India Office Records Research Articles

Merchant capital and labor migration in the colonial Indian Ocean world

Objective/Context: Historians have long acknowledged the importance of merchant diasporas and trade networks in Indian Ocean history but paid little attention to merchant capital’s role in transoceanic labor migration in and beyond this part of the globe. Research on slave trading in the Indian Ocean during the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries highlights the need to pay closer attention to the complexities of economic life in this oceanic world. Methodology. This article surveys relevant historiography and draws on archival research in the India Office Records in London and the Mauritius National Archives in Coromandel. Originality. This article illustrates some of the ways in which Asian and European merchant capital shaped colonial social and economic life. Conclusions. A deeper understanding of the social, economic, and political complexities inherent in Indian Ocean history is contingent upon situating the specialized case studies that characterize this field of study in more fully developed local, regional, pan-regional, and comparative contexts.

Penang: The Fourth Presidency of India 1805–1830. Vol. 3: Water, Wigs and Wisdom by Marcus Langdon

Reviewed by: Penang: The Fourth Presidency of India 1805–1830. Vol. 3: Water, Wigs and Wisdom by Marcus Langdon Kwa Chong Guan Penang: The Fourth Presidency of India 1805–1830. Vol. 3: Water, Wigs and Wisdom, by Marcus Langdon. Penang: Entrepot Publishing, 2021, 505 pp. ISBN 978-967-17008-6-0 This is the third volume of Marcus Langdon’s massive and monumental collation of the archived records on Penang’s history between 1805–1830. Volume One was published in 2013 and reviewed by John Bastin in volume 87, part 1 of this Journal. Bastin noted that Langdon “is a British-born Australian amateur historian who first visited the island in the mid-1970s, attracted by a family legend relating to an ancestor employed in the Penang Botanical Garden. The word ‘amateur’ in the present context is hardly appropriate as the book is unquestionably one of the most professionally conceived and well-written works published in an area of Malaysian history.” Volume Two was published in 2015 and we now have volume 3 published in 2021, which continues the structure of the preceding two volumes of collating [End Page 146] the archived records on Penang according to the issues preserved in the archives. Volume One collated the records for the elevation of the twenty-year old British settlement on Penang into an East India Company (EIC) Presidency of India equivalent to Calcutta, Madras and Bombay, all governed by the Company from its Bengal offices. Volume One also detailed the records of the men charged with the administration of Penang, from Francis Light to Kenneth Murchison, the Governor from 1833 to 1836. The other issues examined in Volume One are the construction of the two buildings which were the centres of government: Government House which survives today as part of the Convent Light Street and Suffolk House, also standing today as heritage building. Volume Two looked at the central structure constructed by the EIC to defend its settlement: Fort Cornwallis. In this context, Fort Cornwallis performed a central function similar to Fort St George in Madras, Fort William in Calcutta and Fort George in Bombay. Similarly, Fort Canning and a series of other artillery forts protected Singapore in the nineteenth century. In earlier centuries, a series of forts defined the port cities of the Dutch and the Portuguese. Besides Fort Cornwallis, Volume Two also examined four institutions in Penang’s historical development: The Free School, St. George’s Church and the Spice and Botanic Gardens and the Library. Two issues which challenged the development of Penang are also covered in this volume. They are the fires in George Town and seashore erosion threatening Penang’s north shore. Volume Three continues this institutional history of Penang with a review of issues in the building of an aqueduct for the provision of potable water to the growing town; and critically, the development of the Jetty or quay central to Penang’s raison d’être as a port-city. The volume also collates the records on the establishment of the public hospital and the introduction and administration of law and order in the settlement and the jail as part of an evolving colonial penal system. Finally, the volume looks at the early newspapers published in Penang from which Langdon draws much information for this history of Penang. Langdon has systematically combed the records of the East India Company in its Straits Settlement Records archived in Singapore and in London, and the India Office Records for this history on the formative twenty-five years of Penang’s history. The salient feature of this history is that Langdon has summarised or reproduced in extenso much of the records he found, so enabling others to draw upon them for their own interpretation of Penang’s early history. The issues and events that Langdon has reconstructed from these archived records of the Hon. Company were what preoccupied the administrators of Penang from Francis Light and his successors, including George Caunter, George Leith among others. It is an account of the problems and challenges they confronted in keeping alive the fledgling settlement they had charge of. It is a history of the system and institutions they put in place...

