Charting change in Asian Landscapes: Festival of Ideas, Cambridge University Library, Saturday 26th October

Do hope to see you in Cambridge University Library on Saturday morning, 26th October 2019 - a drop-in event (no need to book) which is part of the Festival of Ideas.  Between 10 am and 12.30 pm in the Library's Map Room, you will be able to view spectacular photographs and water-colours, and study fascinating maps and panoramas charting enormous changes to Mumbai and Hong Kong landscapes.

SAALG Summer meeting in Cambridge, 25 July 2019

Cambridge University Library will be the venue for our summer meeting this year, and we will be viewing South Asian material from the Royal Commonwealth Society's Fisher and COVIC archives, as well as rare maps and plans from the University Library's Map Department.

Follow links for information on the Fisher photograph collection,  and the Papers of the Colonial Office Visual Instruction Committee.

Sabrina Meneghini will share some of her research. Do read her blog posts of 19 January 2018 and 12 April 2018.

We will be hosting a larger exhibition of work from this archive entitled 'Classroom Photographic Journeys' in the Alison Richard Building, West Road, Cambridge 20 April - 29 May 2020. Please make a note in your 2020 diary! 

Our summer meeting on 25th July will commence at 2 pm, and finish around 5pm.

Spaces will be limited, so if you haven't yet confirmed your attendance, please contact Rachel Rowe  (rcs @ lib.cam.ac.uk with the subject line: 'SAALG 25 July 2019') if you plan to attend. 

Looking forward to seeing you on Thursday 25th July.

Rachel Rowe
Smuts Librarian for South Asian & Commonwealth Studies
University of Cambridge

Forestry in Sri Lanka

The eight books given by William Martin McNeill to the Archives of the Centre of South Asian Studies are one of the smaller donations to the Centre but cover forestry, plant biology and the economic background in Ceylon in the 1920s. Five of the books are only located in the Centre but directories such as The Times of Ceylon Green Book and L.J.B. Turner’s Hand book of commercial and general information for Ceylon are also held in the Cambridge University Library, and an edition of H.W. Codrington’s Short history of Ceylon is held in the History Faculty Library.

William Martin McNeill worked for Colonial Forest Service between 1922 and 1938. He served as Assistant Conservator of Forests at Kurunegala, and was acting Captain and A.D.C. to the Acting Governor Mr (later Sir) Bernard Bourdillon, serving twice: April 1930 - September 1930 and again February - March 1931. Various boxes of his papers and photographs are also held in the Archives.
One of the books unique to the Centre is Ceylon trees by T.B. Worthington, with photographs by the author. Colombo [Ceylon] : Colombo Apothecaries' Co., 1959 given to W.M. McNeill MBE TD with the author’s compliments (Archive McN 2). Each tree image has names in different languages and the use that can be made of the timber.

Archive McN 2

Other unique books are :

The butterflies of Ceylon by W Ormiston. Columbo : H.W. Cave, 1924. (Archive McN 5) and
Cooly Tamil as understood by labourers on tea & rubber estates : specially arranged for planters and planting students  by W.G. B. Wells. Columbo :  Ceylon Observer, 1921. (Archive McN 8).

The Royal Commonwealth Society in the Cambridge University Library Digital Library Sri Lanka collection has material which predates the McNeill collection. Notably the Photograph collection of John Abercromby Alexander (Y303E)

https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/PH-Y-00303-E/171

John Abercromby Alexander (b. 1854) was appointed Acting Forester in Ceylon's North-Central Province in 1886. He may have been resident in Ceylon earlier, possibly engaged in a planting enterprise. Alexander served as Forester, North-Central Province, 1887-88 and then as Assistant Conservator of Forests, Central and Southern Provinces, from 1889 until 1893, when he left the forestry department. He appears to have remained on the island until around 1896. He joined the Royal Colonial Institute in 1892. Abercromby lived at Venture Estates, Kalthuritty, Travancore, India, 1896-1898.

Mapping the Maps – by Natasha Pairaudeau

Map of the Maingnyaung region, located between the Chindwin and Mu Rivers in Upper Burma (MAPS-MS-PLANS-R-C-00001-000-00001.jpg)

Imagine maps as big as bedsheets, and then imagine the sheets big enough for beds made wide enough to sleep extended families. Only such a double stretch of the imagination can provide the scale of the three Burmese maps in Cambridge University Library’s collection, which have recently been made available online in digital format.

From bedsheet to map is not a great leap: all three maps are inked or painted on to generous lengths of cloth. Yet they do not depict lines on a map as the eye in the 21st century is accustomed to seeing them. The most colourful of the three maps, the map of the Maingnyaung region [Maps.Ms.Plans.R.c.1 ; see also above for an extract from this map] is the one which forces the most abrupt lurch, down from that comfortable view on high of modern mapping convention.  Instead, the viewer is positioned near ground level, and invited here to view a stupa, there a crocodile down in the river, away in the distance a noble line of hills. Trees are no mere generic features. While the perspective is mostly from the ground, it co-exists with other even less familiar conventions. Pagodas and stupas either loom large or sit very small, their size and their sanctity apparently intermeshed. Towns and villages, rivers and streams are the sole features which come close to appearing from a bird’s eye view. Yet the neat tracings of brickwork, and of waves on the water’s surface, suggest they may be meant to convey not the lay of the land from the air but other rules of belonging, of enclosure or of flow.

