International Conferences and Geographical Education

The interwar conferences at the heart of our project all aimed to increase geographical education. The International Studies Conferences of the League of Nations explicitly sought to produce teaching materials that would foster in future generations an interest in distant places, and in global peace. The Pan-African Congresses contributed to the building up of encyclopaedic …

Geographies of Sensory Politics: Re-thinking Atmospheres

Geographies of Sensory Politics: Re-thinking Atmospheres Session at the New Orleans Association of American Geographers Conference, April 10th 2018 One of our broader objectives in “Conferencing the International” is to conceive of conferences as multi-sensory spaces and to question the extent to which we can explore sensory geographies of the past and their impact on …

CFP: “On being at sea: historically experiencing movement across the waves”

On being at sea: historically experiencing movement across the waves CFP: RGS-IBG Conference, Cardiff August 28-31 2018 Jake Hodder and Stephen Legg, School of Geography, University of Nottingham A networked conception of space now informs the ways in which geographers consider a host of trans-local historical phenomena, from empires to trading companies, missions to exploration, …

2nd Annual Advisory Board Meeting, July 2017

At the start of July we had the second meeting of our Advisory Board. Similar to our previous get together at the end of our first year, we invited our UK-based Board members to join us in Nottingham for a two-day meeting, divided into four sessions, in order to discuss the progress we had made on the grant, …

A Princely Archive: The Ganga Singh Memorial Trust records, Bikaner, Rajasthan, India

The nation state monopolises many official archives. These include archives at the level of the nation (the National Archives of India, in New Delhi, or the UK in Kew, London), but also at subsidiary levels (the Scottish National Archives in Ediburgh, the Bengal archives in Kolkata, the Nottinghamshire County archives in Nottingham). Conferencing the International argues that …

The Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi

Undertaking historical research in India presents the researcher with a more broadly familiar set of dilemmas: oral or archival history; popular or elite; published materials, commercial products, popular objects and social movements, or official documents, state repositories and the archive of power? These are, of course, false distinctions; the popular press tells us much about …

The National Archives of India

The National Archives of India in New Delhi, like the British National Archives at Kew in London, turn government into History. Minutes, memoranda, laws, reports, and inter-governmental circulars, designed solely for the purpose of colonial bureaucracy, now become the stuff of history making; a dauntingly huge Imperial Archive. A substantial body of scholarship exists on …

Remembering a Democratic Legacy of the Great War in Interwar India

In 2019, India will embark upon a uniquely postcolonial set of centenaries. During the Great War the Defence of India Act (1915) had given the Government of India exceptional powers to silence dissent and crush any nascent “terrorist” or “revolutionary” movement. So effective had the powers proven, against both radical and moderate nationalists, that there …

British Parliamentary Archives, London

The Parliamentary Archives house the records of the House of Lords, the House of Commons and other collections relating to the running of Parliament. Visits are by appointment only and the staff were kind enough to have ordered in-advance some documents I had located via the online database, Portcullis. These included personal papers (Correspondence between …