08 June 2016
New collections online - May 2016
Last month we put three new collection online - EAP689, EAP700 and EAP727
EAP689: Constituting a digital archive of Tamil agrarian history (1650-1950) - phase II
This project, digitising vulnerable documents relating to Tamil agrarian history, is a continuation of the earlier projects carried out in the same region – EAP314 and EAP458. The project aimed to enhance the work already accomplished by visiting some of the locations identified in these earlier projects, as well as new locations, and digitising a variety of vulnerable documents held in private homes in Tamil Nadu. 36 new collections were digitised, bringing the total number, including those from previous projects, up to 74 collections in total. The sizes of the 36 new collections digitised vary from one single document to over a 300 documents per collection. The 36 collections comprise 135 different series which cover a wide variety of genres and topics such as: folk songs, poems, hymns, horoscopes, astrology, sorcery, nikantu, tamil lexicon, medicine, harvest accounts, land lease, land settlements, land partition, land dispute, land record, tax and temple accounts. judgements from the colonial courts and local judicial assemblies, petitions over land dispute, sale, punishment for communication with excommunicated persons, marriage agreement and caste integrity, compensation to families after self-immolation of widows, security rights (kaval), right to access water for agriculture from the lake, dowry details, business communications and accounts with Burma, film pamphlets.
EAP689/6/1/1 - Agreement for temple renovation - Copper-plate
EAP689/21/2/4 - Invitation Letters - Paper [1912-1931]
EAP689/27/1/53 -Music Guide book PB 53 [1939]
EAP700: Preservation of the manuscripts of the Jaffna Bishop's House (1850-1930)
The central aim of this pilot project was to digitise, preserve and disseminate the rare French manuscripts and other documents kept in the Jaffna Bishop’s House in Sri Lanka. These manuscripts are becoming more and more vulnerable to human and natural disasters and merit urgent digitisation for posterity. Jaffna, in the northern part Sri Lanka, inhabited by the Tamil ethnic minority since the independence of Sri Lanka (1948) has been subject to serious ethnic, cultural and political conflicts. One of the most tragic events was the burning of the Jaffna Public library along with its 97,000 volumes of books and manuscripts on 1 June 1981. The Jaffna public library was considered one of the biggest in Asia.
This collection of manuscripts has escaped the bombings and shelling of past decades. They have been stored in wooden cupboards in a reinforced room of the Bishop’s House adjoining the Cathedral, in a strategically sensitive district of Jaffna City. They are, however, highly vulnerable due to their age and their current condition of poor storage, insect infestations, occasional human mishandling, humidity and other natural and environmental disasters. Some of them are in such a fragile state that they are unable to be handled.
These manuscripts and documents are part of the collections of the Catholic mission in Sri Lanka and cover a wider geographical area including the Jaffna peninsula, Mannar, Puttalam and the Vanni regions. The majority of the manuscripts are in French. This makes the collection a rare and unique heritage and should shed new insights on the contribution of the French missions in this region. They contain a variety of information about the Diocese and the parish and the parishioners. They cover two periods: the second half of the 19th century with the commencement of the Missions; and the period before, during, and after the First World War, a period that is also of great historical importance because of its implications in the colonies. They pertain to two broad domains of the history of Christianity and Christian missions in Sri Lanka, and also the cultural history of ethnic minorities in general and with special reference to the Tamils.
The project digitised 58 files, creating a total of 16,944 digital images instead of the 7,000 that were originally planned. The files mostly consist of manuscripts dated from between 1850 and 1930. The project digitised a diverse collection of records such as memoirs of missionaries or codices; records detailing day to day life; observations on economic and social conditions; personal letters; account books giving detailed explanations of the income and expenses related to the missions, churches and cathedral, and daily accounts of the expenditures on different chapters like school, orphanage, and charity; catalogues of letters sent by missionaries; sermons and commentaries.
EAP700/1/2/2 - The Jaffna Diocese and the OMI - Supplement, containing letters & documents [1848-1861]
EAP700/1/8/1 - Statistics of the Diocese of Jaffna [1929]
EAP727: Preservation of Tibetan Ngakpa manuscripts in Amdo region (Qinghai and Gansu Provinces, PRC)
Amdo is a region located in the northeastern area of the Tibetan Plateau. Due to its geographical features of high mountain ranges and vast grasslands, fragmented and scattered institutions of local power have been the prevalent forms of the ruling agency, until its formal inclusion in the administrative system of People’s Republic of China in 1958. In this socio-historical context, Ngakpa have been playing a leading role in the religious life of Amdo Tibetan communities, embodying a sort of independent channel of transmission, alternative to monastic practice. Ngakpa are extremely knowledgeable bearers of the non-monastic tradition of Tibetan Buddhism and Bon religions. They mainly act as ritual masters for a number of different purposes and have a high level of expertise in Tibetan meditation practices, medicine, astronomy and traditional knowledge as a whole.
