Category Archives: Humanities

[Guest post] Lewis Namier and the First World War: the “S.O.S. signal” letter of 5 January 1915

20th century, Archives and Modern Manuscripts, Humanities, Modern, Spotlight, , ,

Opening paragraph of the letter from Lewis Namier to Robert Brand written 5 Jan 1915 [from MS. Brand 26/1, Bodleian Library]. The letter opens: "I am so sorry to trouble you on a Mon, but this letter is truly written under the S.O.S. signal." Copyright Lewis Namier

[Click to enlarge] The opening paragraph of the letter from Lewis Namier to Robert Brand, 5 Jan 1915 [MS. Brand 26/1, Bodleian Library], ©Lewis Namier

One of the occasional delights of research is the happy chance discovery of a document unrelated to your project but of value in another field. This is especially satisfying when it relates to a subject famous for the limitations of its archival sources.

Working in the Papers of Robert Brand, sometime Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford and well-connected banker at Lazard Brothers, I came across a six-page letter, written in scratchy black ink, from L. B. Namier. It is dated 5 January 1915, when Namier was a soldier in the Royal Fusiliers in a PSU (public schools and universities) battalion in Epsom. It is located in MS Brand 26/1.

Lewis Bernstein Namier (1888-1960) became, after the war, one of the most admired historians of his generation. Deploying immense knowledge and meticulous scholarship, he set rigorous new standards in documentary research and pioneered the use of prosopography – and delivered his findings in powerful prose. Constructing an account of his life is hampered by the lack of a substantial personal archive.

There are three major studies of Namier. In Lewis Namier: A Biography (1971), his widow, Julia Namier, is protective of his reputation but captures a sense of him as an individual and gives an account of his brief period in the army based on what Namier had told her. She also utilised various unsorted materials Namier had left, but he burned many of his papers in June 1940, perhaps in fear of a Nazi invasion. Namier’s collaborator on the History of Parliament project, John Brooke, helped bring order to these sources for her. On completing her book, she also destroyed some documents (especially her own letters) in this collection, which is now held by the John Rylands University of Manchester Library.

Linda Colley’s concise volume is a deft, incisive analysis of Namier’s outlook and talents as a historian. She tracked down a number of his letters in various collections in the Bodleian Library but her main sources were the same as those available to Julia Namier. It is not surprising, therefore, that her narrative of this period largely follows Julia Namier’s treatment.

D. W. Hayton’s superb large-scale biography, Conservative Revolutionary: the Lives of Lewis Namier (2019) is the product of painstaking research in an impressive range of archives and benefits from his discovery of a substantial number of documents in the History of Parliament offices, sources unavailable to Linda Colley. He makes use of them to challenge some of Julia Namier’s claims.

None of these studies makes any kind of reference to the letter of 5 January 1915; nor do they cite any other text by Namier on his time in the army. It appears, therefore, to be the only example of Namier’s own words revealing his attitudes and depicting his circumstances in this period. The letter also contains details that allow us to expand our understanding of this episode in his life.

By the time Namier wrote the letter he had been in the army for over four months and had a mounting sense of frustration with life in the camp and was growing desperate to find a means of escape – he twice describes his message as an “S.O.S. signal.”

Hayton accurately explains how unpleasant an experience Namier found his time in Epsom and uses the letters of another soldier serving with the Royal Fusiliers to capture the daily routine of recruits – the drilling and the long days full of menial duties (Hayton, p. 68). But the 5 January 1915 letter provides Namier’s vivid descriptions. He objects to having “every atom of self-respect knocked out of me”; and concludes, “Mentally and morally it amounts to slow, gradual bleeding to death.”

The letter also reveals how Namier enlisted as an ordinary soldier, thereby hoping to contribute to the war effort more quickly than “if I waited for a commission.” But he has become deeply disillusioned by his daily experience as a soldier and by the change in the composition of his unit. It began with many public school and university men with whom he shared similarities of outlook but virtually all his friends have departed for commissions and “my foreign extraction makes it much harder for me to be left among strangers.” Namier is desperate to get away.

Yet there is ambivalence in what he seeks. On the one hand, he writes of wishing to secure a commission in the Army Service Corps, since he could bring to it important skills. This, however, is hindered by his colonel who is “wild” about people leaving for commissions. Nevertheless, he asks Brand if he could intercede on his behalf. On the other hand, he mentions how F. F Urquhart, Namier’s tutor when he studied at Balliol College, Oxford, was trying through Lord Eustace Percy, the diplomat and former fellow student at Balliol, to secure some work for him at the Foreign Office. Hayton discounts the role of Balliol and Oxford (Hayton, p. 70) yet Namier’s words indicate that Julia Namier was accurate when she referred to “Sligger” Urquhart’s endeavours (Julia Namier, p. 119).

There appears to be no record of Brand’s response to the request for help in obtaining a commission. Perhaps he knew through his contacts about Percy’s efforts and regarded them as more promising. In any event, this line of escape from Epsom proved more fruitful. On 1 February Percy invited Namier to the Foreign Office, the wheels were set in motion for his transfer, and by 14 February Namier had been discharged from the army and begun working at Wellington House, the Foreign Office’s new propaganda bureau aimed at promoting American sympathy for the Allied cause in the war. Meanwhile, later in the year Brand himself also joined the civilian war machinery as a member of the Imperial Munitions Board of Canada.

Michael F. Hopkins
Sassoon Visiting Fellow, Bodleian Library Oxford, Hilary Term 2023,
and University of Liverpool

The Anti-Slavery Society and British Slavery in 20th Century Peru

20th century, Archives and Modern Manuscripts, Humanities, Modern, Spotlight, , , ,

By Nic Madge.

This is the second in a series of posts by researchers drawing on the archive of the Anti-Slavery Society, part of the Bodleian’s We Are Our History project.

