Exploring digitized resources in a better way: workshop at the British Library

PhD Student Arnab Chakraborty reports on a recent British Library workshop

The India Office Medical Archives of the British Library conducted a workshop on its digital resources on 26th January 2018. This was to inform and educate scholars about the digitization project they have been doing with a grant from the Wellcome Trust. The workshop was organised by Dr Antonia Moon, lead curator of post-1858 India Office Records (IOR) and her other colleagues.

The speakers ranged from geographers, software developers to the British Library staff engaged with the digitization process. The participants were mostly those who extensively use the IOR and included senior historians like David Arnold and Mark Harrison among others. There was discussion on newer methods of researching digitized documents and using techniques implemented by organisations such as JISC, using images and maps to explain the medical topography in the IOR and also how visualising metadata can be used for exploratory research work.

The digitization process was started following the sources listed in the ‘health’ segment of the book ‘Science and changing environment in India, 1780-1920: a guide to sources in the India Office Records’ and the present work has covered the Sanitary and Annual Reports until 1910.

The work that the India Office Medical Archives has undertaken is indeed huge and will require plenty more time to be further organised and completed, but during the multiple group discussion sessions that were an integral part of the workshop, critiques and new ideas were exchanged on using visual techniques to explain the historical research in a different way; whereas the participants present also raised concerns about the extent to which we can and should depend on technology to ease the process of research. The workshop concluded with details of collaborative work and funding opportunities provided by the British Library and the Wellcome Trust.

Arnab Chakraborty

Centre for Global Health Histories

University of York

Christian Missions in Global History

This week CGHH PhD student Ben Walker presented a paper at the Institute of Historical Research as part of their seminar series 'Christian Missions in Global History'. Many key figures in the field were in attendance including John Stuart, Deborah Gaitskell, John Manton and David Killingray.

Ben's paper challenged the ways in which postcolonial international health is framed. He argued that in addition to the classic models of East-West conflict, former colonial powers retaining influence and the emergence of the global community, there was another significant framing large absent from the historical literature: that of old colonial power establishing health development in areas which they had never ruled or with which they had almost no relation before since before the 1880s. He argued this using his archive work on the massive growth of West Germany and Dutch Catholic medical missions in Ghana from the late 1950s onwards. This was using his research work from Aachen (Germany) Philadelphia (US), Geneva (Switzerland) and Accra (Ghana). All this was set in the context of long-term growth of medical mission across colonial and post-colonialism in Ghana.

Ben's paper provoked a great deal of discussion and many questions. It also caused debate over the nature of evangelism in medical missions, the larger picture of Catholic expansion and the limits placed on post-war German internationalism. Overall, the paper was received very positively with the leader of the discussion, John Stuart, describing it as 'excellent'.