Despite the recent popularity of Ngakpa teachings in the Western world, their survival in the original context is threatened by the increasing marginalisation of their social role and the lack of potential students in the young generation, captivated by new opportunities offered by the Chinese fast-growing economy. The preservation of Ngakpa’s textual heritage is a factor of primary importance for ensuring the perpetuation of this ancient laic tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. This project was exclusively concerned with the preservation of the most endangered manuscripts of one specific group of Ngakpa in the Amdo region, those belonging to the Nyingmapa tradition, the most ancient school of Tibetan Buddhism.
A pilot survey was carried out by the local archival partner and it emerged that between 70 and 100 pecha (the traditional format of Tibetan books, made of long paper pages compressed between two wooden boards and bounded together with a string) of different lengths, privately-owned by thirty Ngakpa, were in very poor physical condition and situated in precarious locations, exposed to the damages of humidity, rats, use and age.
The manuscripts date from between the early 19th and the end of the 20th centuries. Several of them are unique copies that were rescued during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), when they were hidden in various provisional locations, wedged in wall fissures and buried underground. The topics covered by the texts are heterogeneous: rituals, medicine, history, astrology, astronomy, divination, hagiography, mantras, manuals for the construction of traditional ritual objects, such as mandala, stupa and torma (decorated and painted offerings made of barley flour and butter).
The scattered location of the texts and the difficulty to reach them in remote mountain areas required extensive travel among different villages in Huangnan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Haixi Mongolian and Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Hainan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Golok Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture (all in Qinghai Province) and Southern Gansu Province.
EAP727/1/100 - རྒྱལ་བ་སྐུ་གསུམ་གྱི་རྣམ་ཐར་ཡོངས་འདུས་ལྗོན་པ་བཞུགས་སོ།། (rgyal ba sku gsum gyi rnam thar yongs 'dus ljon pa bzhugs) [Early 20th century]
EAP727/6/25 - བླ་མའི་རྣལ་འབྱོར་བསམ་པ་ལྷུན་འགྲུབ་དང་མྱུར་འགྲུབ་མ་བཞུགས་སོ།། (bla ma'i rnal 'byor bsam pa lhun 'grub dang myur 'grub ma bzhugs so) [Mid 19th century]
05 May 2016
New collections online - April 2016
In April six collections were made available through the EAP website and BL Sounds. The variety of subjects, locations, and types of record really highlight the broad range of projects that the Endangered Archives Programme is involved in.
EAP190: Digitising archival material pertaining to 'Young India' label gramophone records
1427 recordings can be listened to on BL Sounds
Related record label ephemera, including catalogues and advertisements
Young India record and sleeve
The project digitised gramophone records, disc labels, record catalogues and publicity material from ‘The National Gramophone Record Manufacturing Company Ltd. Bombay’, which issued records under the ‘Young India’ label between 1935-1955. The company produced over 10,000 titles on 78-rpm, 10 inch diameter shellac discs with two songs per disc. The recordings of film, popular, classical and folk music, as well as educational material were issued mainly from amateur or up-and-coming artists. They feature music from different regions of India, sung in many different languages. The recordings have never been reissued on audio tape or CD and are therefore now available for many people to listen to for the first time. We have already received some great feedback about this collection, including one person who recalled his music teacher many years ago telling the students about Young India and how he used to be a tabla player for the label and regular D V Paluskar accompanist. He was delighted to find that he could now hear the actual music that his teacher talked about all those years ago. Hopefully, with this collection now available for anyone to listen to worldwide, many more people will discover or rediscover the recordings from the Young India label.
EAP468: To preserve Indian recordings on 'Odeon' label shellac discs
1404 recordings can be listened to on BL Sounds
Related record label ephemera, including catalogues and advertisements
Odeon record label advert
This project digitised shellac discs, record labels and associated ephemera from the Odeon record label. Odeon label shellac discs were issued in India between 1912-1938. The company produced over 2,000 titles of north and south Indian music. About 600 titles [1,200 songs] have survived and are with private collectors
Odeon label shellac discs were issued in India in two phases: during 1912-16; and during 1932-38. During the first phase, Odeon's first Indian recordings were made in late 1906 on a grand tour that took the engineers from Calcutta to Benares, then on to Lucknow, Cawnpore, Delhi, Amritsar, Lahore, Bombay and finally back to Calcutta. In all, they recorded some 700 titles, which were duly shipped back to Berlin for processing and manufacture in what was then the established worldwide pattern. Disc records manufactured and pressed in Germany were shipped back to India by 1908. Gramophone records were the only mode of public and family entertainment in that period. Because of the diversity of language and cultural taste, Odeon's engineers recorded a great deal of regional music for local consumption. In a time before film music swept regional variations away, Odeon's activities allowed Indians to listen to the music that would otherwise have been irretrievable. Very few disc records from this period have survived.