The English East India Company and Cochinchina (1614–1705): from free trade to coercion

ABSTRACT By investigating English primary materials kept in the India Office Records, this study reviews relations between the English East India Company and Cochinchina (1614–1705) to argue that the Company changed its connecting strategy towards Cochinchina from commercial and diplomatic approaches to more aggressive methods. Cochinchina witnessed these strategic changes by the Company during its first century: the English embarked on commercial voyages to the kingdom in the 1610s, exploited a diplomatic approach in the mission 1695–1696 and forcefully built a military fortification in the period 1702–1705. Rather than re-narrating the English presence in Cochinchina, this article considers it as a case study to research the Company’s transformation process, as they not only sought to trade with this market but also recognized and exploited its geopolitical potential. Moreover, the study analyses the Cochinchinese Court’s skilful diplomatic responses to the English, in order to provide a comprehensive view of these relations, and fully explore the reasons for the failures of the English in settling a fortification in Cochinchina, and in their efforts at trade and diplomacy in the 1610s.

Mental hospitals and historical trauma: Stop blaming stigma, address the trauma

Background: India is facing a mental health crisis but to change community stigma, we need to address historical trauma. This article discusses the issue of community stigma toward mental health care in India. Objective: The research aimed to trace the roots of community stigma toward mental health care facilities. Method: This study primarily used the archival method of data collection in constructing its narrative. Primary sources including colonial records, some vernacular newspapers, and a few Indian sources were analysed. The Maharashtra State Archives and the National Archives of India, New Delhi, served as the main repository of primary sources. Additionally, India Office Records at the British Library, London, provided further evidence for this research. Digitized copies of Annual Asylum Reports made available by the National Library of Scotland added to the evidence. The study also involved fieldwork at the Thana, Yerawada, and Ratnagiri mental hospitals in 2014. Results: Community stigma to the use of mental health care facilities is a historical problem. The establishment of lunatic asylums in India (as they were referred to in the 19th century, the nomenclature changed in 1921 to the term mental hospitals) caused disruption to local communities and families and left a legacy of trauma and fear. Conclusions: Acknowledging the trauma will disrupt patterns of coercion and cultures of abuse within mental health institutions and it will enable new narratives in mental health care.

Teak & Lead: Making Borders, Resources, and Territory in Colonial Burma

ABSTRACT Through a comparative historical analysis of two sites on Myanmar’s borders with China and Thailand, this article explores how natural resources affected border-making in Zomia. Firstly, the article argues that demand for natural resources drove lowland states’ territorialisation of the highlands in the late nineteenth century, including their desire to demarcate borders. Secondly, local actors chose different political strategies in response to lowland state penetration. Some chose to attempt to repel lowland states, others to avoid them. The type of natural resources available (‘lootable’ versus ‘unlootable’ resources) enhanced or diminished the effectiveness of the political tactics chosen by local actors. Thirdly, the article explores whether local politics or the ‘knowability’ of natural resources determined the differential success of border-making in the region. This attention to natural resources can deepen histories of ‘state-escaping’ highland peoples. This also has implications for the question of human agency and environmental determinism in Zomia, a question which is often implicit but unaddressed when scholars use the concept of the ‘friction of terrain’. In the context of accelerating climate change and the global spread of pathogens, understanding the potential for agency of non-human objects is more important than ever. Drawing on archival materials from the Myanmar National Archives, India Office Records, and the British Library, this study gives insights into both the politics of this region today, and how natural resources affected border-making at the margins of states.

“Cinema Programmes” of the British Public Relations Office in the Persian Gulf, 1944–1948

This commentary introduces the "Cinema Programmes" of the British Public Relations Office in Bahrain from 1944 to 1948. In addition to propaganda-based newsreels and information films, the programs included Hollywood feature films that were borrowed from Bahrain Petroleum Company (BAPCO). BAPCO rented the films from distributors in India for screening in its employees-only cinema in Awali. Following screenings in the com pany cinema, the films were exhibited in a range of nontheatrical venues and for different audiences. These programs, which were collected and archived in the India Office Records, provide us with one of the few sources to track the formative years of film culture in the Gulf.

