consider this carefully before engaging with this project. And if you do get involved, please consider taking regular breaks and referring to the resources we have included to offer support.
Project aims
The project has two main aims:
- To examine the role that newspapers played in facilitating and challenging the practice of slavery
- To create a database of enslaved people and their acts of resistance identified in these newspapers.
The first task - Launched 20 July 2021
The first crowdsourcing task launched on 20 July will contribute to both these aims. It asks contributors to identify four specific types of newspaper advertisement / notice:
- Enslaved people advertised for sale
- Enslaved people wanted for purchase
- Adverts seeking the recapture of fugitives (enslaved people who have escaped)
- Notices informing enslavers that they can collect fugitives who have been captured.
The second task - Launching 23 August 2021
The second crowdsourcing task will ask contributors to transcribe key information from the adverts identified in the first task. This will include information such as names, ages, and places. It will provide the platform for creating a database of people identified within these newspapers, but also create a dataset for analysing trends within these adverts.
Finding the voices of the enslaved in the words of enslavers
These tasks could seem depressing, as users identify advert after advert that facilitated and supported the practice of slavery and dehumanised the people who were enslaved.
Yet while the adverts are written from the perspective of enslavers, they often provide a unique record of an enslaved person’s existence, identity, and actions. This is particularly true of the fugitive advertisements as every advert seeking the re-capture of an enslaved person who had escaped captivity represents an act of resistance.
The degree to which the actions and identities of enslaved people emerge from the page often depends on the needs of the enslaver. When offered for sale, people were usually anonymised. The very first edition of The Barbadian newspaper contained an advertisement for the sale of two people; both identified simply by their gender, number of children, and domestic skills.
But when enslavers were seeking the return of those who had escaped, their identities were necessarily revealed. To achieve their objective these adverts required detailed descriptions. The better the description the easier it would be to track down the fugitive.
Now, two hundred years later, these adverts act as a record of each fugitive’s individual existence and agency. These descriptions enable us to identify individuals and map both social and geographic connections. Fugitive adverts usually specify locations and often mention family members and other associates who might know where a fugitive is hiding. This will therefore enable us to try to establish networks of people and places and potentially identify patterns of resistance.
This enhanced level of detail represents the interests of the enslaver; but it reflects the actions of the enslaved. These adverts reveal a powerful narrative of resistance that reminds us that these people were neither generic nor passive victims. They were individuals, with families and friends, who fought against oppression.
What will we do with these adverts?
This project seeks to help bring these acts of resistance to the fore, individually and collectively.
Once we have a dataset of adverts drawn, classified, and transcribed by crowdsourcing contributors, we will use these in several ways.
Database of people
These transcriptions will form the basis for a database of enslaved people identified within these adverts. A database that not only identifies individuals, but which also maps family connections and other networks of enslaved people.
Analyse at scale
The results of these first two tasks will also enable us to analyse the adverts at scale, to observe patterns and answer compelling questions. Did one newspaper do more to facilitate the practice of slavery than another? Did a particular type of advertisement increase or decrease at any given time? If so, can these trends be linked to other events, such as major revolts or legislative changes?
Share the datasets
We will also make the datasets freely available via the British Library’s Research Repository so that anyone can access and re-use the crowdsourcing results for their own research purposes.
Future tasks
The current task to identify four types of advertisement and notices is just one aspect of this project. Further tasks will include one to transcribe key information from these adverts and another that will ask users to label selected articles as either pro- or anti-slavery.
This latter task will help us understand whether attitudes expressed within these newspapers changed over time and the extent to which these newspapers provided a means to challenge the practice of slavery as well as facilitate it.
How to get involved
To achieve the aims of this project, we need your help to reveal the secrets hidden within these newspapers.
Anyone can get involved simply by visiting the crowdsourcing site and going to the “Classify” page.
You do not need to register to take part. However, if you choose to register as a contributor, this will enable you to engage in discussions and ask questions on the talk boards. It will also allow us to acknowledge your contribution to the project.
We recognise that engaging with this will be a painful experience for many, but we believe this is a worthy and significant endeavour that will help researchers understand the relationship between newspapers and slavery, and help to remember and highlight the humanity and resistance of people who suffered and fought against enslavement.
Acknowledgements
It is thanks to the award of the British Library’s Coleridge Fellowship that we are able to carry out this research project. And it is thanks to the work of the Barbados Archives Department that we have access to the digitised newspapers to work with.