The other two maps, the map of the Royal Lands [Maps.Ms.Plans.R.c.3] and map of Sa-lay township [Maps.Ms.Plans.R.c.2], are less colourful than the first, but in some respects even more intriguing. Like the Maingnyaung map, they take many of their bearings from ground level. Manmade landmarks use scales which vary, apparently,  according to their importance rather than their physical size. With vegetation, there is an insistence on specifics. Yet both maps feature grids traced carefully and evenly across the entire surface. These maps present two worlds at once. There are vistas to be contemplated and meaningful features to be explored in the landscape. But there is also a view from on high, where trees were counted and areas under crop were calculated, and probably, somewhere off the surface of the map, converted into tax exactions.

These maps have already received a share of attention. Allegra Giovine (a doctoral student in the History of Science who studies the production of economic knowledge in colonial Burma) helped to translate notes on the Maingnyaung map from Burmese. The Cambridge maps formed the core of a survey of indigenous Burmese maps in UK collections by Professor Tin Naing Win, the inaugural Charles Wallace Burma Trust Fellow (2015) at the Cambridge Centre of South Asian Studies. They sparked the interest of Marie de Rugy in her recent thesis (Paris 1 – Sorbonne) on Maps and the Making of Imperial Territories in the Northern Indochinese Peninsula. François Tainturier of the Inya Institute continues to study these maps and to re-assess their role in pre-colonial Upper Burma. Much remains nonetheless to be learned about these maps, by those equipped to read the Burmese script which annotates them, and to interpret the wider context of their production and the modes of representation they employ. Great credit goes to the Map Department of the UL, both in finding the will and securing the resources to have the maps conserved and digitised, and to the Cambridge Digital Library, for producing digital pages so effortlessly navigable that they take nothing away from the joy of poring over them. They make it easier, in fact, to hover over the details, whether you are contemplating the view from the ground or from on high.  What’s more, the speed of the internet has improved to such an extent in modern Myanmar, that these massive cloth maps can be viewed with ease in Yangon or Mandalay. Maps such as these are rare, non-existent even, in the location where they were originally made. No such maps produced on cloth are known to have survived within Myanmar today. This only adds to the hope and expectation that they will be pored over, enjoyed, and further studied and interpreted from quarters near and far.

The routes, landmarks and other features depicted on these massive cloths remain beautifully clear some 150 years after they were first painted.  This is particularly so in the case of the map of the Maingnyaung region. The route taken by the maps themselves though, in their journey from Burma to Britain, has been more rapidly obscured. All the cloths reveal, thanks to a discreet label at the corner of each one, is that they were donated by Louis Allan Goss in 1910.

Goss left nothing to explain how he acquired the maps when he presented them to the Cambridge University Library. From research elsewhere, we know he had been an inspector of schools in Rangoon from the late 1870s. Prior to that he spent a decade in business in Mandalay and Rangoon. He published a few books, both while in Burma and on his return to Britain. His translation of the Buddhist Wethandaya tale (1886), the Burmese Copy Book (1905), and Burmese Spelling Book (1907) all remain in the University Library’s holdings.  At the time he donated the maps, he was living in Cambridge and teaching Burmese at the university. The patent he registered in 1914, for a ‘new and useful Transposing Attachment for Pianofortes’ suggest that, by that time, he was enjoying the leisurely pursuits of semi-retirement.

Goss’ generosity extended, too, beyond the University Library. He had already, in 1907, given three other maps to the India Office Collections. These maps, one on paper and two on cloth, are similarly locally-made, depicting Burmese and Shan territory. They are now held at the British Library (access is currently restricted due to their fragile condition, but they are scheduled for digitisation). While they have not weathered the journey quite as well as the Cambridge maps, there is one among them that clearly follows the same conventions as the Maingnyaung map, and rivals it for colouring and artistry.

The Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA) holds further Goss material. In its collections are over 600 glass plates and albumen prints once belonging to Louis Allan Goss. These depict buildings and landscapes from across Burma, dating from the 1860s through the 1880s. Among the collection are some of the earliest photographic images of Upper Burma. Goss’ photographs at the MAA were included in a 2002 exhibition of the museum’s photographic collection, ‘Collected Sights’. Several of the biographical details of Goss’ life come from the efforts of curators at the MAA to inventory this collection. More recently, a further three maps have come to light, which were donated by Goss to the MAA in 1910. None of these are quite as finely detailed as the University Library maps, but all are again made of cloth, and are of similarly generous dimensions.  One of the MAA maps features particularly bold and unusual colouring. These maps are due to be digitised shortly and will be made available online (2017).

The unusual maps and exceptional collection of photographs which Goss donated reflect a somewhat more adventurous life than that of an inspector of schools.  But Goss’ donations only began to make sense with news from Canada of other gifts to a different museum, made by his descendants over a hundred years later. Ron Graham, Trustee of Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum, was eager to learn more about the items presented in 2014 to the museum from the estate of Louis Allan Goss. In contacting the Cambridge University Library, he brought together the very small club of people interested in finding out more about Goss.  And from the Cambridge side, the Canadian donations brought the knowledge that linked Goss to an even more intriguing character, his uncle Clement Williams.