The Putumayo Atrocities

The work of the Anti-Slavery and Aborigines Protection Society in exposing the Putumayo Atrocities is well known. In 1907, W. E. Hardenburg, a U.S. railway engineer, left Buenaventura, on Colombia’s Pacific coast, to travel across South America to the Atlantic.   While descending the Putumayo River, he was captured and detained by agents of the British registered Peruvian Amazon Rubber Company. He discovered that “peaceful Indians were put to work at rubber-gathering without payment, without food, in nakedness; … their women were stolen, ravished, and murdered;  [they] were flogged until their bones were laid bare when they failed to bring in a sufficient quota of rubber or attempted to escape, were left to die with their wounds festering with maggots, and their bodies were used as food for the agents’ dogs; … flogging of men, women, and children was the least of the tortures employed; [they] were mutilated in the stocks, cut to pieces with machetes, crucified head downwards, their limbs lopped off, target-shooting for diversion was practised upon them, and … they were soused in petroleum and burned alive, both men and women.” (Hardenburg The Putumayo, The Devil’s Paradise page 29)

Hardenburg escaped and travelled to Britain where he contacted the Anti-Slavery Society. John Hobbis Harris, the Society’s Organising Secretary, raised the issue with the Foreign Office and arranged for questions to be asked in the House of Commons. As a result of the Society’s pressure, the Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, appointed diplomat Roger Casement to conduct an enquiry. Casement travelled to Peru in July 1910. His report was finalised in January 1911, but only laid before Parliament in 1912. He found that the worst accounts were confirmed. The company’s agents had enslaved “the whole native population … by intimidation and brutality on a scale and of a kind which forbid description.” Sometimes, victims were pegged-out on the ground. At other times, they were flogged in stocks. Rubber “pirates” were “shot at sight”. Private rubber wars recalled “the feudal conflicts of the early Middle Ages.”

Studio portrait of John Hobbis Harris, seated and holding a pen.

John Hobbis Harris on the front cover of ‘The Anti-Slavery Reporter and Aborigines’ Friend’ (Series V, Volume 30, number 2, July 1940). Shelfmark: 100.221 r. 16.

There was outrage in the British press that representatives of a British company should act in this way. In August 1912, Canon Hensley Henson, who had attended an Anti-Slavery Society committee meeting, used his Sunday sermon in Westminster Abbey to condemn the atrocities. Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle and Lord Rothschild contributed to a Putumayo Mission Fund organised by the Duke of Norfolk.  On 20 November 1912, Travers Buxton, the Society’s secretary, and John Hobbis Harris both gave evidence to a House of Commons select committee which was considering whether the British directors of the company had any knowledge of the atrocities. The Anti-Slavery Society vigorously pursued the issue; sending a delegation to see the Prime Minister; instituting proceedings in the Chancery Division to remove the liquidator of the Peruvian Amazon Company; and drafting amendments to anti-slavery legislation to enable prosecutions to be brought in England for acts committed overseas.

The Prime Minister, Lord Asquith, referred to “the exceptional circumstances” of the Putumayo allegations. Francis Dyke Acland, Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, gave an assurance that, “No outrages of any kind were committed by Englishmen.” However, these opinions were disputed by British explorer

Letter from Percy Fawcett to 'The Times', 31 July 1912.

Letter from Percy Fawcett to ‘The Times’, 31 July 1912.

Colonel Percy Fawcett, who wrote to The Times suggesting that the rubber industry in “the whole of forest Peru” should be investigated. It was “obviously improbable that such scandals are confined to one of the better known and relatively more accessible affluents of the Amazon. Other tribes are held up to slavery besides those of the Putumayo.” Fawcett’s view was that “real slavery was the rule (though covered by quasi-legal formalities)”.

A Great Uncle and Colonel Percy Fawcett

My research into Peruvian rubber extraction has focussed upon another British company, the Tambopata Rubber Syndicate, and its enslavement of indigenous people a thousand miles from the Putumayo, at the opposite end of Peru. My interest was triggered by a letter from a great uncle, written to one of his daughters in 1953. He commented on Fawcett’s book Exploration Fawcett and mentioned that Fawcett and his companions had stayed with him between 1910 and 1912 at San Carlos and Marte, two barracas (rubber collection stations) on the Tambopata river. I never met my great uncle and knew little about him, except that he had left Manchester at the beginning of the twentieth century and, apart from fighting in World War 1, spent the rest of his life in South America. Exploration Fawcett refers to Fawcett’s work on behalf of the Royal Geographical Society delineating the border between Peru. He travelled with James Murray, a Scottish biologist, who had accompanied Ernest Shackleton on his 1907-1909 Nimrod expedition to the Antarctic, and Corporal Henry Costin, a former army gymnastic instructor. However, his book gives little detail about San Carlos and Marte.  Was there more information in the diaries and letters of Fawcett and his party?

Fawcett’s diaries are now held by the Torquay Museum. There is a transcript of Murray’s diary in the National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh. I obtained copies of some of Costin’s letters from his daughter in Australia. I found records of the Tambopata Rubber Syndicate and their British agents, Antony Gibbs and William Ricketts, in the National Archives, Kew, the London Metropolitan Archives and the Archivo General de la Nación del Perú in Lima. Murray mentioned my great uncle briefly, but, more significantly, these sources gave a vivid and disturbing description of the activities of the Tambopata Rubber Syndicate.  

Enganche por Deudas

Tambopata Rubber used between 300 and 500 indigenous workers, mainly picadores (choppers) and peones (general labourers) to collect rubber. Many came from the Peruvian and Bolivian Altiplano. Some were members of the local Ese Eja community who had been pressed into service. Like many other companies in Peru, Tambopata Rubber operated a system of enganche por deudas (literally “hooking by debts”). It was bonded labour, often forced. Employers advanced money or some other benefit (transport, accommodation and/or food) which became a debt which workers had to pay off by their labour. It was common for workers to be forced or tricked into this arrangement. Illiterate peones found themselves bound by written contacts which they had signed or marked with thumb prints, but did not understand. The necessaries provided in return for their employment (food, accommodation) were normally over-priced. Debts tended to increase not reduce. Under Peruvian law, a worker was legally obliged to stay with his employer until the debt was paid off. Often that was impossible. Some of the labourers had been transferred over to Tambopata Rubber from the previous owner of the barracas, a German called Carlos Franck. Effectively, this was the sale of human beings tied to the barracas by their debts. The Franck and Tambopata Rubber contracts provided that the workers would pay interest at the rate of 2% per month in the event of any breach of contract; renounced the legal code of their own area; and secured the performance of their enganche obligations with their “person and the best of their goods.”  In other words, enganche was slavery.

Photograph of Percy Fawcett standing, facing camera.

Percy Fawcett in 1911. Image in the public domain.

The workers were paid on Sundays with lead fichas (tokens) which could only be used in the company almacenes (stores). Prices for food at San Carlos were high and the picadores were routinely swindled over the rubber they brought in.