07 June 2021
New online - April/May 2021
We have another four completed digitisation projects that have recently gone online. These four projects represent both the global breadth of EAP projects and the wide variety of content types:
- Temple manuscripts from Kerala and Karantaka, India [EAP908]
- Bound works and manuscripts from Tajikistan [EAP910]
- 19th century Haitian newspapers [EAP1024]
- Archives of public high schools in Chile [EAP1065]
EAP908 - Temple manuscripts from Kerala and Karantaka, India
Led by Dr Vayalkara Jayarajan, the EAP908 team digitised 283 palm leaf manuscripts located at seven different temples in the Indian states of Kerala and Karnataka. The exact sources of these manuscripts are unknown as they have been acquired from several priests and passed on from generation to generation.
Over time, the condition of these sacred and holy manuscripts has deteriorated. This project has therefore helped preserve the information on rites and rituals that these manuscripts contain.
EAP910 - Bound works and manuscripts from Tajikistan
Led by Dr Abdughani Mamdazimov, the EAP910 team identified and digitised pre-Soviet works from private collections in the Gissar region of Tajikistan.
These collections are particularly focused on education, both religious and secular.
The bound works include collections of poetry and a biography of the prophet Muhammad.
EAP1024 - 19th century Haitian newspapers
This pilot project digitised 26 different newspaper titles held by the Bibliothèque Haïtienne des Frères de l’Instruction Chrétienne (BHFIC) in Port-au-Prince.
The newspapers are printed in French (with occasional words in Haitian Creole). Topics include political, economic, and diplomatic news and debates. It also includes literary publications, like short stories and poems.
EAP1065 - Archives of public high schools in Chile
The EAP1065 project team, led by Mr Rodrigo Sandoval, digitised administrative records from eight high schools in Chile.
Dated 1848-1918, these records include:
- Correspondence
- School subjects
- Enrolment records
- Directories
- Punishment room books
- Religious class books
- Diaries
- Exams
- Instructions for edification
This video provides an insight into the project.
Follow us on Twitter to help keep an eye out for many more projects being put online in the coming weeks and months.
01 December 2020
New Collections Online - November 2020
Again it's the time of month to round-up which EAP funded projects are newly available online to view over the past few weeks. This month we have made available the following four projects:
- Photographic archive of the ‘Vasile Parvan’ Institute of Archaeology, Bucharest, Romania [EAP816]
- The Last National Newspapers in Mongolia Printed in Traditional Script [EAP890]
- District Administration Books for Regions in the Former British Colonial Territory of Nyasaland (Malawi) [EAP920]
- Documents from the Archives of Land Registration Division and Lands Commission of Ghana [EAP1119]
Continue reading for summaries of these projects, and to find out what we've made available previously, take a look at our other recent monthly posts.
EAP816 - Photographic archive of the ‘Vasile Parvan’ Institute of Archaeology, Bucharest, Romania
This project was previously on an old version of the EAP website. Due to some technical issues it has only just been made available to view again.
The ‘Vasile Parvan’ Institute of Archaeology’s photography archive provides a unique source of information for archaeological research in Romania, especially of the Black Sea region. Over 2000 photographs have been digitised showing a wide range of activities covering the period 1875-1925. A large number of archaeological sites and monuments, then surviving across Romania, are represented in a vast array of excavation, exploration and restoration photographs. Many of the archaeological sites and landscapes represented in the photographs, along with a host of medieval churches and many villages, were totally destroyed during and after the two World Wars.
The majority of the earliest material focuses on the Romanian Black Sea area, a region called Dobrogea, the richest region of Romania in terms of its archaeological heritage. It also used to be the most ethnically diverse region of Romania and until the end of World War I was one of the most rural and arid. In the 1960s and 1970s huge agricultural programmes resulted in the loss of entire villages along with archaeological remains.
Archaeological artefacts – pottery, sculptures, metal objects – are also represented, along with other items of major historical importance: objects of religious art, paintings, sculptures and fabrics, many of them subsequently destroyed or lost, sometimes plundered by German, Russian or other troops during the wars that have affected Romania in the past 150 years. The on-site images include extremely beautiful local ethnographic photographs and rural landscape images depicting a world long gone.
EAP890 - The Last National Newspapers in Mongolia Printed in Traditional Script
This project digitised over 900 editions of two newspapers held at the Sukhbaatar District Library, Mongolia. These newspapers were the last printed in the traditional Mongolian script before the change to using Cyrillic in 1945. The editions cover a period of major national and international change: 1936-1945.