The name Clement Williams comes up repeatedly in histories of Upper Burma from the mid-1800s.  In the last decades of the Konbaung dynasty, prior to the British annexation of 1885, he was undoubtedly one of the most engaging figures in a period when European merchants and adventurers had extraordinary access to an outward-looking, modernising monarchy. Williams was among the Italian engineers, French diplomats, and Greek and Armenian merchants who vied for the court’s favour, and the King’s ear. He arrived in Burma in 1858 as an Assistant Surgeon in the British Army, but an informal appointment to tend to British interests in Mandalay set him on a different path. Williams impressed the reigning monarch, King Mindon, with his Burmese language ability, if not his surgical skills. When the British sought to appoint officially their first Political Agent in Upper Burma, Williams secured the post. A troubled history saw him fired within the year and replaced by Edward Sladen – the two men would sustain a long and bitter personal rivalry.  After a brief absence he returned to Mandalay as the town’s first representative of the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company. By 1872 he was based in Rangoon, where he operated as a businessman and middleman to the European commercial affairs of the Court (and was assisted by his nephew, Louis Allan Goss). Williams continued to act as a commercial agent to the Ava Crown after Mindon’s death in 1878, when Thibaw succeeded to the throne. His relationship with the new king was short-lived, however, as Williams died of typhoid, in 1879, on a return journey to England.

The paper trail left by Clement Williams suggests it was he, more than Goss, who led a life conducive to accumulating outstanding maps and photographs. In his account of an 1863 expedition he bemoans the loss of glass plates in the leaking hull of the steamer carrying him upriver from Mandalay to Bhamo, suggesting a serious pursuit of photography. And an interest in mapping fits easily with the very purpose of the expedition, to investigate the possibility of navigation on the upper reaches of the Irrawaddy, and trade possibilities with China.

Williams’ life is remarkable too for the way it exemplifies the close interweaving of British private and state interests, and the force of individual personalities, in the years preceding formal colonial annexation. It raises the question of whether, just possibly, the continued relationship of men like Williams with the Burmese Court might have allowed the monarchy, and Burmese sovereignty, to be maintained. Thanks to the care of Goss’ descendants and their donations to the Royal Ontario Museum, and now a collaboration between the ROM and the Cambridge MAA, we can look forward to soon hearing more about Clement Williams’ life story, and seeing more of the photography collection amassed by both uncle and nephew.

The Burmese cloth maps held by the University Library were exhibited at the brilliant Cambridge Festival of Ideas in 2013. When I first saw them there, I was drawn to them merely through a broader interest in the small collections of archives at Cambridge which relate to Burmese history. My research, on Prince Myingoon, one of Mindon’s renegade sons, bore no obvious connection to three massive maps lying for over a century in the University Library, but I soon found Myingoon’s life and antics did not lie far beyond them. Prince Myingoon spent most of his life in exile, first in India and then in French Indochina. He would have left Mandalay not long after the maps were acquired, and it is his exit, rather than his time in Mandalay, that he is best known for. He mounted a rebellion at the Court in 1866 but fled once his bid for power failed. Yet he is someone whose life, like that of Williams, begs the question of whether things might have worked out differently. He might have accepted an offer of the crown under British tutelage, or succeeded in securing French support to regain Mandalay through the Shan States. Instead he died in Saigon in 1921, dejected and in debt. With the reunification of Vietnam his grave was removed (like that of many others) and his remains have lain long forgotten in an indifferent reburial pit.

The maps and Myingoon have little to do with one another, but Williams would have been in Mandalay while Myingoon was still there. Sure enough, the search for the Prince now leads just as often to Clement Williams. I went looking for Prince Myingoon in another of Cambridge’s remarkable Burma-related repositories, the Scott Collection. Sir James George Scott’s long career as an administrator and author included posts overseeing the Shan States from the late 1880s. He would most certainly have had Myingoon’s troublesome partisans in his sights. His private papers are marvellous. The beautifully rounded script of Burmese correspondence jostles with missives from Shan Chiefs elaborately signed in trailing swirls of red ink. Added to the mix are Scott’s own pencilled summaries, unguarded jottings-to-self, and his own fine collection of indigenous maps.

Prince Myingoon, unfortunately, remains buried deep within Scott’s papers, but Clement Williams is there in plain sight. Receipts and notes held by Scott from the early 1870s relate to payments made by ‘Clement Williams of Bristol England, The Agent to HM the King of Burma’. They document Williams’ wholesale purchases of machinery on King Mindon’s behalf, as well as the transactions in gems undertaken to obtain them. Williams was back in Bristol in 1871 buying equipment for sugar refining, a full iron smelting plant, and a further twenty thousand pounds’ worth (no small sum) of unspecified ‘Machinery’ and ‘fire bricks’.  Williams’ buying trip overlapped with the diplomatic mission of Mindon’s Foreign Minister to Europe. Both parties clearly arrived weighed down with rubies. When Williams met with the Kinwun Mingyi in Sheffield in 1872, he relayed to the touring Minister the disappointing news that only 16 000 ‘coins’ could be obtained in sterling for one consignment of rubies, giving them less cash to spend than they had hoped. Another receipt records 25 000 rupees paid direct in rubies to a Bristol merchant, with both Clement Williams and Louis Allan Goss named as the King’s intermediaries in the transaction.

Williams appears again in another set of Burma papers, the Sladen Collection at the British Library. Edward Sladen, Her Majesty’s Resident in Upper Burma once Williams left the post, and Williams’ long-standing rival, wrote a dramatic eye witness account of Myingoon’s 1866 ‘Revolution at Mandalay’. Right when the Prince’s rebel band attacked and killed his uncle (who was favoured by Mindon for the succession), Sladen was with Williams in the Palace, in an audience with the King.

