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.

This Friday's Conference

Do hope as many of you as possible will join our SAALG summer conference at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies this Friday, 2nd July.  We have an exciting programme of lectures and visits on the theme of Arts and Crafts.  Speakers include Dr Hassan Abedin, Dr Crispin Branfoot, Dr Renate Dohmen, Emma Martin and Dr Andrew Topsfield, who will be giving a gallery talk and tour of Indian collections in the recently refurbished Ashmolean. For the full programme, please refer to Jan Usher's post of 25th May.
If you haven't yet replied, but wish to attend, please email me a.s.a.p. The cost is £20, including lunch.

Indian botanical art in Edinburgh

55 botanical drawings made for the forest conservator Hugh Cleghorn are being exhibited for the first time at Inverleith House, Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh. The exhibition is part of a series of drawings made by Indian artists for Scottish East India Company surgeons.
It runs until the 4th July; admission is free.

(photo credit: Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh website)

Coriander and saris - India Week at Clare Hall, Cambridge, 3-11 June 2010

Clare Hall, Cambridge is hosting a week of Indian cultural activities, including lectures, exhibitions, poetry, plays, dance and music...see India Week at Clare Hall, Cambridge for the full programme.

SAALG Summer Conference, Oxford

Our 83rd conference will be held on Friday, 2nd July 2010, at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies, George Street, Oxford, OX1 2AR.

Programme
10.45 - 11.00
Arrival and meet in Seminar Room (our meeting room for the day)
(Refreshments will be available in the adjoining Common Room)

11.00 - 11.30
Welcome talk by Dr Hassan Abedin (Development Officer, OXCIS)

11.30 – 12.00
Professions and processions in 19th century south India: a ‘Company’ album in SOAS Library by Dr Crispin Branfoot (SOAS)

12.00 – 12.45
Pleasures of Leisure? Painting with colour and light in British India by Dr Renate Dohmen (University of Louisiana)

12.45 - 14.00
Brief business meeting followed by lunch and networking
(Lunch will be served in the adjoining Common Room)

14.00 - 14.10
Walk to Ashmolean Museum in Beaumont Street. Enter Museum and assemble in the exhibition gallery: Royal Elephants from Mughal India.

14.15 - 15.30
Gallery talk by Dr Andrew Topsfield (Keeper, Eastern Art, The Ashmolean) and tour of adjoining new Eastern Art Paintings Study Room

15.30 - 16.00
Return to OXCIS and enjoy refreshments in the Common Room

16.00 - 16.45
Charles Bell’s collection of ‘curios’: an archive of the Anglo-Tibetan encounter, 1900-1935 by Emma Martin (Head of Ethnology & Curator of Asia Collections, National Museums, Liverpool)

If you would like to attend, please contact Jan Usher, Secretary, j.usher@nls.uk

See you there!

Ancient India & Iran Trust Lectures

Friday Lectures, Easter Term 2010
5pm, 23 Brooklands Avenue, Cambridge, CB2 8BG (info@indiran.org)

ALL WELCOME, ADMISSION FREE; LIGHT REFRESHMENTS WILL BE SERVED

7 May Professor Stanley Insler (Yale University)
The Oldest Zoroastrian Calendar

14 May Dr Sethuraman Suresh (Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage, Chennai, India)
From Kanchipuram to Kampuchea – A Millennium of Trade and Cultural Exchanges between South India and Cambodia

28 May Dr Rosemary Crill (Senior Curator, Victoria & Albert Museum, London)
The Indian Portrait 1560–1860

4 June Professor Vicente Dobroruka (University of Brasilia)
Hellenistic Political Propaganda and Zoroastrian Oracles

Cambridge Conference on Sri Lanka

Recent research on the cultural history of Sri Lanka will be explored in an all day conference at the Ancient India and Iran Trust in Cambridge on Saturday 15th May 2010.

Please refer to the poster for more details.

Kingsley Martin Memorial Lecture in Cambridge cancelled

I am sorry to report that this Wednesday's Kingsley Martin Memorial Lecture in Cambridge, to have been delivered by Professor Arjun Appadurai of New School University, New York, on the topic: Intimate nation: remembering the Indian National Army, has had to be cancelled. The Centre of South Asian Studies hopes to rearrange the lecture for the Michaelmas Term 2010.

Illustrating India

Dr Jennifer Howes of the British Library has just published Illustrating India: The Early Colonial Investigations of Colin Mackenzie (1784–1821).
It reveals for the first time a mine of unique and fascinating information on pre-colonial and early colonial India. The Mackenzie collection, assembled by Colin Mackenzie, the first Surveyor General of India, between 1784 and 1821, contains the oldest and largest known repository of pictorial documents on the history and culture of India to be gathered by a single European collector.

This book showcases monuments and shrines, sculpture, landscapes, caste groups and social structures as described in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century India. Jennifer Howes’ gripping narrative contextualizes the Mackenzie drawings and provides a broad view of the Indian subcontinent. She presents a graphic account of people and everyday life in Hyderabad and Mysore, along with interpretations of temples and their uses. She also highlights Mackenzie’s investigations at Mahabalipuram, providing unique answers to some puzzling archaeological questions. Most importantly, she shows how Mackenzie’s methods profoundly relied upon information gathered by his Indian assistants.

Besides drawings, Mackenzie collected manuscripts, unpublished letters and maps, and he published articles about his research. Howes includes biographical notes on military draftsmen and copyists who worked for Mackenzie and identifies many unknown artists. Delineating the illustrious career of a determined individual, the author also asks whether Mackenzie could be regarded as an Orientalist.

Anglo-Sikh Heritage Trail - Battlefield Tour

A GUIDED DAY TRIP TO THE BATTLEFIELDS OF NORTHERN EUROPE

Organised in conjunction with Anglia Battlefield Tours, this trip, on 29th May, will take you on a journey exploring the contribution made by Sikh soldiers during the Great War. Tour details and booking forms available on the ASHT website.

Sri Lanka Library Association

2010 sees the SLLA's golden jubilee, and there are several events to commemorate it throughout the year, culminating in the main ceremony on 6th October, which will be attended by IFLA President Ms Ellen Tise.

Home movies chronicling end of Empire released online

A collection of almost 300 silent films, offering a unique glimpse of life in India and other parts of South Asia during the final days of the British Empire has been released online. The films were shot between 1911 and 1956 on 8 mm and 16 mm reel and cover an astonishing range of subjects of interest to social historians, visual anthropologists and school children. The collection is owned by the Centre of South Asian Studies in Cambridge and may be viewed for free at:
http://www.s-asian.cam.ac.uk/films.html

For a taster of the collection, see the University of Cambridge press release, 4th March 2009, which includes a presentation on YouTube, in which the Centre's Archivist, Dr Kevin Greenbank, and Film Archivist, Dr Annamaria Motrescu, talk about this unique collection.