The two newspaper titles are available to view here:
You may also be interested in this recently published blog post which looks into some of the issues surrounding the change from traditional Mongolian script to Cyrillic:
EAP920 - District Administration Books for Regions in the Former British Colonial Territory of Nyasaland (Malawi)
This project digitised District Notebooks created by officers during the British colonial rule of Nyasaland, now Malawi. These notebooks were used to record detailed information regarding local institutions, people, and customs. It was deemed important to record in order to serve the interests of government, as well as for anthropologists and other potential users of this information. All British officers who served as District Commissioners were required to maintain such notebooks, which were then handed over to succeeding officers.
Common subjects dealt with in the district notebooks included 'handing in' and 'taking over' notes, tribal history, notes on population and statistics, succession and inheritance, native social beliefs and customs, health and sanitation, economics, labour, natural history, military medals, metrology etc.
These books were originally located in the respective districts of Dedza, Dowa, Fort Manning, (Mchinji), Karonga, Kasunga, Kota-kota (Nkhota-kota), Lilongwe, Mzimba, and Nkhatabay. As part of this project these books were relocated for preservation at the National Archive of Malawi.
EAP1119 - Documents from the Archives of Land Registration Division and Lands Commission of Ghana
This pilot project digitised a small selection of deed and mortgage registers, as well as some additional related records. The records were all created in the period 1843-1909 when Ghana was part of the British colony known as the Gold Coast. These records are an important source for research into land ownership and the registration and acquisition of land for public purposes. Other potential avenues of research identified include the commercial and industrial activities of named persons, and history of residential settlement in the region.
Please check back again next month for another round-up of collections made available. You may also want to follow us on Twitter for earlier updates about which collections are newly available, as well as other related news.
18 November 2020
What’s in a name? The Sovietisation of the Mongolian language and the Challenges of Reversal
One of the newest EAP projects to go online is EAP890, which contains two collections of Mongolian newspapers, covering the period 1936-1945.
Written in traditional Mongolian script, these newspapers offer a fascinating insight into the history of Mongolian politics and society. They also provide a Mongolian perspective on international affairs, including the dominant global event of the period: the Second World War.
What's in a name?
But beyond the content, even to the untrained eye, this collection shines a light on a key period in Mongolia’s history, as the influence of the Soviet Union intensified eastwards after the 1917 Russian revolution.
Even if you cannot read the traditional Mongolian script these newspapers are written in, a quick glance at different editions of the Ardyn Undesnii Erkh collection prompts a simple question: why did the name of this newspaper keep changing? The answer lies not in typographical errors and careless editing; it is much more profound.
The newspaper title when printed in traditional Mongolian script was always consistent (see yellow boxes below). But alongside this was a variant title written in an alternative script (see red boxes).
In the following examples from four different months in 1941, the variant titles were written differently in each edition. In February 1941, the variant title is very similar to the current Romanised transliteration. But month by month this gradually changed to something that closely resembles the modern Cyrillic spelling.
What is going on?
These changing titles are indicative of a pivotal period in Mongolian history. They reveal a process of linguistic revolution, which act as an important indicator of the broader social and political changes that Mongolia experienced during the mid-20th century.
The Sovietisation of Mongolia
Situated in the heart of central Asia, Mongolia is surrounded by two global superpowers: Russia to the north and China to the south. Between the late 17th and early 20th centuries, Mongolia was controlled by the Chinese Qing dynasty. Throughout this period, local dialects predominantly used the vertical Mongolian script, which was adapted from the Old Uyghur alphabet after Genghis Khan captured an Uyghur scribe at the beginning of the 13th century, during the formative years of the Mongol Empire.
After the fall of the Chinese Manchu dynasty in 1911, Mongolia swayed between independence and continued control by the new Republic of China, until Russian troops entered Mongolia in 1920 and defeated the Chinese army a few months later.
In 1924, the Mongolian People's Republic was established and during subsequent decades Mongolia became increasingly aligned with the recently formed Soviet Union.
During the 1930s, Mongolia was subject to a series of brutal purges. Buddhist monasteries were destroyed and tens of thousands of people were killed. This process intensified as the world drifted towards war. Notable politicians, including Mongolian prime ministers Peljidiin Genden and Anandyn Amar were arrested and shot in the Soviet Union, accused of counterrevolutionary activity and spying for Japan.
