This week’s guest blog comes from Nicola Lawson, Assistant Curator at the Beacon Museum, Whitehaven, Cumbria, to coincide with the opening of an exhibition at the Museum, ‘Edith Brown: Medicine Woman’, which runs from 13th January to 25th March 2018. A number of items relating to Edith Brown held in a collection of papers relating to the Ludhiana Medical College (ref: MS 381189) have been loaned to the Museum from
As we wind up for the winter holidays and bid farewell to 2017, it seems every archivist here at SOAS Archives and Special Collections has a festive archive anecdote to share, so we thought we would collate our favourites into a short seasonal Blog post! SOAS Archives and Special collections, broadly speaking, documents the British interaction with Africa, Asia and the Middle East over the past two centuries. The collections
“Amazing! Diaries, photos, maps, SOAS history – absolutely wonderful!” “The range of material is a real testament to the collections SOAS holds” “Useful to see the range of the collection so I can promote it when training students and speaking to staff” “I have a far less abstract idea of the archives and special collections now and feel increased confidence in visiting” Just some of the great feedback from our
Taking place in the wake of serious drought, floods and hunger, The Boxer Rebellion, Yihetuan or most poetically, The Righteous and Harmonious Fists Movement, was an uprising in China that took place between 1899 and 1900. Tensions rose quickly, culminating with serious anti-foreigner violence in Peking (Beijing) and the city being taken under siege by ‘the Boxers’. Eight international forces eventually forcibly subdued the rebels and the following September the Peking Protocol was
This week’s blog is written by our South Asia Librarian, Farzana Whitfield, and marks the 70th anniversary of the Partition of India. Farzana looks back on her family’s personal experience and memories of Partition. This August marks 70 years of India’s independence from British rule (15th August) giving birth to 2 nations- a Hindu majority India and a Muslim majority Pakistan (14th August). Subsequently there were 3 wars between India
This week’s blog looks at the papers of David Storm Rice’s excavations at Harran, Turkey. Rice, a SOAS academic, made four expeditions to Harran in the 1950s. Each expedition is represented in the archive, which includes notes, photographs, drawings, and correspondence made in the field, documenting not only Rice’s findings but also the practical side of organising an archaeological dig. Harran is in south-east Turkey, not far from Urfa and
This week we continue our series of posts celebrating the bicentenary of John Swire & Sons by taking a look at the iconic Taikoo Sugar Refinery. Established by John Samuel Swire in 1881 in direct competition to Jardine, Matheson & Co who already owned a refinery, the Taikoo Sugar Refinery in Hong Kong soon became the world’s largest and most sophisticated plant in its day. Butterfield and Swire,
This week’s blog looks at the papers of Liao Hongying (1905-1998), which have recently been catalogued. An agricultural chemist, Liao met her husband Derek Bryan while he was working in China. Moving with him to Britain, Liao became committed to furthering understanding of China, a task on which Liao and Bryan worked closely together throughout their lives. Liao’s papers are available on the Archive Catalogue under PP MS 99. Liao
This week’s blog looks at the personal papers of Hermann Derek Bryan (1910-2003), which have recently been catalogued. Bryan’s life and career were bound up with China, firstly as a consular official and later as a teacher and advocate of closer British-Chinese relations. The catalogue for his papers is available on the Archive Catalogue under PP MS 99. Bryan first sailed for China in 1932, aged 21. He had taken
As SOAS marks Black History Month we continue to hi-light historical collections held by SOAS Archives, which reveal the long-standing Black presence in the UK, as well as the contributions and achievements of Black peoples in local, national and international arenas. This week we look at papers in the archives relating to Seretse Khama (1921-1980), the first President of Botswana, who spent some of his early life in Britain. He is also the subject of a