In the second phase, the Odeon disc manufacturing company operated during 1932-38. Its operations were mainly from Mumbai and Madras and the company produced over 2,000 titles in north and south Indian music. At this time, radio and film songs had just entered the entertainment era. Disc manufacturing and distribution activity continued until the outbreak of World War II. Because of the embargo imposed on German goods, the company had to wind up their business in India, leaving behind hundreds of titles. The musical genre recorded on these discs include drama songs, speeches, folk music, classical music, drama sets, skits and plays, vocal and instrumental music.
This project digitised a wide variety of documents related to the administration of the Cercle de Kaya colonial district. They are of interest to a wide range of historical study fields: population, politics, economy, development, customary law. These documents provide an insight into the local intricacies of the administration, politics, economy and social life of the district.
The material in Kaya though was at risk of neglect, physical deterioration and destruction. The documents were stacked on shelves and on the floor in a shed behind the administrative buildings, exposed to dust and moisture and at the mercy of rats, termites and mildew. More recent documents continued to be piled haphazardly on top of the old colonial ones. These colonial archives that for decades had been piled up in a shed in the former colonial district capital, Kaya, were packed up and transported to the Centre National des Archives (CNA) in Ouagadougou. At the CNA, the documents were thoroughly dusted and subsequently sorted, selected and subjected to an initial analysis. The documents were sorted into 4,200 files, with an average of 20 documents per file. Of these, about 40% were from the period 1919-1960 and eligible for digitisation.
Unfortunately, very little metadata was provided with this collection so file descriptions and titles are very limited. If you would like to volunteer your time to making this collection a more usable resource, please get in touch with us.
EAP650: Grima in Caloto Viejo: archiving Afro-Colombian history
This project made an inventory of the historical, notarial and judicial collections held in Caloto’s alcaldía (town hall), Colombia, and digitised a sample of the most valuable and damaged documents.
First founded in 1543, Caloto Viejo (Old Caloto) was the administrative capital of a wide region northeast of Popayán that included Native American groups, European settlers, their enslaved Africans, and maroon communities formed by escaped slaves. By the 1940s this rural region had not yet experienced industrialisation, yet many of Caloto Viejo’s towns had become autonomous districts. Now only the head of a small municipality, Caloto still houses the pre-modern documents of Caloto Viejo.
Caloto Viejo’s documents are crucial for Afro-Colombian history. Caloto and adjacent regions of the Cauca constituted the nineteenth century heartland of slavery, with Julio Arboleda’s massive Japio estate in Caloto the towering symbol of landholding power. The archives of Caloto are important for tracing the wider history of elites, native Americans, and Africans, and essential for salvaging the local history of important Afro-Colombian towns such as Puerto Tejada or the scholarly unknown maroon community of Caricacé with unique linguistic traditions, whose documentary history exists only in the endangered collections of Caloto.
EAP688: Digitisation of the Deed books in Saint Vincent for the slavery era, 1763-1838
EAP688/1/1/72 - Deed book 1822-1823
This project digitised surviving Deed books for Saint Vincent from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
The Eastern Caribbean Court House, St Vincent, holds numerous historic manuscript documents connected with the colonial administration of the island. The earliest records date from 1763, when Saint Vincent was ceded to Britain at the end of the Seven Years’ War, until 1838, the date when Apprenticeship for slaves ended in the British Caribbean and slave emancipation was fully implemented in accordance with the Emancipation Act of 1834.
The Deed books include important material for researchers. After 1763, Saint Vincent was drawn into the orbit of slavery in the British Empire. Its sugar plantation sector expanded rapidly after that date and the island became (along with other Windward Islands such as Dominica, Grenada and Tobago) a new, expanding frontier for British slavery. The Deed books, compiled in the offices of the island’s Colonial Secretary and the Registrar, proved a comprehensive record of all land and property transactions carried out during the seventy-five years when slave plantations were the main type of investment and employment on the island. The Deed books are large bound volumes that are available for every year in the period from 1763 to 1838. The land and property details recorded in these records provide the names of investors, along with their occupation and residence, and precise financial details, either in sterling or in the island’s currency. The information on investors includes whites and free blacks, men and women, and absentee residents (in other West Indian Islands or in Britain) as well as those living in Saint Vincent. The financial information is wide-ranging. Credit transactions are included. Mortgages, annuities, loans and bonds are all specified, with the names of the parties involved. The Deed books contain much material on slave sales between individuals connected with Saint Vincent and they also have information on slave manumissions. Where sugar plantations are identified in these records, the numbers, and sometimes the valuations, of slaves are given. This is particularly useful for researchers for the period from 1763 to 1815 because it was not until after the end of the Napoleonic Wars that slave registration was commonly carried out throughout the British Caribbean.