These purges were ordered by the Soviets, but largely overseen by Khorloogiin Choibalsan - sometimes referred to as the 'Stalin of Mongolia'. Choibalsan was in Russia as a student when the 1917 Bolshevik revolution took place. He returned to Mongolia inspired by the Bolshevik cause and after Stalin came to power in Moscow, Choibalsan gradually emerged as the principal conduit for Soviet influence in Mongolia. By 1939, after the arrest of Amar, Choibalsan had become Mongolia's dominant political leader.
During the next few years, the Sovietisation of Mongolia continued unabated and part of this effort included Russifying the Mongolian language.
Linguistic revolution
While violent purges provide stark evidence of political change, alterations to the national language were also a significant part of the Sovietisation process.
Initial attempts to unify languages within the communist sphere centred on the Latin script. A 1932 Soviet report explained that a unified script would create a system for use by the working masses, as opposed to multiple narrow systems designed for use by the ruling classes. During the late 1930s this objective continued, but Cyrillic became the preferred, unifying writing system.
The first two extracts above, from early 1941 editions of Ardyn Undesnii Erkh, represent a hangover from those initial aborted efforts to Latinise languages within the Soviet Union during the 1920s-30s and replica efforts in Mongolia. In the early 1930s, a Latin alphabet containing 24 dominant characters emerged in Mongolia. This shift was subsequently aborted and in 1937 the former Minster of Education was prosecuted for crimes which included trying to destroy the Mongolian national script. But in early 1941, after the rise of Choibalsan, Latinisation re-emerged. And on 21 February 1941, a resolution was passed in Mongolia to approve a 42-letter Latin script. This decree was short-lived, though, as a month a later, on 25 March, Cyrillic was adopted as the preferred alternative to the traditional Mongolian script. Five years later, this change was enforced
The processes of both Latinising and Russifying the Mongolian language were neither straightforward nor definitive. The subtle and gradual alterations to both the Latin and the Cyrillic versions of the titles evident in these newspaper demonstrate this. The task of using new alphabets to represent an existing language was subject to intense linguistic debate.
As the last national newspapers printed in traditional Mongolian script before the forceful switch to the Cyrillic script on 1 January 1946, these two newspaper collections offer an important insight into the nature of those debates and provide a potentially useful dataset to help better understand the mechanics and subtleties of this linguistic revolution.
By the time of this enforced change, Unen had already transitioned. When the final edition available in this collection was published on 31 December 1945, the only remnant of the traditional Mongolian script was the title; the rest of the newspaper was printed in Cyrillic.
When the Sovietisation process began, the titles were the first parts of these newspapers to change. When the process was complete, they were the last thing to remain.
Beyond communism and 21st century challenges
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the end of communism in Mongolia, efforts have been made to resurrect the traditional script, which is still used in the autonomous Inner Mongolian region of China. This was initially scheduled for 1994, but Cyrillic was re-confirmed as the national script by the Mongolian parliament in 1995.
Twenty years later, in February 2015, the Mongolian government passed a new law which asserted that the traditional Mongolian script, found in these two newspapers, should once again be the national script by 2025. But it may not be that simple.
As I discovered when cataloguing this project, implementing this policy requires technical change as well as political will. It had been our intention to catalogue the collection using the traditional Mongolian script that the newspapers were predominantly written in. However, while the traditional Mongolian script was added to the unicode standard in 1999, there are several design issues that remain unfixed and a lack of support for fonts required to display the script correctly. The 2025 target has provided renewed motivation to address these issues. But it remains to be seen if and when the existing technical problems will be resolved.
For now, therefore, the titles for these collections appear in the EAP catalogue only in the modern Mongolian Cyrillic script and transliterated Latin script.
But once you get beyond the name, the digitised content is there to be explored in the traditional Mongolian script - providing a window into the past and possibly the very near future of Mongolia and the significance of its national script.
By Graham Jevon
With thanks to the EAP890 project team led by Bayasgalan Bayanbat for digitising this content, and to Eleanor Cooper with whom discussions about the language and scripts inspired this post.
Further reading
Charles Bawden, The Modern History of Mongolia, (2002).
Henry S Badsher, 'The Sovietization of Mongolia', Foreign Affairs (April 1972), pp. 545-553.
Uradyn E Bulag, Nationalism and Hybridity in Mongolia (1998).