Tambopata Rubber sought to recover the debts of any workers who fled against their property and via sub-prefects and any new employers. Even in death, workers were bound by debt. On 26 September 1910, a guard who had been working at Marte for over two years, died of a brain haemorrhage. Franck wrote to Lawrence, the local manager, “He has left a wife and three orphaned children. The family of the deceased overwhelm me with their complaints and cries and they demand that I give them at least something to be able to support their little offspring. … I would like you to tell me if the deceased has left any balance so that his family can be protected.”

Lawrence replied, “This ill-fated employee has not left any balance in his favour. On the contrary, he has died owing us a sum.” The Tambopata Rubber Syndicate actively pursued relatives of other workers who died to recover outstanding enganche debts – on at least one occasion forcing them to sell their home.

Food and Health

Fawcett and Murray noted that food at the barracas was always in short supply. In 1910, Fawcett found Marte “in a state of starvation” with only a quart of maize left in the stores. The labourers had existed on leaves and grass for some time. By 1911, there were no provisions at all at Marte and there were often periods when workers went for days without any food. That year, four or five men died of starvation. The Marte manager led raiding parties to rob the banana trees of the Ese Eja in a neighbouring valley.

Given the climate, predatory insects, poor nutrition, the lack of sanitation and the absence of any doctor or medical assistance in the region, it was inevitable that there would be serious health problems on the two barracas. The company’s own records frequently refer to illness and death. In 1910, ten percent of Tambopata Rubber Syndicate workers died as a result of disease and hunger. Fawcett described a group of labourers from Marte arriving at San Carlos as “a grizzly, weak, thin, diseased crew.” There were many cases of malaria and beri beri. In 1911, there was a severe outbreak of fever at Marte. Fawcett described some thirty indigenous workers lying “in a filthy shed … in various stages of collapse, putrid with boils and other disorders.”

Oppression on the barracas

Severe beating was common on rubber estates. Fawcett, Murray and Costin all noted with disapproval that Lawrence frequently flogged workers. Murray stated, “Flogging is practiced at San Carlos, though we could not know to what extent, as a good face is put on things for our benefit. Lawrence, however, uses a whip on the house ‘boys’ and often without justification. For instance, Costin’s pistol was stolen. Lawrence whipped the three house-boys, without having any reason to suspect them.”

Fawcett noted, “In Peru the punishment for whacking an Indian is some years of prison but the Indian has to put up 500 Peruvian soles to state his case.” He described how one of the bookkeepers at San Carlos beat an indigenous worker so badly that complaint was made to the provincial authorities. However, in accordance with the law, the bookkeeper insisted that the victim deposit 500 soles against the expenses of the prosecution. He was unable to produce that sum and instead the bookkeeper accused him of calumny. He was imprisoned for eight months, but died after four months.

Lawrence “bought” people. He boasted to Murray that he bought a woman he kept at San Carlos (despite having a wife in La Paz) for 150 bolivianos. Fawcett wrote, “The savages bring in their children to sell frequently.” On one occasion, Lawrence exchanged two guns, each worth nine shillings and six pence (47½ pence) for two small boys.

From time to time, the workers rebelled against this regime. On 4 September 1909, there was “a serious insurrection” involving one hundred workers at Marte. They fled, after burning the almacen and account books. Tambopata Rubber’s managers, with the help of the local authorities, managed to capture and return most of them. One of the workers who returned surrendered and went down on his knees, begging for forgiveness. A manager shot and killed him as he knelt.

Denunciation of the Tambopata Rubber Syndicate

The final pieces in my research jig-saw were the records of the Anti-Slavery Society at the Bodleian which contain press-cuttings and correspondence with the Peruvian Asociación Pro Indígena. They recount how, in 1910, three picadores managed to escape from Tambopata Rubber’s barracas. They complained about their treatment to the manager of the Inca Rubber Company at Cojata. He informed Pedro Zulen, Secretary of the Asociación Pro Indígena, who wrote to the Puno Prefect:

“Manuel Machicao, Mariano Tito, and Modesto Villa, all three natives of the Department of Puno, have been subjected to corporal punishment, Machiao and Villa at the barraca “Marte” and Tito at the barraca “San Carlos”, which belongs to the Sindicate “Tambopata Rubber”.  The … workmen were punished for the least reason. …  A certain Braulio Peñaranda is named as the chief tormentor of the labourers; the provision of food is not sufficient for the people, who live on half-rations, and are forced to work from 6 in the morning to 6 in the afternoon, so that many get ill with forest diseases.”

The Asociación Pro Indígena petitioned for workers to be allowed to leave the barracas because “at present the labourers cannot leave …   whether or not they owe a debt, but are kept like slaves, condemned to die for want of resources, without receiving any aid”.

This issue was discussed at an Asociación Pro Indígena meeting on 20 January 1911. It resolved to send details to the Anti-Slavery Society under the title “La Esclavitud en la Montaña”. (Due to, in Pedro Zulen’s words, “an involuntary clerical error” publicity of the allegations wrongly named Inambari Para Rubber Estates as the company responsible, not the Tambopata Rubber Syndicate.) The allegations were published in El Deber Pro-Indígena, the Asociación’s newspaper, and repeated in the Peruvian newspapers El Comercio and La Prensa.  El Comercio stated that the “abuses reached the point of ripping indigenous people out of their homes to enslave them in the montaña.” The London Times published a telegram from its Lima Correspondent stating that the President of the Asociación petitioned the Peruvian Government to punish and put a stop to the abuses. In London, Ernest Bartlett, Tambopata Rubber’s Company Secretary, wrote to the Under Secretary of State at the Foreign Office, stating, “the alleged ill-treatment of natives can hardly be taken seriously”; “there is not an iota of truth” in the accusation; the allegations were driven by internal “political rather than humanitarian considerations”; and that he had “no doubt nothing in the nature of an outrage has taken place on [their] property”. Just like Peruvian Amazon’s denial of the Putumayo Atrocities, that attempted rebuttal is not credible in the face of the independent evidence of Fawcett, Murray and Costin.

During 1911, the Anti-Slavery Society received reports of “conditions of debt slavery prevailing throughout Peru”, but in the end only actively pursued the Putumayo Atrocities. The complication of Zulen’s “involuntary clerical error” naming the wrong company delayed its investigation into the Tambopata Rubber Syndicate and its Committee concluded that there was insufficient information to enable it to make any definite recommendation.