EAP749/2/3/9 - Statue: Kunda (Wylie sku 'dra)
The Buchen are performers of specialist rituals, travelling actors, healers and exorcists, and disciples of the 14th/15th century Tibetan ‘crazy saint’ Tangtong Gyalpo. They reside in the culturally Tibetan Pin Valley in North India and are most famous for performing an elaborate exorcism ritual called the ‘Ceremony of Breaking the Stone’.
Buchen enact dramatisations of popular folk-tales, Buddhist morality plays which illustrate principles of karma and ideas of impermanence and are frequently enlivened with comedy. Buchen spread the teachings of Buddha through entertainment. These performances are related to the Tibetan Opera and to a tradition of lay religious performers called lama manipa, who retell the life stories of Tibetan saints whilst pointing out key scenes on narrative painted cloth scrolls (thangkas) with a metal pointer. Buchen theatrical performances contain a similar manipa-like introduction.
This project digitised or took images of a variety of texts, paintings and objects associated with these traditions, including images of masks, clothing, instruments and objects used in performances; thangkas; handwritten decorated and unbound Tibetan books (pecha).
EAP749/3/2/1 - Drowa Zangmo Thankga
EAP749/3/4/1 - Meme Buchen in full costume
25 February 2016
New collections online - February 2016
Three collections have gone online this month – EAP640, EAP726 and EAP729.
This project digitised a wide variety of ecclesiastical records dating from the 17th to 20th century that were located in the churches of Santa Cruz de Lorica and San Jerónimo de Buenavista in Montería in the Department of Córdoba in northern Colombia. These records include, amongst others, those associated with the sale of slaves, property and livestock; the records of mortgages, wills, debts, baptisms, deaths and marriage; land disputes; minutes of city council meetings, including those relating to decisions concerning public works, education and health. These records provide insights into one of the most ethnically diverse areas of Córdoba and allow researchers to explore unique information on racial demography, social and kin networks, and economic conditions of the region.
For a fantastic overview of the history of slavery in the region and the related projects (EAP255, EAP503, EAP640, EAP627, and EAP853) the Endangered Archives Programme have funded, I highly recommend reading the open access article: Researching the history of slavery in Colombia and Brazil through ecclesiastical and notarial archives, published in the EAP Anniversary publication From Dust to Digital. The article can also be downloaded as a PDF (809KB).
Parroquia San Geronimo de Monteria LIBRO DE DEFUNCIONES No. 002 [1808-1836]
EAP640/2/1/29
Parroquía San Gerónimo de Montería. LIBRO DE BAUTISMO No. 2 [1808]
EAP640/2/1/1
This project digitised copies of the ‘El Deber’ newspaper published between 1890 and 1962 in Arequipa, Peru. This paper was one of the most important politically conservative newspapers in the country. This influential Catholic gazette contributed to the national and regional debate on Church-State issues such as legalisation of divorce, secularisation of education, religious intolerance, confiscation of ecclesiastical assets, as well as broader topics such as the economy, social and ethical concerns, political interests and general religious affairs. The newspapers help to provide a portrait of daily life in the city and surrounding area, and are a great resource for researchers looking for information on political, social, cultural, genealogical, intellectual and religious history.
El Deber – 7th August 1945. Front page the day after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima
EAP726/1/1/56/174
El Deber – 4th November 1890
EAP726/1/1/1/2
The Chinmaya International Foundation (CIF) in Kerala, India holds rare paper and palm leaf manuscripts dating back to the late 16th century. The manuscripts include information on arts, mathematics, religion, spirituality, architecture, science, technology, medicine, Ayurveda, rituals, Sanskrit literature, as well as many other topics and are written in various languages and scripts including Sanskrit, Hindi, Marathi, Malayalam, Tamil and in Devanagari, Grantha and old Malayalam.
Pañcatantram - Ancient collection of stories , probably first composed 300CE. It is an ancient Indian collection of inter related animal fables in verse and prose.