Sladen’s account describes how a distraught senior Queen whisked Mindon away, leaving Sladen and Williams with a group of the King’s officials as rebels overran the Palace. A group of rebels, swords drawn, scaled a partition into the chamber where they stood. The Englishmen, following the King’s officials, scarpered over another partition, only to drop down into a vestibule where more rebels were swarming “stupefied and frenzied by drink and excitement”. One of them “carried in his left hand the gory head of the Crown Prince who had just been murdered”. Sladen and Williams managed to exit the Palace, and after some days they were steaming downriver for Rangoon, with much of the European population of Mandalay. The Prince by then was travelling in the same direction, and the British steamer passed Myingoon’s craft at Magway. Sladen continued downriver, still fearful for his passengers’ safety. But a small skiff was sent across with the message that the Prince’s intentions were friendly and that he too was seeking refuge in British-occupied Burma. Sladen does not record a face-to-face encounter between Myingoon and Williams. The distance separating the two men, though, could be measured in the width of a Palace partition, in one severed head of separation, or in a steamer’s length on the Irrawaddy.

With so little information about what they were and how they ended up there, and distributed into a least three archival collections, the maps Goss donated to Cambridge and London archives became cut loose from their bearings, a particularly rich irony for a set of giant maps. Not only were they far from home, they were severed from their circumstances, from the long relationships or brief associations which put the items in Goss’ hands or prompted him to pass them on. An educated guess would indicate that the maps and photos came down from Williams to Goss, and that Goss then parcelled them out to different institutions as a result of encounters with various people who showed an interest. Cambridge was conducive to this process. It was small with a high concentration of interested scholars and archivists, and small libraries able to provide homes for curious objects. That this process spilled over to London is equally understandable.

This process applies to other archival objects, of course, as much as it does to Goss’ donations, even if some donors are more assiduous at labelling than others. When objects find their way into archival collections, a fog falls over the pathways that once connected them, over the conventions within which they were once understood, and over the force of individual personalities or the push and pull of human relationships. Goss left little to describe or explain what he donated or why. For George Scott’s part too, though, it takes some puzzling to work out how Clement Williams’ invoices, written out long before Scott arrived in Burma, ended up in his possession.

To lift a little fog from some of these pathways relies as much on chance encounters as it does on the concerted effort of delving back into archives. While writing this piece, I returned to the internet to check some details about Goss. I was distracted instead by the proliferation of sites, with the centenary of World War One upon us, telling stories of the men named on war memorials. There is a detailed account of Goss’ son, Edouard, who was one of those men. It says he died in the first day of fighting at the Somme, and that his name appears on war memorials in Bristol, Sevenoaks, and Rangoon. It mentions too the Cambridge address where he lived with his parents just before the war. In some senses Cambridge has not grown any larger over the years. A friend, it turns out, currently lives in the same house. Her children are now tapping the walls and floorboards, listening for hollow places that might hide that mislaid bag of rubies. Watch this space.

The Map Department is very grateful to Natasha for her support of and enthusiasm for these maps, and for her generosity in writing this blog post.

Note added by the Library on the digitisation of the three maps of parts of Burma on cloth:

Photographing the Burmese maps was quite a challenge for the Library’s Digital Content Unit. The smallest map was made of 126 images, the largest of 420 and it had to be stitched into 9 parts first before being put into one piece. Some parts of the process took a few hours to complete for the computer with 64 GB RAM memory and 3Ghz 8 core computer. The biggest challenge was obviously handling. It was impossible to move the map without changing the arrangement. Hence the last map, the largest [Maps.Ms.Plans.R.c.3] took a long time to prepare as they had to experiment with different stitching methods.

This post was first published on Cambridge University Library's Special Collections Blog by the Library's Map Librarian, Anne Taylor on 18 April 2017 https://specialcollections.blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=14308

Glimpses of early Siam and Burma [Thailand and Myanmar]

Thibaw, the last King of Burma (1878-85), and his wife Supyalat, RCS Y3029D_1

Dr John Cardwell, Archivist of the Royal Commonwealth Society collections in Cambridge University Library, writes:

The Royal Commonwealth Society Library has just created an electronic catalogue for one of its largest and most significant manuscript collections: the papers of the diplomat, colonial administrator and orientalist Henry Burney (1792-1845). Burney was born in Calcutta, the son of a Senior Master of the Calcutta Military School for Orphans. His grandfather was the musicologist Dr Charles Burney and his aunt the novelist Frances Burney. Burney was commissioned into the East India Company’s army in 1808, but transferred to its political service when appointed Military Secretary to the Governor of Penang in 1818. From 1825 he served as Political Agent to the states adjacent to Penang and led several political missions. From the beginning of his career, Burney had displayed a gift for oriental languages, soon mastering Hindustani, and during this time he acquired Siamese and Malay. Burney’s grasp of local politics and languages led to his appointment as Envoy to the Court of Siam, and he travelled to Bangkok in September 1825. By June 1826 he had successfully negotiated a treaty with the King.

Territory to west of Thanlawatee Myeet, 1830s [Mae Nam Khong River], RCMS 65_9_9_3

In 1827 Burney was posted to the new British province of Tenasserim, which had been acquired during the First Anglo-Burmese War (1824-1826), serving as Deputy Commissioner of Tavoy. Burney immediately began learning Burmese. In 1829, he acted decisively to suppress a rebellion. His diplomatic experience and linguistic skill were further recognised in 1829 with the appointment as the Indian government’s representative to the Burmese Court. Burney arrived at the capital of Ava on 24 April 1830, establishing the first British Residency. Burney’s study of Burmese (with the aid of a tutor) had advanced so rapidly that by April 1832 he was able to communicate directly with the Burmese ministers in their own language. He enjoyed initial success, resolving the problem of banditry on the Arakan and Tenasserim frontiers and a territorial dispute on the Manipur border. He also persuaded the Burmese government to pay the final instalment of the indemnity owed as part of the war’s settlement.