Postscript

In any event, by 1911, the Amazonian rubber boom was over. Rubber prices were plummeting and it was clear that the Tambopata Rubber Syndicate project was economically unsustainable. The cost of producing rubber was three times higher in South America than in the Far East. Transport was too difficult and too costly. Despite the enslavement of indigenous workers, there was a shortage of labour. There was never sufficient food for the workers. Latex could only be extracted from the local species of rubber tree by felling, rather than tapping, meaning that picadores had to travel further and further to find rubber. The company decided that the barracas could not be made financially viable and abandoned them in 1913. In December 1913, a shareholders’ meeting passed a resolution formally winding up the company and appointed a liquidator.

 

A more detailed version of Nic Madge’s research will be published in the next edition of La Revista de Historia de América (Volume 165, May-August 2023).

www.nicmadge.co.uk

 

Additional Earls of Clarendon family papers are now available

17th century, 18th century, 19th century, 20th century, Archives and Modern Manuscripts, Early modern, Humanities, Modern, Newly available (2023), ,

Following the recent release of the catalogue for the archive of the Earls of Clarendon (2nd Creation) an additional, and final, tranche of the family’s historical archive has now been catalogued and is available to readers in the Weston Library. These papers mainly comprise correspondence and papers of Victorian statesman George Villiers, the 4th Earl of Clarendon, but include some additional Villiers and Hyde family papers, including earlier correspondence and papers of Lord Cornbury (the son of Henry Hyde, the 4th Earl of Clarendon, 1st creation) and Thomas Villiers (later the 1st Earl of Clarendon, 2nd creation) as well as family genealogical notes.

George William Frederick Villiers, 4th Earl of Clarendon (1800-1870), diplomatist and
liberal statesman [Dictionary of National Biography], was ambassador at Madrid, 1833-1839, Lord Privy Seal, 1839-1841, President of the Board of Trade, 1846, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, 1847-1852, Foreign Secretary, 1853-1858, 1865-1866, 1868-1870 and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, 1864. In 1839 the 4th Earl married Lady Katharine Barham, the widow of politician John Foster Barham, and as a result this archive includes some John Barham correspondence and financial papers.

This tranche of the 4th Earl’s correspondence and papers makes available significant additional material from his time as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland (1847-1852) as well as letters concerning foreign affairs (1835-1841) and hundreds of letters of general correspondence spanning his long career in government service (1820s-1870).

Full catalogue of the papers of Howell Arthur Gwynne (1865-1950), correspondent and editor, is now available

19th century, 20th century, Archives and Modern Manuscripts, Cataloguing, Humanities, Modern, Newly available (2023), , ,

The finding aid for the papers of Howell Arthur Gwynne (1865-1950), for which only a hard copy handlist existed previously, has been retro converted and fully catalogued , making access to Gwynne’s papers published and available for the first time on Bodleian Archives and Manuscripts. The catalogue is available here.  The papers, of which comprise Gwynne’s diaries, subject papers and correspondence, were also repackaged into archival standard boxes and folders to support long term preservation. Part of the scope of the retro conversion was also enhancing dates and descriptions, which feature in the new catalogue.

Howell Arthur Gwynne is mostly known as editor of the British conservative newspaper the Morning Post from 1911 until it’s collapse in 1937 when it became absorbed by the Telegraph. Prior to this, Gwynne had a successful early career as a Reuters correspondent overseas; on 16 November 1895 he was appointed special correspondent for the second Ashanti Expedition; his diary of the expedition is at MS. Gwynne dep. 28. He also took the lead of organisation of the Reuters service during the Boer War, and was on hand to accompany Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain’s tour of South Africa 1902-1903 (see MS. Gwynne dep. 29/2).

Papers of Howell Arthur Gwynne: some of the material re-packaged and re-boxed in archival standard C7s, or kasemake boxes for volumes. Photo credit University of Oxford.

Much of the series of subject papers relates to the Morning Post‘s policy and publications, which heralded much controversy at certain points during Gwynne’s editorship. One such instance was the Morning Post’s support, both financially and in print, of General Reginald Dyer after news broke in Britain of the Amritsar Massacre of 13 April 1919, when Dyer gave orders to British led troops to open fire on a non-violent gathering of religious celebrations at Jallianwala Bagh, culminating in mass casualties.  During the Hunter Commission, an inquiry into Dwyer’s actions, the Morning Post initiated a benefit fund the ‘General Dwyer fund’ to raise financial aid for him after the dismissal from his position.  Correspondence relating to the fund, views of the Post‘s readership and an insight to the response to Dwyer’s actions and the massacre can be found at MS. Gwynne dep. 8.

Arrangement of the papers has been retained throughout the cataloguing process; the files allocated ‘major correspondence’ includes correspondence with key figures, social and political, of the early 1900s including Lady Margot Asquith, Andrew Bonar Law, and H. G. Wells. The papers will be of interest for late 19th-mid 20th century colonial and political history as well as the operations of the British Press and censorship during the First World War.

Kelly Collins

Rethinking the Aborigines Protection Society through its Informants

19th century, Archives and Modern Manuscripts, Humanities, Modern, Spotlight, , ,

By Darren Reid, University College London

This is the first in a series of posts by researchers drawing on the archive of the Anti-Slavery Society, part of the Bodleian’s We Are Our History project.

 

Within the archives of the Anti-Slavery Society are the correspondence records of its cousin, the Aborigines’ Protection Society (1837-1909), which merged with the Anti-Slavery Society in 1909. The Aborigines’ Protection Society (APS) was administered from its headquarters in London by a range of middle-class White philanthropists who felt dissatisfied with the state of relations between Britain and the range of Indigenous peoples who found themselves within the professed territories of the British Empire.

Image from the cover of the publication 'The Aborigines Friend' in January 1850 depicting the meeting of five individuals from differnt parts of the world in their traditional clothing.

Figure 1: Cover of The Aborigines’ Friend, 2 no. 21 (January 1850).

Problematically, the APS was not opposed to colonization, but only believed that colonization could be done in a nicer and more “humane” fashion by ensuring that Indigenous land was taken in a consensual and equitable manner, and that Indigenous peoples were educated to enjoy the best that European superiority could offer. At first glance, such a blatantly imperialist raison d’être may seem to limit the value of the APS as a subject of historical inquiry. For, in an academic and social environment which values diversity and seeks to shatter ethnocentric and racist discourses, do we really want to hear from a group of nineteenth-century do-gooders trumpeting the “White Man’s Burden” to assuage their imperial guilt?

