National Archives celebrates 50 years of Caribbean independence

To commemorate 50 years of Jamaican and Trinidadian independence, The National Archives is publishing images from the Colonial Office photographic collection on Flickr, the photo sharing website.


The National Archives will be uploading images from nearly 20 countries from Monday, the anniversary of Jamaica's independence, to 31 August, the anniversary of the independence of Trinidad and Tobago.

Visit the Caribbean collection on Flickr to view the images. New countries will be added each week day, beginning with Antigua (8 August) and the Bahamas (9 August).

The hugely diverse collection spans the colonial period and the National Archives will continue to augment it over the course of this year with images from the Central Office of Information collection (catalogue reference: INF 10) to produce a unique resource for Caribbean history.

Some of images remain unidentified, so if you recognise people, places or incidents not in the descriptions, please let them knows in the comments section below the images

Americas through a lens - National Archives photographs

You can now view hundreds of Americas photos from the National Archives CO 1069 collection online. They capture scenes from Canada to Belize, Trinidad to the South Shetland Isles, and span more than 100 years.




The images are from the Colonial Office's Photographic Collection and include some of the earliest known photographic depictions of Canada dating back to the 1850s. Some of the images have accompanying background information to give them context, but many do not.

The photographs have been uploaded to the photo-sharing website Flickr so that you can tag and contribute comments and suggestions to help improve the descriptions.

The latest online release of pictures from the Colonial Office collection follows the successful launch last year of Africa through a lens - an online showcase for the African images in the collection. The project was inspired by Project Naming, a Library and Archives Canada (LAC) initiative to help identify Inuit portrayed in its own photographic collection.

JOB: Community Project Officer - Caribbean Images (National Archives)

Exciting news of a new project, and a job opportunity for someone!

The National Archives is recruiting for a Community Project Officer to work with Caribbean images from their collection for a period of 18 months. Community engagement is fundamental to this project and the deadline is 7th November. Please pass this notice on to others you think might be interested.


The vacancy can be found on the National Archives website by searching under the jobs section, or following this link.
You may also be interested in viewing images of Africa from this collection: 'Africa through a lens' http://nationalarchives.gov.uk/Africa/

SAS-Space

So shameless self promotion - and to inform you we have added some conference papers on various Caribbean topics, presented by the Commonwealth Studies Librarian at the Society for Caribbean Studies conference to SAS-Space, the School's Institutional Repository.

Clover, David (2005) Dispersed or destroyed: archives, the West Indian Students' Union, and public memory. Society for Caribbean Studies Annual Conference Papers, 6 . ISSN 1471-2024


Clover, David (2006) Visions of the Caribbean: exploring photographs in the West India Committee Collection. Society for Caribbean Studies Annual Conference Papers, 7 . ISSN 1471-2024

Clover, David (2007) The West Indian Club Ltd: an early 20th century West Indian interest in London. Society for Caribbean Studies Annual Conference Papers, 8 . ISSN 1471-2024

Clover, David (2008) “This horably wicked action”: abortion and resistance on a Jamaican slave plantation. Society for Caribbean Studies Annual Conference Papers, 9 . ISSN 1471-2024



More papers on various topics will be added over the next few weeks.

Jubilee Time Capsule

The Institute of Commonwealth Studies Librarian recenlty met with staff from the Royal Commonwealth Society's Jubilee Time Capsule project.

With 2012 marking the Diamond Jubilee of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II also marking 60 years as Head of the Commonwealth, the project aims to build a unique time capsule of this time – and want to hear your story!

The project asks that you pick a day from the last 60 years and tell them what happened in your family, community or country. You could interview someone, write a poem, do a drawing, take a photograph or make a film. There are 21,915 days in the last 60 years (from 6th February 1952 until 5th February 2012) and they need stories for each of them!

The Time Capsule is open to people of any age but special prizes will be given to those under 25.

The Institute of Commonwealth Studies Library is currently assessing what material to contribute from our own collections, including potentially from the history of the Institute itself, as well as from some of the Commonwealth non-government organisations whose records and archives we hold. Some of the material from our photographic and political pamphlet collections may also be included.