The world’s first slum improvement programme: Calcutta’s bustees, 1876–1910

ABSTRACTMany believe that the first slum (settlement) upgrading projects were launched in the 1960s. In fact, arguably the world’s first began in Calcutta in 1876 and ran until 1910. It was sui generis. Like recent programmes, Calcutta’s prioritized sanitary infrastructure over dwelling repairs; unlike them, it lacked resident participation. Inspired by sanitary initiatives in Britain, it was motivated by public health concerns, especially for Europeans; unusually, it had precise geographical foci. It involved the extension of sewers; of water lines to standpipes, wash stations, and public latrines; the filling in of tanks (ponds) used for washing and cooking; the closing of domestic wells; street cleaning and street widening. It was modestly effective but had the unanticipated effect of encouraging piecemeal redevelopment at higher densities. Locally and internationally, it was soon forgotten so that similar programmes had to be reinvented. In that respect, it exemplifies a common pattern of policy amnesia.Abbreviations: AR: Administration Reports of the Commissioners of Calcutta; Calcutta: The Municipal Press; BC: Bustee Committee, Minutes; BMP: Bengal. Municipal Proceedings; IOR: India Office Records, British Museum; SC: Report of the Commission Appointed under Section 28 of Act IV (B.C.) of 1876 to Enquire into Certain Matters Connected with the Sanitation of the Town of Calcutta; Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press, 1885 [Sanitation Commission].

The impact of the religious authority in Iraq's political events (1914-1918) Study in light of the British documents

This research aims to the impact of the religious authority follow in the political events in Iraq during the First World War, and culminated in the position of the harbingers established a greater role in the years following the war, both those represented by the fact that a number of uprisings against occupying such as Najaf uprising British authority Najaf in 1918 or the fact that Iraq's major liberal revolution on the thirtieth of June 1920. Within this context revealed British documents is published on the seriousness of the role that the contribution of the religious authority and its men who have issued calls for jihad, and declared fatwas, which called for the lifting of arms against the British occupiers, who had wanted to tie Iraq to India, and turn it into a British colony to take advantage of its wealth and harness his people to serve the effort British military during and after the war. These British documents include documents of the Ministry of British India (India Office Records) British and documents of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Foreign Office) which were copies of which exist in the National Library in Baghdad in the years of the eighties of the twentieth century before being National Library of sabotage and arson, which affected the scientific institutions Cultural and after the 1991 and 2003 events.

East India Company: India Office Records from the British Library, 1595-1947

East India Company: India Office Records from the British Library, 1595-1947

Class, Cotton, and ‘Woddaries’: A Scandinavian railway contractor in Western India, 1860–69

AbstractThis article makes use of a recently unearthed archive in Sweden, complemented by research in the India Office Records and Maharashtra State Archives, to explore the business networks of the small-scale railway contractor in 1860s Bombay Presidency. The argument centres on the career of one individual, comparing him with several contemporaries. In contrast to their civilian colleagues, freebooting engineers have been a somewhat understudied group. Sometimes lacking formal technical training, and without an official position in colonial India, they were distrusted as profiteering, even corrupt, opportunists. This article will present them instead as a diverse professional class, incorporating Parsis alongside various European nationalities, who became specialists in local milieux, sourcing timber and stone at the lowest prices and retaining the loyalty of itinerant labourers. It will propose that the 1860s cotton boom in western India provided them with a short-lived window of opportunity in which to flourish, and to diversify into a variety of speculative enterprises including cotton trading, land reclamation, and explosives. The accidents and bridge collapses of the 1867 monsoon, and subsequent public outcry, will be identified as a watershed after which that window of opportunity begins to shut. The article's concluding section analyses the contractors’ relationship with their labour force and its intermediary representatives, and strategies for defusing strikes. Ultimately, small independent contractors were agents of modernity not formally affiliated with the imperial project, and forced to bargain with merchants and strikers without official backing. Theirs is a record of complex negotiations at the local level, carried out in the immediate post-Mutiny settlement.

