Science and environment in India 1780-1920

The India Office Records in the British Library document the activities of the English East India Company and the British administration of India from 1600 to 1947. This guide makes a great part of this material relating to science and the environment material newly accessible via sign-posted routes into the archives and detailed lists of the principal records. It also gives the historical and archival context of the documents, outlining the British involvement in science in India and explaining how the records are organised.

The guide is arranged into the following sections: plant and botanic gardens; agriculture; forests and forestry; animals and animal husbandry; geology; meteorology; health and disease; irrigation and water control; communications and the built environment; ethnography; landscape and topography.

Online access to Ashmolean Museum's Islamic art

Islamic and Asian art at the Ashmolean Museum
(Copyright Ashmolean Museum)

SAALG members who visited the Ashmolean as part of this summer's SAALG conference, will be especially interested in Eastern Art Online, a project of the Yousef Jameel Centre for Islamic and Asian Art at the University of Oxford. It provides online access to the Ashmolean Museum's Eastern Art department collections with special focus on the stories the objects have to tell.

Bharat Britain conference, 13 and 14 September 2010

Bharat Britain: South Asians Making Britain 1870-1950

Conference Dates: Monday 13 and Tuesday 14 September 2010
British Library Conference Centre, St Pancras, London


Uncover and examine South Asian participation in literary and intellectual networks, art movements, and activist groupings during this under-explored period of Britain’s multicultural history.

Held in partnership with the British Library, the Making Britain conference will explore the formative contribution South Asian writers, activists and intellectuals made to shaping Britain’s literary, political and cultural life in the period 1870-1950. In so doing, it will highlight the research of the collaborative three year interdisciplinary research project Making Britain: South Asian Visions of Home and Abroad, 1870-1950, funded by the AHRC from 2007-2010 and linking the Open University with the Universities of Oxford, London and SALIDAA (South Asian Literature and Arts Archive).

Key speakers include:
Humayun Ansari, Elleke Boehmer, Antoinette Burton, Santanu Das, Susheila Nasta,
Nayantara Sahgal, Shyama Perera, Meera Syal and Rozina Visram

By focusing on the presence in Britain of South Asians in 1870 - 1950, and on the numerous modes in which they inflected ideas of Britishness and laid the ground for the construction of new multiple identities, the Making Britain conference seeks to heighten awareness of the breadth and depth of South Asian contribution to British culture.

Conference Price:
Single-Day Standard Fee including lunch: £ 60.00
Two-Day Standard Fee including lunch: £120.00

A limited number of 50 concessionary places per day are available:
Concessions (students/unwaged) Single-Day Fee including lunch: £20.00
Concessions (students/unwaged) Two-Day Fee including lunch: £35.00

TO REGISTER PLEASE VISIT:
http://www.open.ac.uk/Arts/south-asians-making-britain/conference-registration.htm
Or contact: Heather Scott, Project Co-ordinator ‘Making Britain’, The Ferguson Centre, Faculty of Arts, Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes

A hot night in Bengal

Banyan tree with Hindu shrine at Gaya, Bihar. Coloured aquatint by T. Daniell, 1796 (Wellcome Library, Creative Commons)

If you haven't yet read this Sunday's posting on the Wellcome Library's blog, I can promise you an entertaining read!  Chris Hilton quotes from an East India Company letterbook for Dinapore District, dating from 1840-1841, which is currently undergoing conservation in the Library.