However, while the APS was run by a small group of middle-class telescopic philanthropists in Britain, it was dependent upon a network of informants who wrote letters about colonial events from across the British Empire, and these letters are extremely valuable for assessing diverse lived experiences of empire. The APS correspondent archive contains over 9,000 letters from men and women, settlers and Indigenous peoples, convicts and lawyers, missionaries and soldiers, and everything in-between. Each of these informants interpreted the purpose of the APS in ways reflecting the diversity of their interests and attitudes towards empire.

Here, I examine one particularly complex case study to demonstrate the diverse perspectives on empire that can be found in the APS collections: the Thaba Nchu succession dispute of the 1880s. Thaba Nchu was a small kingdom in southern Africa which, in the mid nineteenth century, found itself within the borders of the newly established Orange Free State. The Orange Free State technically fell under the suzerainty of the British Empire, but due to a complicated series of rebellions and treaties, it was effectively an independent Afrikaner state. The sovereignty of Thaba Nchu was therefore a hot-button issue: as an independent kingdom within an independent state within a suzerain empire, there was no clear consensus on who was actually in control.

Map of southern Africa showing Thaba Nchu in relation to Cape Town, Bloemfontein and Johannesburg.

Figure 2: Map showing Thaba Nchu in relation to Cape Town, Bloemfontein, and Johannesburg. © Darren Reid

The indeterminacy of Thaba Nchu’s status led to crisis in 1880, when the death of the paramount chief led to a succession dispute between two contenders: Samuel Moroka and Tshipinare. Moroka favored strengthening ties with Britain, whereas Tshipinare wanted to strengthen ties with the Orange Free State. Tshipinare made an under-the-table deal with the president of the Orange Free State, Johannes Brand, who arrested Moroka and banished him in return for a generous cession of land. In response, Moroka travelled to London to petition the British government to intervene and back him as the true chief of Thaba Nchu.

Throughout Thaba Nchu’s succession dispute, the APS received letters from at least ten different informants hoping to establish their own narrative of events, five of whom I will discuss in this blog post. There was Samuel Moroka himself, who tried to convince Britain of its obligation to intervene. There were also two settlers, David Smith of the Cape Colony and Edmund Bourdillon of the Orange Free State, who capitalized on Samuel Moroka’s petition to bring their own Anglo-Dutch rivalry before the British public. Finally, there were Richard and Elizabeth Whitfield, a brother and sister living in London who used the succession dispute to argue for the illegitimacy of British intervention within independent states. Attending to the differences in how these informants wrote about Thaba Nchu is suggestive of the multiplicity of perspectives on empire that can be found within the APS correspondent records.

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Updated Catalogue: Conservative Central Office – Young Conservatives

20th century, Humanities, Modern, Newly available (2023), Social Sciences, , , , , , , ,

We are pleased to announce the arrival of our expanded catalogue of the Young Conservatives, the youth wing of the Conservative Party. Over 40 boxes of new material have been added to the archival collection of the organisation, which existed under this name from 1946 to 1998, and was recently revived in 2018. The new material spans from 1959 to 1994 and covers a range of records from minutes and papers of the Young Conservatives’ National Advisory Committee to campaigning leaflets, posters and manifestos, adding substantially to the existing collection held as part of the Archive of the Conservative Party. The collection covers a range of important events within the history of the Young Conservatives, most notably its swing towards the radical right-wing during the 1980s, as well as its gradual membership decline and the early political careers of some prominent figures in British political and public life. This blog post will explore a handful of interesting topics which can be explored within this expanded collection, highlighting its significant historical value.

Youth for Military Disarmament

Throughout its existence, the Young Conservatives has had varying degrees of power and influence within the Party as a whole. Our new material explores this impact through various series including working groups and reports, external relations, publicity and officers’ papers. One of their most notable areas of influence was through campaigns they led, such as Youth for Military Disarmament (YMD) and the campaign for Sunday Trading.

YMD was set up by the Young Conservatives at the start of the 1980s to counter the message of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, especially amongst youth, instead arguing against unilateral disarmament in the UK. The campaign group had multiple directors, including Nick Robinson, later BBC political editor, and created an array of campaigning materials including posters, leaflets, badges and stickers. Files on YMD included in this catalogue offer an insight into the creation and use of these campaigning materials. The image below illustrates some examples, and the ‘campaigning checklist’ suggests leafletting in streets/schools/colleges and holding public meetings to spread the message.

YMD campaigning checklist and materials – CPA CCO 506/37/7.

This note from Phil Pedley, then Vice-Chairman of the Young Conservatives, demonstrates the early creation stage of these campaigning materials. Underneath a draft sketch and outline of the poster, he explains: ‘With this I’m trying to get the message across that there’s two sides with weapons & both must put down their weapons.’ The file later contains the completed A2 poster depicting a never-ending trail of USSR missiles contrasted with a handful of NATO missiles alongside the caption: ‘Do they really want peace? We do!’, clearly modelled on this initial idea.

Note from Phil Pedley, Vice-Chairman of the Young Conservatives, outlining his ideas for a YMD poster, Jul 1981 – CPA CCO 506/37/6.

Factionalism and swing to the right

From the early 1980s the Young Conservatives began to split into two factions, known informally as the ‘wets’ and ‘dries’, or the moderate and more right-wing sections of the group. This division was a reflection of the Party as a whole, which saw a similar split under the more hard-line leadership of Margaret Thatcher. The 1980s thus saw much in-fighting within the Young Conservatives, manifesting itself in accusations of electoral malpractice, members being banned from events, and scathing newsletters and leaflets spread at conferences. The image below is an example of a poster distributed at the 1988 Young Conservatives Annual Conference by the ‘dries’, criticising the leadership of Nick Robinson, Chairman at the time, specifically for banning 100 members from the event. The ‘wets’ successfully limited the influence of the ‘dries’ for several years until 1989, when Andrew Tinney became the first Chairman successfully elected from the right-wing slate.

Poster distributed at the 1988 Young Conservatives Annual Conference – CPA CCO 506/16/44.

A couple of new boxes contain material related specifically to the Committee of Enquiry, established in 1982 in response to extremist activity and right-wing infiltration into the organisation. As outlined in a circular in file CPA CCO 506/39/1, the need for this Committee ‘had been self-evident to the National Advisory Committee after the appalling publicity – principally in the summer months of 1982 – generated by the activities of the Uxbridge Young Conservatives’, who had ‘invited self-confessed fascists to speak to their branch and produced a newsletter entitled Dreadnought, which carried articles that were blatantly racist’.