EAP729/1/1/40
Bhagavad Gītā - The Bhagavad Gita copied in 18th century AD
EAP729/1/2/39
28 October 2015
New images online - October 2015
This month we have had four projects go online. The first photographed temple murals in Tamil Nadu (EAP692). This is the first time that EAP has funded a project to preserve architectural art. These exquisite paintings were vulnerable for a variety of reasons, including the recent use of sand-blasting in temples. The pilot project digitised murals at five sites, four of which are Hindu: Alagarkovil Kallagar Temple (with art dating from the 17th Century); Madurai Meenakshi Sundareswara temple (16th Century murals); Narasingampatti - Chitrachavadi and Adiyamankottai, Chenraya Perumal temple (all 17th Century). The last location is a Jain complex at Tirumalai.
These paintings come from the east ceiling of the Alagar kovil Kallalagar Inner Mandapa and depict the continuous narration of the Ramayana.
EAP692/1/1/2 Alagar kovil Kallalagar Inner Mandapa Ceiling East [17th Century]
EAP692/1/1/2 Alagar kovil Kallalagar Inner Mandapa Ceiling East [17th Century]
The next two images come from cave 1 at Tirumalai and probably date between the 15th and 17th centuries.
EAP692/5/2 Tirumalai Jain Cave. Room 1 [16th Century]
EAP692/5/2 Tirumalai Jain Cave. Room 1 [16th Century]
The second project to go online was EAP759, a pilot project that digitised manuscripts from Sundarban Anchalik Sangrahashala, a regional museum housed in an abandoned part of Jadunath Nandi Hospital, in the South 24 Parganas District of West Bengal, India.
This illustration from EAP759 shows a page from another Hindu epic, this time the Mahābhārata.
EAP759/1/2 Mahabharata [19th century]
Madagascar was the location for the next project (EAP856), with the digitisation of archives of the nineteenth-century prime minister, Rainilaiarivony (1864-1895). The journals are written in Malagasy using Latin script that was introduced in 1823. The archives have been inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register since 2009. They have never been systematically studied and now that this invaluable resource is online, it will be of huge benefit to researchers.
EAP856/1/1 Photo Album D
EAP856/1/2 Journal du Premier Ministre Rainilaiarivony - Relations de diverses affaires traitée par le Premier Ministre [1866]
EAP698 was the last project to be made available this month, a major grant that digitised Cham manuscripts. An important cultural group within Vietnam, the Cham once had their own kingdom called Champa, which lasted from the 7th century to 1832. There are about 162,000 Cham people living in Vietnam today, concentrated in Central Vietnam and the Mekong Delta region.
The project digitised manuscripts from 25 private collections and below is a taste of what the manuscripts contain.
EAP698/15/6 Cham manuscripts collected by Ms. Dong Thi Hang, No.06
EAP698/1/11 Cham manuscripts collected by Mr. Sam Van Tanh, No.11 [Latter half of 20th century]"
I am sure we will have some more interesting projects to share next month, but if you can’t wait until the next blog to hear our latest news, do join our Facebook group.
26 February 2015
New online collections – February 2015 – Part 2
This blog features the final three new projects available online this month. These are EAP164, EAP566 and EAP684.
EAP164 digitised collections which document pre-industrial society on the Ukrainian Steppe. During the last 10 years the Zaporizhzhia Learned Society of Ya. Novytskyi (attached to Zaporizhzhia National University) has been working on the discovery of documents representing the different ethnic and religious social groups that existed on the Steppe. These include former Zaporozhian Cossacks, Bulgarians, Albanians, Greeks, Armenians and Germans. EAP164 digitised the material which the society discovered on its various surveys.
The digitised images that are now online include personal memoirs, diaries and letters as well as official records and photographs.
EAP164/1/15/2: Archives of Ljax. Book 2 – Image 1
EAP566 digitised Urdu periodicals from India and Pakistan. These periodicals have enormous significance for the understanding of Urdu culture and history of colonial India. Urdu was the dominant language of interchange in India throughout most of the nineteenth century. Since printing in India was cheap, anyone with an opinion might and often did publish a statement of their views. Often such publications were of limited editions, frequently a few hundred copies, and were not collected by many libraries. Yet these publications provide us today with a broad spectrum of writings by colonial Indians on all major and many minor issues of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Such writings are invaluable to historians of social, cultural, literary, and intellectual change.
The project carefully selected some of the most important Urdu periodicals which were in danger of being lost forever. These periodicals were successfully digitised and are now available to view online.
EAP566/1/1/10/6: Maulvi (Volume 30, Issue 6) [1940] – Image 2
The final project this month is EAP684; this surveyed the collections of the National Archives of Burundi to provide information on the documents which are in a fragile physical condition. A small sample of material was digitised and this is now available to view online.
EAP684/1/4/1: Agriculture, Fishing, fish farming [1949-1950] – Image 1
Check back next month to see what else has been added!