King Bagyidaw appreciated Burney’s efforts to foster good relations, honouring him with a Burmese title inscribed on gold leaf, Mahaz-eyayazanawrahta, accompanied with a badge of office, a nine-stranded salwe. Burney’s position, however, was undermined in 1837 when Bagyidaw was deposed by the Prince of Tharrawaddy, who later became King, and he found it difficult to work with the new regime. Burney was recalled on 8 March 1838 and went on furlough to England. In 1842, he returned to active service with the EIC army, but died at sea in 1845 while travelling to England on medical leave.

The collection preserves important records of Burney’s diplomatic missions: his instructions, travel, correspondence, journals and reports, which include rare insight into the Siamese and Burmese Courts. It also contains examples of traditional texts, such as Siamese kradat phlao and Burmese black parabaiks and palm leaf manuscripts. Burney shared the family’s intellectual curiosity and literary flair, and was fascinated by Siamese and Burmese culture. He researched the two countries’ climate, geography, languages, history, philosophy, religion, astronomy, mathematics and astrology, and collected important translations from original sources. Burney presented papers to learned bodies such as the Royal Asiatic Society and published in the ‘Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal’, the ‘Asiatic Journal’ and the ‘Journal of the Statistical Society.’ During the early 1840s, Burney received permission from the EIC to publish the journal of his mission to Siam and it is possible that he also contemplated writing a pioneering English language history of Burma. With the resumption of his military career, ill health and an early death at the age of 53, however, these plans never came to fruition. The RCS is also fortunate to possess a number of early photograph collections relating to Burma dating from the 1870s (RCS Y3029A-F), which complement the Burney archive.

To view the Janus catalogue of the Henry Burney Collection, RCMS 65, please follow this link:

https://janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/db/node.xsp?id=EAD%2FGBR%2F0115%2FRCMS%2065

South Asia @ Cambridge Festival of Ideas 20 Oct-2 Nov 2014

http://www.festivalofideas.cam.ac.uk/

This autumn's Festival of Ideas in Cambridge has several events likely to interest followers of the SAALG blog.  Booking is essential for many and some are already booked up.

FULLY BOOKED - Envoy: the experiences of a diplomat in Asia

Ancient India and Iran Trust, Friday 24th October, 5.00 pm. Event 77.
Fully Booked

Friday 24 October: 5:00pm

Sir Nicholas Barrington served as a career diplomat in five Asian countries, including Afghanistan and Iran, ending as Ambassador to Pakistan. With memoirs now published, he will discuss some of the interesting problems he had to face and the need to build bridges between East and West.

10 seconds of film: colonial identity exhibited in archival footage

Alison Richard Building, SG1/2, Saturday 25 October: 7:00pm - 8:00pm, Event 123

Archives of colonial documents often challenge conventional historical narratives. This joint presentation considers some remarkable examples of written, visual and aural archival records held by the Centre of South Asian Studies.

India-Pakistan: the common ground

Lady Mitchell Hall, Saturday 1st November, 3.00 pm.  Event 222

A panel discussion looking at commonalities between the two countries in the India/Pakistan divide, finding common ground in terms of development, economic growth and research, where a spirit of co-operation brings benefits for all. With Professor Joya Chatterji, Dr Ornit Shani, Dr Bhaskar Vira and Dr Kamal Munir.

Chatterji, Dr Ornit Shani, Dr Bhaskar Vira and Dr Kamal Munir. - See more at: http://www.festivalofideas.cam.ac.uk/events/india-pakistan-common-ground#sthash.sIjbDMbf.dpuf

Sovereignty at sea: identity politics of Asian territorial disputes in East and South China Seas

Alison Richard Building, SG1/2, Saturday 1 November: 3:00pm - 4:00pm, Event 221

The risk of conflict escalating from relatively minor events has increased in the South and East China Seas over the past years with disputes now seemingly less amenable to negotiation or resolution. The panel discusses discourses in China, Japan, and Southeast Asian countries, and suggests implications for issue areas of potential mutual benefits. With additional perspectives on maritime relations of rising powers and post-colonial contests in Europe and the Middle Eastern/North Africa.

Negotiating identities? Cultural encounters in Bend it Like Beckham

Anglia Ruskin University, East Road, CB1 1PT , Wednesday 22 October: 7:00pm - 9:00pm, Event 55

Wednesday 22 October: 7:00pm - 9:00pm

Probably more than most other European countries, contemporary Britain has been shaped by mass immigration, in particular from South Asia, and British-Asian Cinema has joined the often polemic media debate about the country’s ‘multiculturalism’. Be it as a potential mirror of popular attitudes, ideas and preoccupations, or as regards the likely impact on common views and opinions on migration, we cannot afford to ignore the filmic portrayals. In this context, Professor Guido Rings will explore the negotiation of identities in one popular example of British-Asian cinema: Chadha's Bend it like Beckham. Professor Guido Rings will raise questions such as: How does the film express cultural differences and to what extent does this follow traditional concepts of culture? How is the interconnectedness of cultures articulated and how does this relate to current notions of interculturality and transculturality? Professor Guido Rings is Professor of Postcolonial Studies, Director of Research Unit for Intercultural and Transcultural Studies (RUITS), Anglia Ruskin University.