The Committee wrote a report on the ‘Infiltration by the Extreme Right into the Conservative Party’ which covered the entire Party, its members fearing that the problem was not confined to the Uxbridge Young Conservatives or even the Young Conservatives as a whole. A draft version of this report was leaked in 1983 and a consequent BBC Panorama programme, ‘Maggie’s Militant Tendency’, made various allegations of far-right sympathies within the Party. These led to two Conservative MPs, Gerald Howarth and Neil Hamilton, successfully suing the BBC for libel in 1986. Below are letters from these two MPs to John Selwyn-Gummer MP, Chairman of the Party, expressing their anger at having been included in this report.

Letters from Gerald Howarth MP and Neil Hamilton MP complaining about their inclusion in the Young Conservatives report on the infiltration of the extreme right into the Conservative Party, October 1983 – CPA CCO 506/39/4.

Notable figures

The Young Conservatives acted as an entrance into politics for many key political figures, catering for roughly the 16-30-year-old age group and encouraging membership by offering social activities and events in addition to political ones. Many of the new files released in this update contain correspondence, election manifestos, reports, and other insights into these early political careers, including future Conservative MPs such as Richard Fuller, Murdo Fraser, and Eric Pickles.

Below are some examples of candidate manifestos for internal elections, including those of:

  • Richard Fuller: Young Conservatives Chairman, 1985-1987, then an MP.
  • Nick Robinson: Young Conservatives Chairman, 1987-1988, then a journalist.
  • John Bercow: MP and Speaker of the House of Commons.
  • Andrew Tinney: Young Conservatives Chairman, 1989-1991.

Election Manifestos of Richard Fuller, 1986, and Nick Robinson, 1987 – CPA CCO 506/20/11.

Election Manifestos of John Bercow and Andrew Tinney, 1989 – CPA CCO 506/20/12.

Event programmes

Whilst the majority of the newly added material covers the 1970s and 1980s, there are a handful of interesting files covering the activities of the Young Conservatives during their earlier years of much higher membership, the group reaching c. 150,000 members in the 1950s. These include event programmes outlining the various social activities put on throughout the year by individual area branches. An example below demonstrates the events hosted by the York Young Conservative Organisation from April to June 1959, including games nights, a balloon race, and a motor treasure hunt.

Event Programme of the York Young Conservatives, 1959 – CCO 506/36/1.

All the material featured in this blog post, alongside the full updated collection of the Young Conservatives, is now available to view at the Weston Library. To browse the catalogue, visit: Collection: Conservative Party Archive: Conservative Central Office – Young Conservatives | Bodleian Archives & Manuscripts (ox.ac.uk)

Bicentenary of the Anti-Slavery Society: first minute book digitised

19th century, Archives and Modern Manuscripts, Digitisation, Humanities, Modern, Spotlight, ,

On 31st January 1823 a group calling itself the Committee on Slavery assembled at the Kings Head Tavern, Poultry, in the City of London. William Smith M.P. was in the Chair and those present included Zachary Macaulay, Samuel Hoare, Thomas Clarkson, Samuel Gurney, Thomas Babington, Thomas Hodgkin and William Wilberforce junior. The committee agreed that it was ‘deeply impressed with the magnitude and number of the evils attached to the system of slavery which prevails in many of the colonies of Great Britain, a system which appears … to be opposed to the spirit and precepts of Christianity as well as repugnant to every dictate of natural humanity and justice’ and resolved to found an association ‘for mitigating and gradually abolishing the state of slavery throughout the British dominions’ (MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 20, E2/1, pages 1-2).

Opening page of the minute book of the Anti-Slavery Society recording, in manuscript, its first meeting.

Opening page of the first minute book of the Anti-Slavery Society, MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 20, E2/1, page 1 [click to enlarge]. © Anti-Slavery International      To mark the organisation’s bicentenary the minute book has been digitised and is now available from Bodleian Archives & Manuscripts and Digital Bodleian.

This was the beginning of a campaigning organisation, the successor of which is still in existence today, two hundred years later. The Committee on Slavery changed its name a number of times during the 19th century but came to be known as the Anti-Slavery Society and extended its focus from British territories to a commitment to end slavery worldwide. It merged in 1909 with the Aborigines Protection Society (founded in 1837) which campaigned against the ill-treatment of indigenous peoples. In 1990 the Society changed its name to Anti-Slavery International and continues to campaign against modern slavery, forced labour and human trafficking.

 

The Society’s archive was purchased for the Bodleian Library in 1951, with further tranches of papers added in later decades, and is available for consultation in the Weston Library. The archive includes:

  • minute books from 1823 to 1935
  • long runs of correspondence from many parts of the world, bringing examples of slavery to the Society’s attention
  • correspondence with government departments
  • territorial files
  • lantern slides and photographs
  • financial papers
  • newspaper cuttings and printed ephemera
  • the records of associated groups such as the Mico Charity, the Committee for the Welfare of Africans in Europe and the British Armenia Committee

The Bodleian also holds The Anti-Slavery Reporter, published by the Society since 1825 with various changes of title.

The archive records key events during the Society’s history including the organisation of the first World Anti-Slavery Convention in London in 1840, the campaign against the atrocities perpetrated against enslaved labourers in the Congo and in Peru, the lobbying of the League of Nations and later the United Nations leading to international agreements to end slavery and the promotion of human rights for indigenous peoples. The Society’s work had a global reach from the apprenticeship system in the Caribbean, forced labour in Russian timber camps and pass laws in Africa to lynching in America and Mui Tsai in China and southeast Asia.

Oil painting of the Anti-Slavery Society Convention in 1841 showing packed room of delegates listening to a speaker.

The Anti-Slavery Society Convention in 1840 by Benjamin Robert Haydon. Oil on canvas, 1841. NPG 599. © National Portrait Gallery, London. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0

To mark the organisation’s bicentenary the minute book recording the first meeting has been digitised and is now available from Bodleian Archives & Manuscripts and Digital Bodleian.

New Archive of the Conservative Party releases for 2023

20th century, Humanities, Modern, Newly available (2023), Social Sciences, , , , , , , , ,

Each January the Archive of the Conservative Party releases files previously closed under the 30-year rule. The majority of newly-available files this year include research, correspondence, briefs and reports created in the lead-up to the 1992 General Election. It has been just over thirty years since John Major’s somewhat surprising election victory, allowing us to open up files offering a unique insight into the behind the scenes work contributing to this win. These include subject files and briefs prepared by Conservative Research Department, campaign documents created by Conservative Central Office, and reports collected by the Public Opinion Research Department, each with significant historical value. Additional newly-released material this year includes Conservative Research Department letter books, files created by the Conservative Overseas Bureau/International Office, and papers and correspondence of Conservatives in the European Parliament.

