In this blog, Freya Malhi, an undergraduate history student who has been interning with the ‘lascar’ strand of the Mariners project, discusses her experience of a first archival trip to the British Library with Lucy Wray.
On the 19th of July I visited the British Library with Lucy Wray to continue her research using the India Office Records. Our focus was on ‘lascars’, a term used to describe non-European sailors, particularly from South Asia, who were employed in large numbers from the 16th to mid-20th century. We were particularly interested in their interactions with the Strangers’ Home for Asiatics in London, a missionary institution which provided boarding and aid in repatriating lascars who had fallen on hard times between 1857 and 1937.
As an undergraduate, my excitement and anticipation were particularly heightened by the fact that, although I have engaged with digitised collections of primary sources many times during my degree, this was my first time doing hands-on archival research. This was a fantastic opportunity for me to experience what a career in academia might look like, given that visiting archives is key to an historian’s work.
What were my expectations?
I had loose expectations prior to this trip of what it might be like. For example, in the preceding week, Lucy gave me some photographs of sources from her previous visit to transcribe and digitise, so from that experience I knew that I would likely be looking at handwritten correspondence and reports surrounding the Strangers’ Home for Asiatics. As the British Library allows you to request files prior to visiting, I even knew what the subjects of the documents I planned to look at would likely be.
However, if anything, there were more elements of research at the British Library that I had questions about. I was curious about how the process of collecting and viewing files would work. How many staff would there be? What were the reading rooms like?
I soon learned that the British Library, as a large-scale public institution, was very organised, with a large body of staff and an online catalogue and request system. Requesting new files was therefore a straightforward and quick process (a 70-minute wait – quite understandable given the 14 kilometres of shelves that hold the India Office Papers, according to the British Library’s website [1]). The reading rooms, too, were pleasant. The warnings that we couldn’t take in food, drinks, bags, or pens made me fear that we’d be entering an environment akin to a surgeon’s sterile field, but it turned out to be more like a quiet and warmly lit library. Lucy had thankfully warned me about the loop of quiet white noise that is played in the background.
I was also curious about the form the files and archival papers would take, and how they were held and preserved. I discovered that the records I viewed mostly consisted of files that were part of much larger bound volumes of correspondence from or to the India Office’s different departments. These volumes were organised by year rather than topic, so I could turn from the pages of correspondence about lascars that I had requested a volume for and immediately see reports about a plea for help dissolving a marriage in India or discussion of a book loan request from the Manchester Vegetarian Society. While these surrounding files were not usually relevant to our research, they gave me a fascinating insight into the other simultaneous concerns of the India Office.
What surprised me?
I was surprised by the ease of access to the British Library’s records – I had always assumed that there would be a level of bureaucracy or a longer process to be able to view archival documents, and I am sure that for many archives that remains the case, but I was pleasantly surprised to learn that anyone over 18 can view British Library holdings so long as they apply for a library card and provide ID.
What did I discover?
Much like Lucy’s previous visit, many of the files I looked at comprised part of the ‘Public and Judicial Departmental Papers: Annual Files,’ IOR/L/PJ/6. However, a file of correspondence I found to be particularly revealing was instead part of the ‘Statistics and Commerce Department Papers’, IOR/L/E/6/37-74, the India Office’s Statistics and Commerce Department’s annual files produced between 1880 and 1881. This file, IOR/L/E/6/44, File 730, contained printed copies of internal correspondence within the Government of Madras Marine Department, as well as a copy of a complaint written in 1879 by Lieutenant-Colonel Hughes and the Directors of the Strangers’ Home, and remarks on that complaint from British Consuls in European ports.
The complaint itself argues that too many destitute lascars and ’Asiatic seamen’ have been sent to London by British officials in foreign ports, and that more provisions need to be made for their welfare, so they do not become destitute. The complaint includes four suggestions for how to achieve this.
This collection of correspondence demonstrates, through the various Consuls’ defences of their own positions and actions regarding lascars, that responsibility for lascar welfare was a concern oftentimes suspended between missionary and philanthropic organisations such as the Strangers’ Home, and Britain’s colonial bureaucracy and officials abroad. The British Consul at Rotterdam, for example, acquits British officials of any responsibility for high numbers of destitute lascars in his response to Hughes’s complaint:
‘In my opinion the remedy of an evil (if it can be so styled) is being sought in the wrong place. So long as Asiatics can be engaged as seamen or firemen in Indian or other Asiatic ports on the same terms as Europeans, there is no doubt that the number of such seamen temporarily destitute in European harbours […] will increase in proportion to the increased development of steam communication with the East.’
Furthermore, some of the Consuls refer to economic rather than welfare concerns surrounding the movement and repatriation of lascars. In this manner, the Strangers’ Home & the destitute lascars discussed became vehicles for a discourse about British subjects and state responsibility, while the movements of the lascars themselves were controlled and restricted.
Lucy and I have now begun the task of transcribing and cataloguing these materials. I feel certain that this experience of archival research will be invaluable as I enter my third year of my BA and tackle my dissertation; more importantly, however, it has served as confirmation that further study is something I want to pursue after I graduate.
References
[1] https://www.bl.uk/collection-guides/india-office-records [Accessed 03/08/2023]
[2] ‘File S&C 730/1880 – Government of Madras Marine Department papers in connection with a complaint by the Directors of the Strangers Home for Asiatics regarding the great number of Asiatic seamen sent to London in a destitute condition from continental ports,’ IOR/L/E/6/44, File 730: Dec 1879-May 1880, British Library, London