You can also keep up to date with any new collections by joining our Facebook group.
18 February 2015
Stories they tell: clues from endangered archives
Documents, manuscripts, photographs and sound recordings that capture much of the world’s memory are preserved in vulnerable collections around the globe. If they perish, part of history is irrevocably lost. In the past, efforts to preserve these collections and make them available for scholarly interpretation often meant removing them to the safety of western libraries. Though well intentioned, these actions frequently had unintended consequences. Preserved and available to scholars, the materials became inaccessible to the communities whose history they captured. This had a twofold effect: it impaired the communities’ ability to write their own history and at the same time, by detaching documents from original context, led to the loss of an important layer of historical information.
EAP039 Buddhist manuscripts from the library of the remote Gangtey monastery in the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan © Dr Karma Phuntsho
The Endangered Archives Programme uses digitisation to preserve records and to make them freely accessible to all, without removing original materials from their custodians. Whenever possible the projects help the keepers to secure the survival of the original documents. Because the materials are often too fragile to be handled on a regular basis, the digital surrogates frequently provide the only point of access not only for scholars worldwide, but also for local readers. By making digital records available to all, the programme ensures that the history they capture is open to wide audiences, multiple perspectives and diverse interpretations.
EAP334 Locating and digitising manuscripts in Wolof Ajami script, written by members of the Muridiyya Sufi order founded in Senegal in 1883 © Dr Fallou Ngom
The “From Dust to Digital” volume, which marks the 10th anniversary of the Endangered Archives Programme, showcases the historical importance and research potential of the digitised collections. The open access online version of the book is designed to ensure that not only the primary sources, but also the research they have inspired, are freely available to all. The book brings together 19 articles from the 244 projects that the programme has supported since its inception. We asked the authors to focus on the digitised collections, but gave them complete freedom in choosing specific questions they wanted to explore. The intention was to ensure that the volume illustrates a wide range of research that the EAP collections make possible.
The chapters discuss inscriptions in Libya; manuscripts in India, Ethiopia, Kenya and Mali; archival records in Bulgaria, Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Nigeria, Senegal, Palestine; photographic collections in Argentina, India, Russia and Cameroon; and sound recordings from Guinea, Iran and the Russian Federation. The articles tackle the fundamental problems of transcribing and translating – sometimes for the very first time – languages that have nearly fallen silent. They investigate historical transmission of texts and explore the processes underlying collection formation. They bring to light unknown events and cast new light on historical phenomena. They provide vivid insights into local and even personal histories.
EAP526 The priests of May Wäyni monastery with their manuscripts, Ethiopia © Professor Michael Gervers
Many of the contributions stress the importance of the original context for our understanding of the materials. The physical location of inscriptions within a landscape; the ceremonies preceding a reading of a manuscript; the place that a manuscript or a photograph holds within a larger collection, are all important for our interpretation of these documents. Without them we can only see a part of the story.
Most of the sources discussed here were not previously subjects of scholarly attention. We hope that this publication will open new debates and inspire scholars to explore the archives preserved by the Endangered Archives Programme. We also hope that open access to both the primary sources and to the articles in the “From Dust to Digital” volume will encourage future authors to make their research freely available to all.
Roly Keating, Chief Executive of the British Library, with Ambassador of the Lao Embassy, H.E. Mr. Sayakane Sisouvong and the 3rd Secretary, Mr Moungkhoun Chansavath at the book launch held at the Library on the 17th February 2015.
Gabriela Ramos and Evelyne Mesclier browsing through the publication.
Dr Maja Kominko
Cultural Grants Manager at Arcadia and the editor for the publication “From Dust to Digital”
04 November 2014
A Chief and his Wheelbarrow: Digitisation and history in India’s Northeast
Historical Christian missionaries have long drawn the spotlight in modern Mizoram, a hill state in the borderlands of India’s northeast. Stone memorials of missionaries’ late-nineteenth-century visits rise up along roadsides, their hair clippings are preserved behind glass, and their names christen Mizo schoolchildren’s sports teams and populate history books.
In late 2011, our EAP454 digitisation team arrived in Mizoram no less star-struck. We trained our cameras on the earliest missionary documents and photographs in hopes of preserving digitally the exceptionally rapid transition of a Mizo hill people fundamentally transformed, from an oral society following localised religious practices to an overwhelmingly Christian and literate society. In many ways, the plan was both sound and successful.
But while snapping away at what we thought was the main historical vista, we started hearing other voices from the past whispering on our panorama’s fringes, beckoning us out to an overgrown, more vernacular trail. With the help of various custodians of historical material, we started bushwhacking.