This blog post will explore a number of highlights of the newly-released material, specifically focussing on files relating to the 1992 General Election. A full list of the newly de-restricted items is linked at the end of the post.

General Election Warbook, Mar 1992

The Conservative Party’s Organisation Department, the largest component of Conservative Central Office, underwent a significant number of structural and organisational changes throughout its lifetime, becoming known as the Campaigning Department from 1989. The Department oversaw campaigning, training, community affairs, and local government, many of their records therefore offering an insight into election planning. Being released this year is a final draft copy of Conservative Central Office’s General Election ‘Warbook’, a document prepared for John Major outlining campaign plans for the election (see file CCO 500/24/309/2). The purpose of the document, as stated in its introduction, ‘is to outline the political scenario in which the next Election will be fought and to provide the detailed guidelines and direction within which a successful campaign can be waged.’ The document is divided into sections on the ‘battleground’ and the ‘campaign’, covering issues such as target groups and floating voters, election timing, and the role of the Prime Minister in the campaign.

Below is an example of a couple of pages from the battleground section of the document, highlighting some of the key political issues of the time in the UK. Inevitably, the economy comes first. The country was still in the midst of a recession that had begun under Thatcher’s leadership, with high unemployment a particular worry. Throughout these pages there is a clear focus on ‘psychological’ impacts of certain issues, including the ‘psychological turning point’ of inflation in the UK falling below that of Germany, and the ‘psychological 2.5 million barrier’ in unemployment figures. It is evident that this election campaign was highly focussed on the way the general public perceived economic changes. Further issues explored in later pages include the NHS, Europe, crime and education.

General Election Warbook: Economic Issues, Mar 1992 – CPA CCO 500/24/309/2.

A later section of the document focusses on target groups and communications during the campaign. It highlights the importance of media in reaching target audiences, stating ‘the objective must be to saturate the media with the Party’s campaign. If the Party reaches the media then the Party’s target groups among the electorate will also be reached.’ Some of these target groups, those typically considered floating voters or who current messaging was failing to reach, included the 30-45 age group, and upper working-class men. The importance of John Major as Party Leader is also discussed here, the document emphasising that ‘the Election Campaign will be more presidential in its style and manner than hitherto experienced.’

General Election Warbook: Target Groups and Communications, Mar 1992 – CPA CCO 500/24/309/2.

Inside Conservative Research Department, Mar-Apr 1992

Conservative Research Department also played a fundamental role in preparations for the election, acting as an essential source of facts and figures for key party members and MPs during the campaign. During the build-up to the 1992 General Election, David Cameron was Head of the Political Section of the Research Department, playing an integral role in these preparations. Amongst the new releases for this year are a couple of his letter books, as well as letters and briefs created by him amongst the letter books of desk officers who worked under his leadership.

The memoranda pictured below, sent out by Cameron in successive days in the week before Labour released their Shadow Budget, illustrate the inner workings of the Research Department at this time. Cameron stresses the importance of making sure ‘we destroy, comprehensively, Labour’s Shadow Budget on Tuesday’, highlighting the need to find any ‘technical slip ups’ and to brief selected journalists with specific topics and questions that might be particularly harmful to the opposition. This period was obviously one of the busiest for those employed in this department, with specific focus on anticipating the moves and policies of other parties in order to effectively tackle them.

David Cameron Letter Book: Political Section (General Election briefing material), Mar 1992 – CPA CRD/L/5/6/14.

The same letter book also contains a document looking back on the work of Conservative Research Department during the campaign. In addition to leading the Political Section of the Research Department, Cameron was responsible for briefing John Major for his press conferences throughout the election campaign, contributing to the very early mornings demonstrated by this timetable. This was perhaps too much to take on, as he reflects: ‘It was a mistake for the job of briefing the Prime Minster to be given to the Head of the Political Section. I should have concentrated solely on monitoring and responding to the statements and activities of the Labour and Liberal parties. It was quite difficult to combine both jobs and do them properly.’ Other reflections include the fact that the Economic Section were ‘persistent offenders’ in being late to submit briefs, and that opposition monitoring had been a particularly successful aspect of the campaign.

David Cameron Letter Book: Political Section (General Election briefing material), Apr 1992 – CPA CRD/L/5/6/14.

Defence, 1990-1992

The issue of defence was an area in which the Conservative Party particularly sought to distance their policies from those of their opposition, emphasising their approach as the only one able to keep the country safe. A newly-released subject file on defence (COB 8/5/2 Folder 5) contains briefings and memoranda relating to the Saatchi and Saatchi Party Election Broadcast on defence. The file demonstrates the gradual process involved in creating such broadcasts, with various annotated drafts illustrating how phrasing and structure was altered. The image below shows Guy Rowlands, Conservative Research Department defence desk officer, emphasising the need to remove the naming of the Ayatollahs as ‘villains’, as this inclusion was ‘just too sensitive and would spark problems’.

Party Election Broadcast on defence: planning, Feb 1992 – CPA COB 8/5/2 (Folder 5).

This file also contains papers relating to a plan of ‘teasing out some damaging nuggets from the Labour hierarchy by way of inspired correspondence.’ The plan involved finding members of the public, identified by constituency agents, willing to send letters to opposition MPs such as John Prescott, Gerald Kaufman and Joan Ruddock, to help the Party learn more about Labour’s defence policy and even encourage admissions such as ‘their life-long support for CND’, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. In a letter to the Oldham West Conservative Association, Rowlands offers recommendations for such correspondence, suggesting ‘perhaps the letter-writer could pretend to be full of concern for nuclear proliferation and argue that the world needs organisations like CND more than ever before…!’ This was certainly an interesting tactic but may well have contributed in some small way to the Party’s election victory.

‘The Quest for Labour’s Defence Policy’, Feb 1992 – CPA COB 8/5/2 (Folder 5).

All the material featured in this blog post will be made available from 3 Jan 2023. The full list of de-restricted items can be accessed here: Files de-restricted on 2023-01-03

An Interpreter’s Gift: Tokens of Sino-British Friendships in the First World War

20th century, Asian and Middle Eastern Collections, Humanities, Medical, Modern, New acquisition, Spotlight, , , ,

Among recent donations to the Bodleian Library is a stunning lace edged silk cushion cover, now part of the Weston Library Special Collections under shelf mark MS.Chin.a.25. Delicately embroidered with floral patterns and measuring about two feet long and wide, the piece features a calligraphed dedication in Chinese and, at its centre, a watercolour painting reading “Memories from Péronne” in French.