Have a look and think about contributing to the Jubilee Time Capsule website

Mysterious Mandela

The Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory is appealing to the public to assist in finding missing information to accompany many photographs held in their collections.  They will be publishing many of these photos on their website in the coming months.

The first two batches of photographs are available here and here.

Complete the information required by commenting in the gallery if you have any of the following information regarding each photograph:


1.Who the un-identified people in the photo are
2.Who the photographer is
3.When and where the photo was taken
4.Who the copyright holder is

South Africa's Drum magazine turns 60 this month!

Drum was first published in Cape Town in March 1951 under the title African Drum moving in September 1951 to Johannesburg under a new publisher, Jim Bailey. Drum flourished, eventually achieving a circulation of 400,000 copies distributed not only in South Africa but also in Ghana, Nigeria and East Africa.


Anthony Sampson who was editor of Drum in Johannesburg in the 1950s, later writing a memoir of this time entitled Drum: an African adventure and afterwards says of the importance of Jahannesburg, , “Of all South Africa's cities, Johannesburg was the chief magnet. The gold mines below and around the city absorbed thousands of contract workers. They arrived from the rural areas to be kept in batchelor compounds. Then, months later they were sent back to their homes when their contracts expired. This world existed alongside a much more sophisticated black Johannesburg of shebeens, dancehalls, snappy dressers - where life was lived fast, and on the streets. And it was this world which provided much of the creative talent in the magazine Drum.”


Drum walked a fine line in dealing with the subject of apartheid. As confronting apartheid head-on would have led to the publication being - as other publications were to be over the following years, Drum attempted to expose the evils of the racist system without actually condemning official policy.”


While Drum opposed racism and apartheid, some of the key events of the Liberation Struggle were not published. Jim Bailey did not approve the publication of any reports or photographs of the Sharpeville massacre, nor the terrible work and living conditions of migrant workers on the mines.

More information on the history of Drum, is available on the South African History Online website.




The Baileys African History Archive  houses the Drum collection and has digitised many of the images from the South African Drum and its sister magazines across Africa. Images can be searched, viewed and purchased from this site.

The Institute of Commonwealth Studies holds Dorothy Woodson's Drum : an index to "Africa's leading magazine," 1951-1965 , and copies of Drum are held at both SOAS and the British Library.

(with thanks to the Archival Platform)

National Library of New Zealand: Flickr Commons

The purpose of the National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa is to enrich the cultural and economic life of New Zealand and its interchange with other nations.

The National Library of New Zealand has contributed since November 2008 to The Commons on Flickr, going live with a selection of 120 historical photographs from the Alexander Turnbull Library, the research library within the National Library. The Library hopes that use of the Flickr Commons helps new people discover some of the wonderful material in their collections.

The National Library's Flick Commons site includes sets looking at circuses, book bindings, 15th century printed books, Wellington, New Zealand Prime Ministers, sports, hunting and fishing, Samoa, Whakarewarewa, and Gallipoli.

Additional images are also available on the general National Library of New Zealand's general Flickr photostream, which includes photographs of the 2010 Christchurch Earthquake, Xmas in NZ, NZ soldiers going sightseeing in France, surf lifesaving, and WW1 Victory Parades. More images are available on the National Library's Timeframes website.

Africa through a lens

Africa through a lens is a set of thousands of images taken from a broader photographic collection of Foreign and Commonwealth Office images, held at The National Archives. Starting with some incredible early photographs from the 1860s, the images span over 100 years of African history. These images are now available, for the first time, to view online at http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/africa/.



The website includes podcasts looking at the origins and aims of the project; a focus on Nigeria; Africa through a lens, discussing photography and image making; and finally a podcast on conserving the images. Users can tag images on Flickr to add information about these as not all are captioned, and the captions are representative of the time they were taken (and not necessarily captions we would use today).

Particular strengths in coverage include South Africa, Nigeria, Uganda, Ghana, Kenya, Zanzibar and Tanzania

West India Committee archives - handlist now available

Another newly added handlist added to the ULRLS Archives catalogue.

