Epistolary Labour: A Cultural History of the Imperial Letter and British Family Life in Colonial South Asia, 1857-1921

书信劳动：1857-1921 年南亚殖民地的帝国信件和英国家庭生活的文化史

• 批准号: 2273876
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Leicester
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2019 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2273876
• 关键词: Epistolary; Labour; Cultural; History; Imperial

During the age of Empire from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries, many British families were mobile and endured constant separations, as family members moved around the world for government and military postings, travel and missionary work. Materials such as letters, gifts, drawings and photographs were fundamental for distant individuals to share news, discipline their children and maintain a sense of belonging to family at home. Family events including births, marriages and death were all marked by the exchange of these kinds of objects, and without them continued affection for one another was lost during such moments of transition and upheaval. This project will trace the communication networks within imperial families over time and also understand why geographical and cultural separation inspired such creativity. Individuals took to water-colouring, scrapbooking and writing stories in intricately written letters to document their time on the Indian subcontinent, but also to make their correspondents in Britain feel intimate with their new lives and environments. In her 2004 text Empire Families, Elizabeth Buettner generated conversation about the positive effects of letter-writing on the 'long-distance intimacy' of families serving the Raj during late imperial rule. Kate Smith and Margot Finn have explored correspondence, but also material culture, within disconnected families in the earlier period of East India Company rule. I will build on this research to produce a new study of a selection of families and their archival collections which will span a more extensive time period than has been addressed thus far. In this way, many family archives with connections to colonial South Asia, which have not been previously examined with a view to historical research, will be introduced to the field through this project. Extensive research will be conducted into the biographies of at least five colonial families, such as the collections of the Warnefords-cum-Nightingales of the Andaman Islands or the Starr family of the North-West Frontier. These family deposits in institutions such as The British Library and The Centre of South Asian Studies are extremely rich, often containing hundreds of intensely personal letters detailing everything from relationships to illness to violence, but they do not often receive attention. Deep analysis of the language in the letters or the artistic techniques of water-colours or drawings in these collections will help us understand how imperial families operated and the myriad ways they articulated loss and longing. But it will also be important to take a wider view of the political and social context of these sources. For instance, historians including Emily Manktelow and Esme Cleall have recently demonstrated that the colonial family was deeply politicised due to the unstable power dynamics between coloniser and colonised. This project will bring these kinds of sources to the fore of cultural historical analysis when they have too often been dismissed as mundane and insignificant.Another intention for this project will be to explore whether Indian communities and individuals could provide emotional support to, and share affection with, these imperial families. A function of new imperial history is to appreciate the two-way exchange between metropole and colony, valuing the impact of Indian culture on British mentalities and behaviour. Generally, research into imperial families has focussed upon the evidence of British expatriates maintaining ties with British friends and kin in the metropole, without considering how they channelled their energy into creating new bonds in India - sometimes with so-called 'natives' through interracial marriages or adopted families. This project will thus aim to be one of the first in-depth investigations into the wide range of new relationships that could form in the colonies across the racial and cultural divide.

在18世纪末到20世纪初的帝国时代，许多英国家庭都是移动的，并忍受着不断的分离，因为家庭成员为了政府和军事职位、旅行和传教工作而在世界各地移动。信件、礼物、图画和照片等材料是远方的个人分享新闻、管教子女和保持对家庭归属感的基本条件。包括出生、结婚和死亡在内的家庭事件都以交换这些物品为标志，没有这些物品，在这种过渡和动荡的时刻，彼此之间的持续感情就会消失。这个项目将追踪皇室家族内部的通信网络，并了解为什么地理和文化的分离激发了这种创造力。人们开始用水彩画、剪贴簿和写故事的方式来记录他们在印度次大陆的时光，同时也让他们在英国的通讯员对他们的新生活和环境感到亲切。在她2004年的文本《帝国家庭》中，伊丽莎白·比特纳（Elizabeth Buettner）引发了关于写信对帝国统治后期为英国服务的家庭的“远距离亲密关系”的积极影响的讨论。凯特·史密斯（Kate Smith）和玛戈特·芬恩（Margot Finn）在东印度公司统治的早期，在不联系的家庭中探索了通信，也探索了物质文化。我将在这项研究的基础上，对一些家庭及其档案收藏进行一项新的研究，这将比迄今为止所讨论的时间跨度更大。这样，许多与南亚殖民地有联系的家族档案，以前没有为历史研究进行过审查，将通过这个项目介绍给实地。将对至少五个殖民家庭的传记进行广泛的研究，例如安达曼群岛的Warnefords-cum-Nightingales或西北边境的Starr家族的收藏。这些家庭在大英图书馆和南亚研究中心等机构的存款非常丰富，通常包含数百封私人信件，详细描述了从关系到疾病到暴力的一切，但它们通常不会受到关注。深入分析这些收藏品中的信件语言或水彩画或绘画的艺术技巧，将有助于我们了解皇室家族是如何运作的，以及他们表达失落和渴望的无数方式。但从更广泛的角度看待这些来源的政治和社会背景也很重要。例如，历史学家包括艾米丽曼克特洛和埃斯梅克利奥最近证明，殖民家庭是深刻的政治化，由于不稳定的权力动态之间的殖民者和殖民。这个项目将把这些经常被视为平凡和微不足道的资源带到文化历史分析的前沿。这个项目的另一个目的是探索印度社区和个人是否可以为这些皇室提供情感支持，并与他们分享感情。新帝国史的一个功能是欣赏宗主国与殖民地之间的双向交流，重视印度文化对英国人心理和行为的影响。一般来说，对皇室家族的研究集中在英国侨民与英国朋友和大都市亲属保持联系的证据上，而没有考虑他们如何将精力用于在印度建立新的联系-有时通过跨种族婚姻或收养家庭与所谓的“本地人”建立联系。因此，该项目的目标是成为第一批深入调查跨越种族和文化鸿沟可能在殖民地形成的广泛的新关系的项目之一。