The Imperial Security State: British Colonial Knowledge and Empire-Building in Asia, by James Hevia

Based solidly on archival sources in the India Office Records, The National Archives (including Foreign Office and War Office papers) and a wide range of secondary material, this book by James Hevia explores two historical dimensions. One is the ways in which the Intelligence Branch of the Indian Army exploited its methods of collecting topographical, statistical and human (anthropological) information to plan military campaigns; and the second is to explain the importance of intelligence collecting to our understanding of the creation of the modern state. In short, Hevia’s argument is that imperial expansion, notably in India, created the techniques for modern state self-preservation. By de-romanticising the Great Game of Anglo-Russian rivalry in Central Asia, the author claims to locate the origins of United States and British counter-insurgency ‘operations systems’ employed during the Cold War with the Soviet Union (pp. 258–60). This review will, first, examine Indian Army methods behind military planning; and, second, it will evaluate the claim of continuity into the twentieth century.

'The Friends of the Burma Hill People': Lieutenant Colonel John Cromarty Tulloch and the British Support to the Karen Independence Movement, 1947–1952

In the chaotic aftermath of Burmese independence, Britain officially maintained a policy of non-intervention in the domestic affairs of its former colony. However, the conservative dissatisfaction with what was perceived as a hurried independence soon found expression in The of the Burma Hill People, an organization founded in London in 1947 in support of the Karen nationalist movement. This paper aims at shedding new light onto the internal dynamics and motives underpinning the underground activities of the group, focusing on its charismatic founder: Lieutenant Colonel John Cromarty Tulloch, Force 136 veteran and ardent supporter of the Karen independence cause. By relying on archival material from the British Library's India Office Records, recently declassified Secret Service personal files, as well as on Tulloch's wartime memoirs, this paper serves a twofold purpose. First, it sets to offer a new degree of accuracy in reconstructing the dynamics and connections of Tulloch's network, providing a more nuanced insight of the motives and strategies of the Friends of the Burma Hill People. Second, it challenges the widespread tendency either to dismiss Tulloch's endeavor as the machinations of a nostalgic veteran, or of interpreting it within a Cold War logic. Instead, it highlights the role played by colonial narratives of martial race and loyalty in fuelling British conservative opposition against the new Burma–which are well and alive to this day.

The Role of British Military Experts in the Formation of the Qajar Troops in the First Quarter of the Xix Century

This research deals with the role of British military experts in shaping Qajar troops during the Russian-Iranian wars of 1804–1813 and 1826–1828. The article is based on a wide range both of published works and archival material. A greater portion of yet-unpublished materials dealing with the activities of British officers in Iran, as well as diplomatic documents and legislative acts is kept at RSHA1 and RSAN2. Besides, the author has relied on materials of the British Library, Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections, including archival materials of India Office Records (1858-1947).3 In addition to archival materials, the research has referred to existing sources, correspondence between diplomatic representatives of Great Britain and Russia, Qajar Iran, diaries, memoirs, travel notes of participants and contemporaries of the epoch in question. The above facts make it possible to examine the eastern policy of England, its relations with Qajar Iran, and specifically, questions arising from aid (military experts, uniform and weaponry) and funding for army reorganization; also, the attempts made in this directions by the heir to the throne, fiAbbas Mirza (1789-1833). The article does not pretend to provide a comprehensive analysis of this scantily explored subject, but aims to give a brief review of striking examples of British-Qajar interaction in the military sphere.

Commemorating Failure: The Four Hundredth Anniversary of England’s Trading Outpost in Japan