Stephane Grivelet, 'The Latinization Attempt in Mongolia', http://acta.bibl.u-szeged.hu/16597/1/altaica_039_115-120.pdf
Stephane Grivelet, 'Reintroducing the Uighur-Mongolian Script in Mongolia Today', Mongolian Studies, Vol. 18 (1995), pp. 49-60.
28 August 2020
New Collections Online - August 2020
August has been another busy month for EAP with newspapers, manuscripts, books, and archival documents all being made available. Here is a summary of four of the most recent EAP projects to go online:
- Provincial Newspapers in Peru (19th-20th century) [EAP498]
- Rare Books in Grantha script from South India [EAP918]
- British Indian Association Archive [EAP922]
- Rare Medieval Manuscripts from Newari Settlements in Nepal [EAP1023]
EAP498 - Provincial Newspapers in Peru (19th -20th century)
This project digitised 176 different newspaper titles from five regions of Peru:
- EAP498/1: Cajamarca
- EAP498/2: Lambayeque
- EAP498/3: Tacna
- EAP498/4: Huancavelica
- EAP498/5: Ayacucho
Across the five collections, a total of 2,133 newspaper editions have been digitised and made freely available.
These unique collections offer important material that will help generate new research into the history of Peru, particularly the regions outside the largest cities. The Tacna collection, for example, includes important coverage of the the area's occupation by Chile between 1880-1929.
These collections contain a wide variety of topics, including satire, labour movements, literature, and education.
EAP918 - Rare Books in Grantha script from South India
The EAP918 project team digitised ten collections owned by institutions and private scholars, containing a total of 1,112 books printed in Grantha script.
Grantha script has mainly being used for reading Sanskrit in South India since the 6th century, but during the 20th century it became almost obsolete. Very few people use it and very few libraries continue to hold books written in Grantha script, which include accounts of topics including astrology, astronomy, history, philosophy, rituals, language and grammar, poetry, music, yoga, and society.
This digitisation project was therefore vital to help preserve this once widely used script and to make the knowledge it contains available to a new generation of researchers.
EAP922 - British Indian Association Archive
The British Indian Association, founded in 1851, was one of the earliest political associations of Indian colonial subjects. It was the first political body of the nation and can challenge the Indian National Congress for the title of the Grand Old Party.
The Association was largely composed of landholders who maintained a combination of conservatism and progress in their efforts to obtain freedom for colonial India.
Spanning the period 1851-1948, this collection contains a wealth of material relating to the British Indian Association and the wider political situation in India. The collection is divided into 11 series:
- EAP922/1/1: Annual Reports (1859-1948)
- EAP922/1/2: Booklets (1852-1947)
- EAP922/1/3: Journals (1936)
- EAP922/1/4: Minute Books (1864-1948)
- EAP922/1/5: Newspapers (1869 -1929)
- EAP922/1/6: Book (1909)
- EAP922/1/7: Felicitations (1926-1927)
- EAP922/1/8: Pamphlets (Early 20th century)
- EAP922/1/9: Manuscripts (19th century-Early 20th century)
- EAP922/1/10: Reports (1890-1938)
- EAP922/1/11: Documents (1859-1938).
EAP1023 - Rare Medieval Manuscripts from Newari Settlements in Nepal
Building on the work of previous projects EAP676 and EAP790, this latest project digitised 28 collections of manuscripts located in Newār settlements in Rural Kathmandu and hill areas of Nepal.
These Hindu and Buddhist manuscripts range from the 12th-18th centuries and cover a wide range of topics including:
- Literature
- Medicine
- Music
- Rituals
- Epic stories
- Narratives
- Tantra
- Shashtra
- Iconography
- Glorification
- Eulogy
- Grammar
- Mahatmya
- Puja
- Indigenous Kiranta texts.
They are written in a wide range of languages and scripts. Languages include:
- Kiranti
- Mara
- Nepali
- Newari
- Sanskrit
- Tibetan.
Scripts include:
- Bengali
- Bhujimol
- Devanagari
- Lepcha
- Limbu
- Newari
- Proto-Bengali
- Tibetan.
Follow us on Twitter @bl_eap to keep up-to-date with the latest new collections going online.
We will be uploading many more collections from all over the world in the coming weeks and months.
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- New Collections Online - November 2020
- What’s in a name? The Sovietisation of the Mongolian language and the Challenges of Reversal
- New Collections Online - August 2020
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- The Legacy of Slavery: A 19th Century Newspaper and 21st Century Racial Inequity
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