The trail took us away from the familiar paths and historical narratives, reversing their direction from a Victorian Aberystwyth and London inwards to a Mizo Aijal and Lungleh outwards. Among many colourful characters, it led us to Khamliana Sailo, a Mizo lal, or ‘chief’.
[Fig. 1, Khamliana seated second from right, n.d., http://eap.bl.uk/database/large_image.a4d?digrec=2113522;catid=183611;r=27529]
Khamliana grew up around fire and sword. By age twelve he had witnessed atrocities by both British and Mizo forces, including the utter destruction of his chiefly grandfather’s village and livelihood.[1]
The next time the heir Khamliana came face-to-face with invading British forces, he and his father joined up as guides and interpreters, assisting a British captain who was known in the vernacular ominously as Lalmantua—the capturer of Mizo chiefs. Khamliana was helping the very forces that had burnt his familial village. Why?
At first blush, many of the EAP454 documents paint Khamliana as a full-blooded British ally. A wealthy Khamliana makes various donations to the British Raj, principal among these a massive gift to the Imperial Indian Relief Fund in 1915. Here, Khamliana’s largesse earns him nation-wide press in the journal The Feudatory and the Zemindari,as well as recognition from the Chief Commissioner of Assam and the regional Superintendent.
[Fig. 2, Khamliana poses outside his colonial-style bungalow at Lungleng village, n.d., http://eap.bl.uk/database/large_image.a4d?digrec=2113837;catid=183484;r=11478]
This idyllic ally Khamliana is also evident in the vernacular letter he wrote in 1897 to Kumpinu [‘Company Mother’ or Queen Victoria], a letter heralded as the first ever written by a Mizo. In it, Khamliana proudly informs the Empress of his intent to light patriotic bonfires all around his village on her birthday. His tone is petitioning and deferential: ‘We will live on your kindness and take heed of your orders,’ he writes, ‘as for us we are less significant and smaller than even the ants to you.’[2]
[Fig. 3, Letter from Khamliana to Queen Victoria, 16 June 1897, http://eap.bl.uk/database/large_image.a4d?digrec=2113528;catid=183611;r=29358]
But pliable to the colonial authorities as he might have appeared, Khamliana was still playing a much older chiefly game. Colonialism might have made some new rules, but he still strove to carve out and maintain familial status and honour.
Quick to learn and to exploit the potentials of the writing technology introduced more widely in the 1890s, Khamliana requests and keeps written character references from colonial officials, using these to secure positions for his sons. He fights for land rights. He invokes his father’s assistance to the Raj for special permission to keep guns. He pens his own bonds of allegiance with Mizos, conscious of the potential for permanency inherent in the new technology (‘This agreement is a real one,’ records his pact with one Ralduha, and ‘must be kept as record for ever’). He also maintains scrupulous (and apparently carefully concealed) financial records of vast wealth; in popular historical memory today, Khamliana drops off his first bank deposit via wheelbarrow, colonial officials’ mouths agape.
[Fig. 4, Khamliana’s bungalow preserved in Lungleng, Mizoram; photographed by author in 2008, CC-BY.]
Indeed, Khamliana inherited his chieftainship from his father in a time when waves of chaos, war, and political upheaval were crashing over the hills. In his attempt to stay afloat amidst such a turbulent political sea-change, he grasped the new technology of writing, deftly managed wealth, chose his own allegiances, wrung material benefits out of colonial authorities, and dispatched calculated messages of diplomacy even to the highest British Chieftainess.
As Khamliana’s case shows, the EAP454 collection provides an opportunity to see the people of this upland region of India as complex, three-dimensional participants in their own histories rather than as the flat, supporting characters to colonial missionaries and officials. There is a whole host ready to ride into the scene. And at least one of them is pushing a cash-stuffed wheelbarrow.
Written by Kyle Jackson co-director of the 2011 EAP pilot project ‘Locating and surveying early religious and related records in Mizoram, India’. He is a PhD candidate at the University of Warwick’s Centre for the History of Medicine where he is exploring histories of health, religion, and Christianization in colonial northeast India.
[1] Lalhmingliani, ‘Khamliana’, Historical Journal Mizoram 12 (2011): 1-11.
[2] Translated in P. Thirumal and C. Lalrozami, ‘On the discursive and material context of the first handwritten Lushai newspaper “Mizo Chanchin Laishuih”, 1898’, Indian Economic & Social History Review 47.3 (2010), 377-403 (pp. 399).
08 August 2014
New online collections – August 2014
Last month seven collections went up online EAP140, EAP184, EAP231, EAP272, EAP454, EAP569 and EAP657.
