Connecting Stories: Our British Asian Heritage

Exhibition opening at the Library of Birmingham on 15 July

This family-friendly exhibition, launching on 15 July, will tell the story of the close connections between Britain and India, Pakistan and Bangladesh from 1600 to the present day. It will show how those connections have influenced our food, culture, fashion, politics and heritage and made us who we are today.


The exhibition continues the partnership between the British Library and the Library of Birmingham, bringing together their rich and complementary collections to illustrate this important but little-known aspect of British and local history. There will be over 100 exhibits which highlight many different voices from the past.

Princess Sophia Duleep Singh is one of many people who will feature in the exhibition. Image from IOR/L/PS/11/52, P1608 (Image courtesy of the British Library Board)

Exhibits include letters, posters, photographs, advertisements, surveillance files, campaigning materials, oral history, and even a children’s game and a 19th century paper bag for Indian sweets. I and my co-curator of the exhibition, John O’Brien, hope that the variety of exhibits will prompt visitors to consider the many ways that history is recorded and how gaps and silences can be filled.

The exhibition aims to capture Birmingham's importance in global trade and as a centre of industry.


Mirror of British Merchandise, 1888 (Image courtesy of the British Library Board)

The Library of Birmingham collections include stunning images by local photographers past and present which will be showcased in the exhibition. The image below is from the Dyche Collection, 1950-c1975, MS 2912. (Image courtesy of the Library of Birmingham)

Capturing images of Birmingham’s richly diverse community is an important part of the exhibition and engagement programme. A selection of photographs will be included in the exhibition to give a vivid picture of Birmingham and all the people who live there today. Anyone in Birmingham can get involved now by sending their photograph via Twitter #brumpeeps. Exhibition visitors are also invited to ‘make their mark’ and share their own stories.


Please see the Library of Birmingham’s website for activities throughout the duration of the exhibition, such as family days, oral history training and talks at local libraries.


The exhibition and community engagement programme have been generously supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund.


Penny Brook
Head of India Office Records at the British Library and exhibition curator


Further information


Asians in Britain web pages


The Library of Birmingham’s website for details of opening hours and events


#connectingstories
#brumpeeps

@SouthAsia71: Bringing Oral Histories to a New Audience

Since my previous post, which explained how @SouthAsia71 tweets archival documents related to the Bangladesh Liberation War in 1971,  I've been busy working with material from the oral history project at the archives of the Cambridge South Asian Studies Centre (CSAS). This post will showcase the tweets, discuss their success in reaching a new and wider audience, and lay out plans to incorporate them into analytical narratives within @SouthAsia71's twitter feed.

In terms of the material available at CSAS, I've first turned my attention to a series of interviews carried out by Professor Ian Stephens in 1973. The meetings brought together a number of different scholars to discuss their perspective on the events of 1971 from various geographical locations. In order to convert the material into tweets, I've applied the same principles that I have to the government documents that I'm used to- condense the material into an engage-able format, whilst maintaining proper context. Given the conversational nature of Ian Stephen's interviews, this can be easier said than done, but a challenge I've relished.

The inclusion of oral histories has added a new dimension to the twitter feed. The above tweet, quoting Dr Rashid Amjad, was the first time that @SouthAsia71 had considered the reaction of the West Pakistani people toward the crisis in East Pakistan. Previously focus had been almost entirely upon the actions of the military government and Zulfikur Ali Bhutto.

The Oral History-based tweets have been successful in reaching a new and wider audience. The tweet above, featuring Atta-ur-Rahman, was retweeted 16 times throughout the course of a day (each tweet is sent 3 times per day) and was seen by 2.913 people. Whereas the tweet below, a highlighted screenshot from a transcript of the interviews, attracted 27 retweets and reached 3,084 people. As @SouthAsia71 continues to gain followers, these numbers are certain to rise in future. Of the account's 2,800 followers, 65% reside in South Asia, and are interacting with this material for the first time.

The material from CSAS has also sparked debate and discussion about the events of 1971. In the above exchange I made the point that Dr Amjad is explicitly separating consideration of the West Pakistani leadership from the people themselves in West Pakistan.

In future, the material from CSAS will be incorporated into the wider analytical narratives that @SouthAsia71 creates. As in the example above, the integration of diplomatic and oral histories can provide a rich and more nuanced picture for @SouthAsia71's followers. There is also great potential to use the material on other mediums such as Storify and Buzzfeed, this will be the focus of my next post.

@SouthAsia71: Widening Access to Archives on Twitter

In the first of three posts over the course of two months, I will introduce my Twitter account @SouthAsia71 as a new and unique means of widening access to archives.

Over the course of my doctoral studies, I found that I had collected a vast amount of archival data that I was desperate to share. Having taken over 100,000 photographs of documents from archives in the UK and the US, I took to Twitter in an attempt to have them reach a wider audience. In 2015, @SouthAsia71, with the use of the archival pictures and other resources, tweeted Bangladesh's road to independence as if it were happening on that day, in real time. Since January, I've continued to tweet about the events of 1971, now concentrating on creating narrative arcs and providing analysis for the account's followers. I've also worked to ensure that content is free from copyright restrictions and is fully referenced.

Since its launch in December 2014, the account has gained almost 2,500 followers at an average growth rate of around 150-200 followers per month. In December 2015, during the 14 days of the 1971 war between India and Pakistan, the account received over 1,600 retweets and 1,000 likes, and in just 4 days this March, the account accrued over 800 retweets and 400 likes. Via retweets, material often reaches more than 5,000 Twitter users and has reached as many as 13,000. Engagement rates (which include retweets, likes, follows, link clicks etc) for @SouthAsia71's tweets rarely dip below 3%, often reach 10% and can be as high as 20%; This is in comparison with an average engagement rate of 0.5% for all Twitter users. Through tweeting the documents themselves alongside infographics produced with information from primary material, @SouthAsia71 is engaging thousands of people with archival sources.

@SouthAsia71 has the potential to showcase any archive that has material relating to Bangladesh's independence. With an audience engaged online with the history of South Asia the account certainly has scope to expand beyond the study of 1971. In the coming weeks, I will be incorporating information from the oral histories project at Cambridge University's Centre for South Asian Studies into the Twitter feed. As well as producing tweets from the data, I will also use Storify to both provide a repository for the data I use and to provide an editorial narrative (I've produced an example of a Storify story here).

I have written a long-form article about the project for E:International Relations (available here). My next post will discuss the results of my usage of the material at Cambridge.

Researching developing cities

Researchers interested in issues relating to the growth of cities in south and south-east Asia may be interested in a new research group, recently established at the University of Cambridge, Cities South of Cancer (CSC).  The group is currently studying four cities: Buenos Aires (Argentina), Cali (Colombia), Jakarta (Indonesia) and Khulna (Bangladesh).

Researchers explore issues to do with globalisation and architecture, poverty and urban informality, urban growth and governance, amongst other major themes. Research extends across disciplinary boundaries constantly inviting collaborations with sociologists, anthropologists, cultural theorists, urban planners, historians, lawyers and engineers. CSC emerges as a platform for interdisciplinary and cross-sector collaboration whose aim is to develop new forms of urban practice in the developing world. Group members may be contacted at citiessouthofcancer@aha.cam.ac.uk

Public Knowledge Project

Free access to scholarly journals published in Bangladesh, Nepal and Vietnam is now possible via the Public Knowledge Project.
Bangladesh Journals Online
Nepal Journals Online
Vietnam Journals Online