Be it as a potential mirror of popular attitudes, ideas and preoccupations, or as regards the likely impact on common views and opinions on migration, we cannot afford to ignore the filmic portrayals. In this context, Professor Guido Rings will explore the negotiation of identities in one popular example of British-Asian cinema: Chadha's Bend it like Beckham. Professor Guido Rings will raise questions such as: How does the film express cultural differences and to what extent does this follow traditional concepts of culture? How is the interconnectedness of cultures articulated and how does this relate to current notions of interculturality and transculturality? Professor Guido Rings is Professor of Postcolonial Studies, Director of Research Unit for Intercultural and Transcultural Studies (RUITS), Anglia Ruskin University - See more at: http://www.festivalofideas.cam.ac.uk/events/negotiating-identities-cultural-encounters-bend-it-beckham#sthash.CeGr0pnQ.dpuf

Those interested in Southeast Asia may also wish to attend...

Hidden Hong Kong

Cambridge University Library, Map Room, Saturday 25th October, at 10.00 am, 11.00 am and Noon.  Event 84

An opportunity to study spectacular photographs and maps of Hong Kong in the collections of Cambridge University Library, with Rachel Rowe of the Royal Commonwealth Society Library and Anne Taylor, Map Librarian.
http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk

To book an event, click on the relevant link above, and then follow the booking information on the right-hand side of the screen.

For a full listing of Festival events, visit: http://www.festivalofideas.cam.ac.uk/events

Archives of art curator Donald Bowen

RCMS 360_4_1 Indian quarters, 1943

Cambridge University Library's Royal Commonwealth Society Collection has published an on-line catalogue of an important recent acquisition, the archives of Donald Bowen (1917-), artist and Curator of the Commonwealth Institute’s Art Gallery. The collection includes memoirs and correspondence documenting Bowen’s early training at the Chelsea School of Art, the Byam Shaw School of Drawing and Painting, and tuition with the artist and occultist Austin Osman Spare. Bowen describes his military training and service during the Second World War, including the Battle of Arras and evacuation at Dunkirk, and his commissioning into the Royal Engineers. Bowen served in India between 1943 and 1947, travelling widely. One of the treasures of the collection is an album of drawings in pencil and related media depicting India’s people, landscapes, architecture, plants and animals.

RCMS 360_3 Exhibition of Oshogbo and West Nigeria artists, 1974

In 1953, Bowen joined the Imperial Institute (later the Commonwealth Institute), initially as Exhibitions Officer, and became Curator of its Art Gallery in 1962. He provides an insider’s view of the institute’s move to its iconic new building in Kensington High Street, which opened in the same year. Its purpose built galleries soon won a central position in the contemporary London art scene. Between 1962 and his retirement in 1979, Bowen organised more than 200 exhibitions of paintings, drawings, prints, sculpture, the crafts and other media, working with established and emerging Commonwealth artists, many of whom had never exhibited in Britain before. Correspondence, memoirs and other material vividly reflect the planning, organisation and impact of the exhibitions.

RCMS 360_5 Trafalgar Cemetery, Gibraltar, 1988

As an acknowledged expert on Commonwealth Art, Bowen travelled extensively, and the collection records an educational visit to West Africa in 1968, and a lecture tour of Canada in 1969, undertaken after an invitation to address the Canadian Society for Education through Art. A second volume of original art work includes pencil drawings executed during the visits to West Africa and Canada.


To view the collection catalogue, please follow the link:


http://janus.lib.cam.ac.uk/db/node.xsp?id=EAD%2FGBR%2F0115%2FRCMS%20360


For information about accessing the archive in Cambridge University Library, please see:

http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/deptserv/rcs/visiting.html




Post by John Cardwell, RCS Archivist.

Sir Frederick Tymms: the flying civil servant

Frederick Tymms (on the left), with Rod Doucla [sic]
whilst working on the Cape to Cairo Air Route in 1929
Cambridge University Library RCMS 20/2/9/30

Frederick Tymms (2nd from left), camera in hand,
with Wolley Dod, Lindup, and Francis, whilst planning the Cape to Cairo Air Route, 1929
Cambridge University Library RCMS 20/2/9/10

Frederick Tymms (2nd from left) in Allahabad in 1934
with T. Campbell Black and C.W. Scott for the England-Australia Race
Cambridge University Library RCMS 20/2/15/1

'Imperial Airways - Delhi Flying Club - handing over',  January 1932
Cambridge University Library RCMS 20/2/10/139

The Royal Commonwealth Society collections in Cambridge University Library hold the archives of Sir Frederick Tymms,  RCMS 20, one of the most significant figures in the development of civil aviation, referred to by his biographer, E.A. Johnston, as the 'Flying Civil Servant'.

Tymms served as an Observer in the Royal Flying Corps during WW1, then joined the civil aviation department of the Air Ministry 1920-1927 where he became involved in the development of air routes across Africa and India in the 1920s and 30s.  His archives document the difficulties of locating suitable landing strips at regular distances across each continent and the excitement at the opening of new aerodromes. 