EAP140 was a project to digitise the Tangut collection held at the Institute of Oriental Studies in St Petersburg. The Tanguts were a people who established a kingdom during the 10th-13th centuries in present day northwest China. Once the area had been invaded by the Mongols in 1227 the usage of the Tangut language began to decline. These unique historical, literary, and administrative texts are of great value in understanding and preserving a lost writing system and culture. If you haven’t seen it already you can read more about this collection and the Tangut people in our last blog.
EAP140/1/35 – Image 92
EAP184 digitised items from the Matanzas province in Cuba. The records that were digitised relate to African slaves and their descendants. Collections from seven different archives were digitised, six of these collections came from parish archives; the final collection from the Archives of the Provincial Government of Matanzas.
During the nineteenth century, Matanzas became the centre of Cuban sugar production, which meant a high demand for slave labour. The territory became the major destination for African slaves in Cuba. The region's archives are very rich in all kinds of information on the African population living in Matanzas from the early 16th century to the end of the 19th century. This includes demographic statistics, information on ethnicity, resistance and occupations of free and enslaved Africans.
EAP184/1/11 Pt 1 – Image 257
EAP231 digitised court records of the Department of State for Justice in Banjul, the Gambia. The collections are valuable for researchers hoping to gain a deeper understanding of how colonial agents and local communities engaged with one another. Court records reveal struggles between men and women, elders and youths, elites and commoners. Since African women could visit colonial courts to seek divorce, court transcripts are one of the few places where historians can hear African women's voices. The records also reveal disputes over land, other forms of property, child custody and many other subjects.
Due to the nature of the material some items in this collection are only available to view via the reading rooms at the British Library.
EAP231/1/1 - Image 177
EAP272 digitised and preserved 1,400 ephemera and 215 manuscripts that came from the Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya in Nepal.
The ephemera are mainly political but also cover religious, social and cultural topics. They are mainly pamphlets and leaflets, with some posters and postcards. The ephemera dating from 1900-1951 represents the last 50 years of the Rana Period. The remainder date from 1951-1960, this covers the period of Nepal's short stint with parliamentary democracy, until the first elected government was toppled by a coup from King Mahendra in December 1960, replacing the multiparty democracy with his own brand of political system named the 'Panchayat'.
The manuscripts date from 1808 and cover a wide range of subjects such as religion, culture, philosophy, law, medicine, hagiography, natural history, and literature. The project rescued these items from poor storage conditions and ensured their long term preservation.
EAP272/1/1/226 - Image 1
EAP454 was a pilot project which surveyed privately held ecclesiastical documents in Mizoram, India.
The main focus was early religious and related records, particularly English and Welsh missionary records that recorded a history otherwise only transmitted by the then exclusively oral Mizo society. The project’s scope widened with the surprising discovery of hitherto unknown and early collections written in vernacular Mizo. Many of the earliest missionary educated Mizos were prolific writers of letters, manuscripts, diaries, and notebooks. Most of these sources still revolve around the distinctly religious axis of the Project's focus, but from the perspective of the Mizo.
The Project digitised much more material than initially expected; over 10,000 images are now available to view online.
EAP454/2/9 Pt 2 – Image 3
EAP569 identified and collected information on relevant documents about Nzema in Ghana. These documents pertain to the land management system and local power structure that has been in place in Ghana since pre-colonial times and that still plays a fundamental role in Nzema society today.
The project looked at records from the Public Records and Archive Administration Department (PRAAD) in Secondi-Takoradi as well as the Western Nzema Traditional Council Archive in Beyin and the Eastern Nzema Traditional Council Archive in Atuabo (Ellembele District, Eastern Region).
The project was successful in identifying many relevant records, creating a list of these items and packaging the documents in archival materials. The project digitized 46 files (15 in the Eastern Nzema Traditional Council Archive, 31 in the Western Nzema Traditional Council Archive) and generated 5,039 digital photographs, which are now available to view on our website.
Due to the nature of the material some items in this collection are only available to view via the reading rooms at the British Library.
EAP569/1/1/1 (as above) Image 135
EAP657 digitised and preserved a collection of archival material related to Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko (9 March 1814–10 March 1861), the famous Ukrainian writer and painter whose literary heritage is regarded to be the foundation of modern Ukrainian writing. His archival collection had been dispersed until recently, and valuable nineteenth century documents had been kept in deteriorating conditions.
The materials digitised reflect different periods of the life of T H Shevchenko. The archival material had been held in different private collections of Shevchenko’s friends and relatives from all over Ukraine until just 10 years ago.
Some of the items in this collection, due to copyright reasons, are only available to view via the reading rooms at the British Library.
EAP657/1/3 – Image 2
Check back next month to see what else has been added!
You can also keep up to date with any new collections by joining our Facebook group.
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