Commemorating FailureThe Four Hundredth Anniversary of England’s Trading Outpost in Japan Adam Clulow (bio) On 11 June 1613, a strange vessel sailed into the port of Hirado on the western island of Kyushu. Dispatched more than two years earlier by the English East India Company, the Clove brought with it seventy-one mariners, a varied collection of trading goods, and grand ambitions to establish a foothold in the rich Japanese market. After initial negotiations with the local lord, the leader of the expedition, John Saris, set off for central Japan in search of an audience with the retired shogun, Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543–1616), the last of Japan’s three great unifiers and the founder of a regime that had succeeded in entrenching its power over a fractious archipelago. Arriving at Ieyasu’s headquarters of Sunpu (in modern-day Shizuoka prefecture) in early September, Saris set about obtaining generous trading concessions from Tokugawa authorities. The product of these negotiations was the so-called English factory in Japan, which was established in Hirado in 1613 and placed under the direction of Saris’s trusted deputy, Richard Cocks. There the outpost remained for just over a decade, until December 1623, when Cocks’s superiors made the decision to formally abandon it. The result was the virtual suspension of English contact with Japan until the nineteenth century, when the government that had been founded by Tokugawa Ieyasu began first to totter and eventually to collapse. This year, 2013, marks the four hundredth anniversary of the English factory in Japan. Although all anniversaries are essentially arbitrary, and although the lapse of exactly four centuries since the outpost’s establishment has no particular significance, such occasions do have their uses, prompting if nothing else a moment of reflection on the current state of research concerning the history of the English experience in Japan. They can also be used, perhaps more productively, as opportunities to consider possible directions for future investigation. The starting point for such an exercise is with two incontrovertible, albeit somewhat paradoxical, facts that underpin the history [End Page 207] of the English factory. First, there can be no question that this particular experiment ended in abject failure.1 Unlike the Dutch presence in Japan, which lasted until the opening of the country in the nineteenth century, the English stay ended in what can only be described as a hasty retreat. Ludwig Riess (1861–1928), the Prussian-born professor of Tokyo University who penned one of the most important early studies of the English factory in 1898, noted that the “establishment of the East India Company in Japan was a failure,” while subsequent scholars have dismissed the venture even less charitably as an “unmitigated disaster” or as a “fiasco.”2 A ten-year experiment involving a handful of staff and producing no enduring impact either on Japan or on the parent organization’s balance sheet might have been expected to fade into obscurity. What saved the factory from this fate is the fact that it produced one of the most complete archives of the early modern trading world. In the words of one prominent archivist, “The English factory at Hirado in Japan was a minor episode in the history of the East India Company’s struggle . . . and yet it has left an archive of more than four hundred items which is unrivalled in depth and coverage at this date.”3 While the existence of these materials (the vast majority of them preserved in the India Office Records in London) is striking enough, it is also the case that they are, through the tireless work of staff at two key institutions, almost uniquely accessible. Between 1978 and 1980, the Historiographical Institute of the University of Tokyo published the complete version of Richard Cocks’s diary, a detailed and highly informative account of the factory’s daily workings covering the years 1615–1616, 1617–1619, and 1620–1622.4 And then in 1991 this already-useful resource was massively augmented by the British Library’s publication of the vast majority of the extant correspondence, journals, account books, and other records related to the factory. Compiled and edited with great skill by Anthony Farrington, The...

Silence, Accessibility, and Reading Against the Grain: Examining Voices of the Marginalized in the India Office Records

This paper deals with issues of power and silencing of the “Other” within colonial archives, particularly regarding British East India Company records of an attempted mutiny of Bengali sepoys and Javanese aristocrats in 1815, now housed in the India Office Records of the British Library. It recommends incorporating a postcolonial approach and reading records against the grain in order to recover these marginalized voices. The body of this paper is broken into three sections. The first section introduces the historical context of the attempted mutiny, questions the incomplete nature of archival and colonial records, and discusses the archivist’s responsibility to present as complete a record as possible. The second section discusses the introduction and importance of postmodern theory to the archival field. Particularly significant are arguments by practicing archivists who advocate reading records against the grain to recover voices of the marginalized, how this can be incorporated into archival practice, and the ensuing difficulties which may emerge. Finally, the third section discusses problems of access to colonial records such as those held in the India Office Records, and how the practices of digitization, international cooperation and preservation, and reading records against the grain are able to produce a plurality of voices.

Logging the ‘Frontier’: Narratives of Deforestation in the Northern Borderlands of British India, c. 1850–1940

This article analyses the institution of ‘scientific forestry’ in the northern borderlands (‘Frontier’) of British India c. 1850–1940. Using archival material from the India Office Records (IOR), it traces the extension of colonial forest policies from the plains to the inaccessible parts of the Indus River and its tributaries. The article demonstrates that ‘scientific forestry’ was an early conservation narrative claiming to preserve forest – but in reality had a long lasting and, often devastating impact on forest resources. While ‘scientific forestry’ was gradually implemented in the more distant parts of the ‘Frontier’ – an idiom for the northern borderlands of British India – they passed over the lateral valleys along the main Indus gorge where large expanses of forest remained hidden from the Imperial gaze. By virtue of their inaccessibility they emerged unscathed from a century of intense forest prospecting and exploitation. Thus only in those areas where ‘scientific forestry’ could not be implemented was pristine forest preserved.