Bodleian Libraries, MS. Chin a.25

Bodleian Libraries, MS. Chin a.25

It is no coincidence that the name of Péronne should immediately evoke the history of the First World War through its association with the Battle of the Somme. Pictured above (Figure 1), the cushion cover was gifted during the war by Zhang Jiantang, a Chinese interpreter and medical dresser enrolled in the Chinese Labour Corps, to Frederick Jones (1890-1975), Serjeant Shoemaker serving with the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC) in France.

In recent years, historians of China and Europe have shed increasing light on the long-forgotten role of an estimated 140,000 Chinese men who were sent to Europe to perform manual and support labour between 1916 and 1920. As the French and British governments were being faced with hefty war casualties and acute manpower shortages, they negotiated agreements to recruit Chinese labourers, who then became enlisted as part of the colonial troops administered by the French Ministry of War, or as part of the Chinese Labour Corps (CLC) under the British Expeditionary Forces. These men performed a variety of tasks including factory, agricultural, building, and demining work, before being sent back to China around 1918-1920. Among them, an estimated four to five hundred were formally enrolled as interpreters, with many more who, through linguistic skills acquired at various stages of their lives, performed translation and interpreting duties on top of other tasks.

Among the latter was Zhang Jiantang, who signed as “dresser and translator at the Chinese hospital in France” on the cushion cover that he presented to Frederick Jones. The embroidered piece was a gift for Serjeant Jones to bring back to his wife, Annie Lydia Durbin, whom he had married in January 1916 during a short permission home to Fulham, London. The inscription in Chinese reads as a powerful testament to the deep friendship that developed between the two men, despite them having known each other for a mere two months, and despite the “far-reaching racial and linguistic differences” which should have separated them.

Wedding picture of Frederick Jones and Annie Lydia Durbin, January 1916. Private family collection, courtesy of Ms. Iris Jones.

Wedding picture of Frederick Jones and Annie Lydia Durbin, January 1916. Private family collection, courtesy of Ms. Iris Jones.

In all likelihood, the mention of “Chinese Hospital” on the dedication should point towards the two men having met at the No. 3 Native Labour General Hospital in Noyelles-sur-Mer, which was set up in April 1917 as the “Chinese Hospital” before being renamed as part of a larger system of native labour hospitals for colonial workers. The Noyelles hospital was by far the largest on the Western Front employing and treating Chinese labourers. However, several other medical institutions did employ Chinese personnel, and records show that Chinese medical assistants were often transferred from Noyelles to other institutions when practical needs arose. In particular, the N°7 Native Labour Hospital in Le Havre did employ a sizeable number of Chinese workers, as well as a Serjeant Jones from RAMC who reported for duty in August 1918 from the neighbouring 52nd stationary hospital.

Hospitals, of course, have been described as a key site which both affirmed and questioned colonial and racist hierarchies during the First World War, as well as perhaps one of its most intimate places of encounter (Maguire 2021). Despite the segregation in place and despite frequent descriptions of Chinese medical staff as “lacking knowledge and discipline” in various war diaries of field hospitals, the amount of care, work, and language skills that went into the creation of such a gift in wartime keep reminding us of the importance of looking beyond Eurocentric administrative archives for writing deeply textured, human sized histories of the First World War.

While the exact geographic origin of the cushion cover cannot be pinpointed yet, working alongside Chinese medical workers undoubtedly left a deep impression on the RAMC Serjeant. His daughter, who turned a hundred and one years old this year, still remembers vividly the deep impression that Chinese stretcher-bearers left on her father, and the soothing words in Mandarin that he picked up from them – words that still soothe her to this day.

Coraline Jortay
Laming Junior Research Fellow
The Queen’s College

Our grateful thanks go to Ms. Iris Jones, Frederick Jones’ daughter, for this wonderful gift to the library.

Sources:
Oral history interview conducted by Dr. Coraline Jortay (Laming Junior Research Fellow, The Queen’s College) with Ms. Iris Jones on 9th October 2022; Jones family papers; UK National Archives WO 95/4115 and WO 372/11.

Further readings on the history of Chinese labourers in the First World War:
Chen San-ching, Huagong yu ouzhan, Taipei: Academia Sinica, 1986.
Dendooven, Dominiek. Asia in Flanders Fields. A Transnational History of Indians and Chinese on the Western Front, 1914-1920. University of Kent, 2018.
James, Gregory. The Chinese Labour Corps:(1916-1920). Hong Kong: Bayview, 2013.
Li Ma. (eds.). Les Travailleurs chinois en France dans la Première Guerre mondiale. Paris: CNRS, 2012.
Xu, Guoqi. Strangers on the Western Front: Chinese Workers in the Great War. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011.

Further readings on the colonial politics of WWI Hospitals:
Buxton, Hilary ‘Imperial Amnesia: Race, Trauma and Indian Troops in the First World War’, Past & Present, 241 (2018).
Hyson, Samuel and Lester, Alan ‘“British India on Trial”: Brighton Military Hospitals and the Politics of Empire in World War I’, Journal of Historical Geography, 38, 1 (2012).
Anna Maguire, ed., ‘On the Wards: Hospitals and Encounters’, in Contact Zones of the First World War: Cultural Encounters across the British Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021, 153–76.

Collecting COVID: Oral Histories now available

21st century, Archives and Modern Manuscripts, Digital archives, Humanities, Medical, Newly available (2022), Sciences, Social Sciences, Women, , ,

The Collecting COVID project has been underway at the Bodleian Libraries and History of Science Museum since late 2021, with an active collecting programme achieving a range of material acquisitions relating to the University’s research response to COVID-19.  To complement the physical COVID-19 collections established at both institutions, the Bodleian has also been collecting oral history interviews, all conducted by writer and broadcaster Georgina Ferry.

The first batch of born digital audio files have now been made publicly accessible through the University Podcasts website.

https://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/series/collecting-covid-oral-histories

Consisting of 20 episodes relating to the interviews of 13 researchers and academics spanning across academic divisions, the interviews reveal an insight into some of the incredibly impactful work happening behind the scenes during the height of the pandemic. From drug discovery/repurposing, vaccine trials and development, government policy tracking and development of mass testing programmes, the interviews offer the listener a window into our recent past and into the immense efforts taken to combat a global health emergency.

The Collecting COVID project is funded by the E. P. A. Cephalosporin Fund.