During the 1930s and much of the 1940s Tymms was in India where he was appointed Director of Civil Aviation 1931-1942. For a brief period in 1942-1943 he became Managing Director of Tata Aircraft Ltd, Bombay, and from 1945-1947 was Director General of Civil Aviation in India.  The Tymms archive is rich in photographs from this period - see: RCMS 20/2/ 10-19.  There are views of the grand Secretariat buildings in New Delhi, in which Tymms had an office, of the Delhi Flying Club which he joined, and of his travels all over South Asia looking for viable air routes and opening aerodromes.  Early air races are documented, such as the MacRobertson England-Australia Race in 1934, as are numerous air stations and aeroplanes.  Tymms took photographs in Burma and the collection has fine aerial photography of the Arakan Coast. He also  took many photographs in Simla, the hill station to which the government moved for relief from the searing heat of Delhi, as well as in Kashmir where he holidayed with his wife. 

Tymms, a keen photographer , also captured on cinefilm some events associated with his work in civil aviation, as well as social occasions and holidays he enjoyed with family and friends.  His earliest film dates from 1925 and records the First African [aviation] Survey (Film 12).  There are three short black and white silent films made in South Asia in the early to mid-1930s - Films 16, 17 and 19.

Film 16 (the film can is labelled: Hyderabad. Jaipur. Simla. Delhi) includes busy street scenes, farming scenes, elephant rides, coastal scenes and a view of the Himalayas. There are several scenes of Qutub Minar, Delhi, of road trips, street vendors, shikar and fly fishing. 

Film 17 (the film can is labelled: North West Frontier Province. Kashmir. Palampur.  Simla) opens with views of the Khyber Pass and then moves to Dal Lake and Srinagar in Kashmir, and onto hill stations in  Himachal Pradesh.  It focuses on travel and landscape scenes, as well as local crafts.

Film 19 (the film can is labelled: Bombay. Ceylon. Burma. Singapore. Karachi) includes fishing boats, street vendors, temples, shoreline, a flower market, ball games, traditional Burmese dance, aircraft and airport buildings. It includes shots of the Shwedagon Pagoda and Buddhist monks in Rangoon, a paddle-steamer transporting railway wagons, sea-planes, Kallang airport in Singapore, and Karachi airport.

Tymms and his wife Millie had become great friends with J.R.D.(Jeh) Tata and his wife Thelly during their time in India, and they returned in October1962 to participate in Air India celebrations in Bombay on the occasion of J.R.D. Tata's reenactment of the first Karachi-Bombay flight, via Ahmedabad in 1932. Sir Frederick filmed some of the celebrations in colour.   Film 8  opens on 15th October 1962 in an Air India marquee at Bombay airport and includes footage of a Burmah-Shell Aviation Service bullock cart, a De Havilland Leopard Moth dating from the 1930s and a Boeing 707. The film also includes hugely contrasting scenes of Indian women carrying heavy stone on a building site, busy street scenes, and grand buildings in Delhi.

Tymms went on to represent the UK on the Council of the International Civil Aviation Organisation (I.C.A.O.), led missions to New Zealand and the West Indies as a trouble-shooter to promote civil aviation, and was a founding member of the Guild of Air Pilots and Air Navigators. He was elected Master of the Guild in 1957.    His wide interests embraced communication technologies, satellites and space travel, and the sovereignty of space.

The Tymms collection on civil aviation was donated to Cambridge University Library by Group Captain E.A. Johnston in 1994.  Johnston's biography of Tymms, To organise the air: the evolution of civil aviation and the role of Sir Frederick Tymms, the Flying Civil Servant, was published  by Cranfield University Press in 1995, ISBN 1871315468.

SAALG 90th Conference - Friday 21st February - University of Cambridge Library

Join us for the 90th SAALG Conference which will take place on Friday 21st February at the University of Cambridge Library. The theme for the day will be 'Archives' and we will have the opportunity to learn about a variety of collections and projects - there will also be a chance to visit the new Centre of South Asian Studies building in Cambridge.  

Image: Cambridge University Library Faoch via Flickr

The full programme is as follows: 

Image: Cambridge University Library - RCS QM 8/123 - From the Royal Commonwealth Society Library, Queen Mary Collection.  A view showing crowds of people watching the arrival of the Royal Party at a palatial building, Calcutta.

The fee for the day is £20 including lunch, full directions to the Library will be sent out before the day. Please email Helen Porter, SAALG Chair hp7@soas.ac.uk or telephone 020 78984153 to make a booking or for more information. The final day for registering is Wednesday 12th February. 

Documenting a frontier: spectacular hand-painted fabric maps of Burma

Cambridge University Library welcomes you to 'Documenting a frontier' - an opporturtunity to view some spectacular manuscript maps of Burma dating from the 1860s, alongside rare early photographs of the region from the Royal Commonwealth Society's collection.

 

 

Map of Maingnyaung region (Cambridge University Library, MS.Plans.R.C.1)

The event forms part of the University of Cambridge's Festival of Ideas (event 66) and takes place on Saturday afternoon, 26th October 2013 in the Map Room, Cambridge University Library. Ticketed entry is at three times: 1:30pm - 2:15pm, 2:30pm - 3:15pm and 3:30pm - 4:15pm.

Please book your place online at: www.cam.ac.uk/festival-of-ideas or by phoning: 01223 766766 (lines open Monday-Friday , 10am - 4.30pm)

Event URL:  http://www.cam.ac.uk/festival-of-ideas/events-and-booking/documenting-a-frontier
For more information about the event, please email: rcs@lib.cam.ac.uk or phone: 01223 333146

Not Orville and Wilbur

MS Add.1688, f. 19v (detail). Representation of the goddess Mayūrī from an 11th-century manuscript of the Pañcarakṣā, bought by Daniel Wright in 1873-6.