Science and the Changing Environment in India, 1780‐1920: A Guide to Sources in the India Office Records

Science and the Changing Environment in India, 1780‐1920: A Guide to Sources in the India Office Records

Records in a Rival's Repository: Archives of the Dutch East India Company and Related Materials in the India Office Records (British Library), London (and the National Archives of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur)

AbstractTwo of the former so-called rival empires of trade in the Orient, the Dutch and the British with their respective East India Companies, are today friendly neighbours, closely co-operating both politically and economically. Their erstwhile mercantile rivalry in the East, however, is still reflected in the fact that part of the records of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) is nowadays kept in—of all places—the department of India Office Records at the British Library in London, the very repository of the archives of the British East India Company (EIC).This article presents an overview of the relatively unknown and unexplored materials derived, copied, or translated from the VOC and stored in that lion's den. Apart from a few miscellaneous papers, three groups of records will be described: the remaining archives of the VOC establishment at Melaka (in Malaysia), VOC documents in the Mackenzie collections, and relevant materials in the archives of the EIC. The bulk of the first group of records and parts of the second and third group are unique. In addition, the few Dutch records from Melaka that still remain in Malaysia will be dealt with in an Appendix.

From Kings Cross to Kew: Following the History of Zambia's Indian Community through British Imperial Archives

In the summer months of 2005 I traveled to London for the purpose of carrying out archival research in the Oriental and India Office Collection (OIOC) of the British Library at Kings Cross. My aim was to document the history of Indian immigration to the former British protectorate of Northern Rhodesia (present-day Zambia), about which very little has been published. The OIOC contains a vast amount of material relating to Asia and Africa—reportedly some 14 kilometers of shelving—including the India Office Records (IOR) and its key manuscripts detailing Indians' migration to British Central Africa.Indians' arrival into Northern Rhodesian territory can be traced in these archives to 1905, and I was interested in the period from then until the independence of the country in 1964. The information held in the IOR is partic ularly rich: because the India Office acted as an intermediary among the Colonial Office in London, the Governor's Office in Northern Rhodesia, and the Government of India in New Delhi, the records bring together and represent the concerns of all the official actors. However, when India achieved sovereignty in 1947 the doors of the India Office closed and matters relating to the Indian diaspora were transferred to the Commonwealth Relations Office and the Dominion and Colonial Offices, whose interests were empire-wide. These sets of files are presently held in the National Archives at Kew.

Malay Documents In The Melaka Records in the British Library

In 1964 F.R.J. Verhoeven, then Director General of the National Archives of Malaysia, wrote an article entitled ‘The lost archives of Dutch Malacca’ in which he lamented the apparent disappearance of the c. 2,000 volumes of records which he estimated must have been produced during the Dutch administration of Melaka from 1641 to 1824. Apart from 150 volumes in the National Archives of Indonesia in Jakarta, some fifteen volumes of Church registers now in the National Archives of Malaysia, and a small number of records in The Hague and elsewhere, nothing was known to have survived. It was only with the publication in 1983 of Ian Baxter' listing of series R/9 in the India Office Records that it became widely known that a portion of the archives had been shipped to London early in the twentieth century:The records of the Malacca Orphan Chamber and Court of Justice, R/9, occupy 44 feet of shelving (ninety-eight boxes) at the India Office Records in London. They were donated by the Government of the Straits Settlements to the India Office in June 1927, after lying, neglected, for many years in the basement of the Court House at Malacca. It is only recently (1981) that they have been completely sorted and listed. They comprise thirty-six boxes of Orphan Chamber records, fifty-four boxes of records of the College of Justice, one box of records of the Political Council and seven boxes of miscellanea. For the most part the records are written in Dutch and although they extend in date from 1685 to 1835 the bulk of them relate to the period 1785–1825, i.e. the last years of the Dutch East India Company's administration, the British occupation of 1795–1818 and the second Dutch administration of 1818–25.