The West India Committee was formed in the 18th century, by London merchants, engaged in the West Indian trade, and absentee owners of West Indian estates. The Committee acted as a pressure group for West Indian interests, principally in the support of the sugar and rum trades and, in the first decades of its existence, in opposition to the abolition of the slave trade and then slavery. Following the abolition of slavery the Committee shifted its work firstly towards the encouragement of immigrant labour from India, China and Africa, and then from the 1840s to 1856 to opposing the removal of preferential sugar duties for West Indian sugar. Later in the 19th century, there were further moves to support cane-sugar grown in the West Indies against the new threat of beet sugar which was now being grown in Europe. The West India Committee mounted a strong anti-bounty campaign, as well as seeking alternative markets for West Indian cane sugar in the United States.


When bounties were eventually abolished throughout Europe in 1902, a concerted effort was made to widen the interests of the Committee beyond sugar alone, to the promotion of West Indian trade in general. The organization grew to include many members residing in the West Indies, and the Committee turned to representing their interests. The West India Committee was succeeded by the Caribbean Council for Europe, active also on trade issues, for example in relation to the Lome Agreement, in which the European Union granted some preferential terms to countries within the ACP (African Caribbean and Pacific States) group.

The Commonwealth Studies Library holds a microfilm copy of the early records of the West India Committee

M915 West India Committee minutes 1769-1924 [microfilm] contains:

Minutes and papers of the West India Committee and its predecessors, sub-committees and related organisations, including:

• West India Merchants
• West India Planters and Merchants
• Admiralty Committee of the West India Merchants
• Sub-Committee of the West India Planters and Merchants Appointed to Oppose the Abolition of the Slave Trade
• Literary Sub-Committee of the West India Planters and Merchants
• Merchants, Owners and Masters of Ships
• Jamaica Planters and Merchants
• Country Committees and Proprietors’ Groups: eg. Demerara and Berbice (later British Guiana), Jamaica, Trinidad, and Importers of West Indian Cocoa committees
• British and Colonial Anti Bounty Association
• Board of Commissioners of Grenada and St. Vincent
• Meeting of MPs Interested in the West Indian Colonies

(microfilm copy of original at the University of West Indies, Trinidad)

and two collections of archives from the West India Committee

West India Committee: Acquired Papers ICS96 1750-1988

This collection was acquired with the West India Committee Library and includes reports and accounts and lists of members; the Chinese Emigration Committee Rough Memorandum Book, 1857-1859; Library catalogues; and albums of press cuttings and othe rpapers relating to the work of the West India Committee, its members and events in the West Indies (including albums relating to sugar bounties and free trade, the 1907 earthquake in Jamaica, the West Indian Contingent Committee and the British West Indies Regiment, visits by Sir Algernon Edward Aspinall, Secretary of the West India Committee, to the West Indies, the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture, Trinidad, royal tours, the West India Club, Hurricane Janet and the West Indies Hurricane Relief Fund, constitutional crisis in British Guiana 1953-54, and elections in British Honduras 1954). The collection also includes watercolours and sketch maps of Tobago, St Vincent and Antigua, by Sir William Young [1749-1815], Governor of Tobago [1807-1815] and a number of photograph albums.

West India Committee: Official Archives ICS97 1799-1999
This collection was donated by the West India Committee in 1999. It contains offical records of the West India Committee from about 1900. These include minutes of Annual General Meetings, Executive Committee, Management Committee and various Sub-Committees; minutes of the West Indian Contingent Committee 1915-1919; minutes of the War Services and Ladies' Committees 1939-1940; minutes of the Merchants' and Shippers' Standing Committee, and of the Passage Accommodation Sub-Committee 1949-1954; minutes of the Committee for Exports to the Caribbean, later the West Indian Trade Advisory Group 1965-1980; meeting papers, Annual Reports, lists of members, financial records and extensive files of correspondence and general files on topics including Post Lome negotiations, the rum trade, the rice trade, the banana trade, and tourism. The collection includes photographs relating to Caribbean personalities and countries.