The manuscript has been catalogued and digitised for the Sanskrit Manuscripts Project and is available at http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-ADD-01688/ 

In the world in general mention of the Wright Brothers brings to mind the pioneers of controlled powered manned flight, Orville and Wilbur Wright. In the Sanskrit world, the Wright Brothers suggest instead the beginnings of one of the most important Sanskrit manuscript collections in the world.

Cambridge University Library’s South Asian collections grew in the 1870s when one brother Daniel Wright, surgeon to the British Residency at Kathmandu, Nepal from 1866 to 1876, collected a large number of Sanskrit manuscripts on the suggestion of his brother in Cambridge, William Wright, Sir Thomas Adams’s Professor of Arabic from 1870. Their father had worked for the East India Company and William was born in Nepal. William Wright donated many Islamic manuscripts to the Library and arranged the purchase of a significant Syriac collection.

The first Sanskrit manuscripts were commissioned copies, transcripts of early manuscripts. It was only as the project progressed that it became clear that buying manuscripts of an early date that would be taken out of use when modern copies were made was the way forward. Many purchases were made through Pandit Gunanand of the Residency, with whom Daniel Wright wrote a history of Nepal (Cambridge, 1877).

We have a price list in Daniel Wright’s hand (classmark ULIB 7/1/4) showing that MS Add. 1585–1677 were purchased for £429/11/-. The famous illustrated Perfection of Wisdom (MS Add. 1643) dated 1015 cost £25! The same list shows that Daniel Wright was also sending unbound Tibetan block-printed books and Tibetan manuscripts.

South Asian manuscripts in Cambridge University Library comprise more than one thousand documents in Sanskrit and other South Asian languages, written in various scripts on different materials, such as birch-bark, palm-leaf and paper. Many have wooden covers, some lavishly illustrated. On some there are traces of offerings made in religious ceremonies: rice, sandalwood dust and red and yellow powders. The Buddhist manuscripts were catalogued by Cecil Bendall in the late 19th century (Cambridge, 1883). What Daniel Wright collected is much wider than the Buddhist core of the collection and includes works of great rarity in different genres and on a host of subjects. Among them are some of the oldest extant manuscripts from South Asia, dating from the last centuries of the first millennium CE, collected in Nepal, the only region of the Indian subcontinent where the climate allows their survival for more than a few centuries.

This collection is now being worked on by the Sanskrit Manuscripts Project which began in November 2011, funded by an Arts and Humanities Research Council grant. The manuscripts will be catalogued and many will be digitised. Results will be collected in a multimedia archive and the records will be searchable online through the Library’s online digital library: http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/. Many are already available.

This in turn is sparking a collaborative effort with Sanskritists in the UK and abroad. Research findings will be presented through academic journals and other publications, as well as in international workshops focusing on some of the religious and intellectual traditions that have played a key role in South Asian civilisation.

For more information, see the Sanskrit Manuscripts Project webpage, which has details of current work and associated events.

Craig Jamieson
South Asian, Tibetan and Southeast Asian Department, Cambridge University Library
Email: southasian@lib.cam.ac.uk
 

Powerful words

A major exercise in ‘linguistic archaeology’ has set out to complete a comprehensive survey of Cambridge University Library’s South Asian manuscript collection, which includes the oldest dated and illustrated Sanskrit manuscript known worldwide.

Written on now-fragile birch bark, palm leaf and paper, the 2,000 manuscripts in the collection express centuries-old South Asian thinking on religion, philosophy, astronomy, grammar, law and poetry.

The project, which is led by Sanskrit-specialists Dr Vincenzo Vergiani and Dr Eivind Kahrs and funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, will study and catalogue each of the manuscripts, placing them in their broader historical context. Most of the holdings will also be digitised by the Library and made available through the Library’s new online digital library (http://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/).

To read more about this exciting project, see:  http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/newspublishing/index.php?c=1#news315

Festival of Ideas

The University of Cambridge Festival of Ideas celebrates the arts, humanities and social sciences, and is the only free festival of its kind in the UK.  Festival events are extremely popular, and booking without delay is essential to avoid disappointment.  Visit the Festival of Ideas website for full details on how to secure a place by phone or online: www.cam.ac.uk/festivalofideas.

Events likely to interest readers of the SAALG blog include:

Laying the topmost stone of New Delhi (one of two)
 on 30th September 1927

Moving Pictures, Moving Stories: photographs, films and interviews from the end of the Raj - on Saturday 29 October 2011, 15.00-16.30, Mill Lane Lecture Room 5. 
Dr Annamaria Motrescu and Dr Kevin Greenbank  (Centre of South Asian Studies, University of Cambridge) will discuss the use of these unique archival resources in online projects and classrooms. To book your place, email: admin@s-asian.cam.ac.uk or phone: 01223 338094.

Submitted as a cover for a tourist brochure
by Heather Balfour in 1959

Essays of Empire - on Thursday 27 October 17:00-18:00,  Morison Room, Cambridge University Library, West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DR. 

Dr Seán Lang (Senior Lecturer in History, Anglia Ruskin University,  and Chair of the Better History Group) will present a glimpse of how school children across the globe responded to the pressures for change within the British Empire through their entries to the Royal Commonwealth Society essay competition.
To book:  telephone 0845 271 3333 or online at: www.angliaruskincommunity.eventbrite.com/ 

Links to digital resources:

Films from the archives, Centre of South Asian Studies: http://www.s-asian.cam.ac.uk/films.html and interviews:  http://www.s-asian.cam.ac.uk/audio.html

Royal Commonwealth Society Essay Competition archive: http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/repository/item_of_the_term/