Tag: Afghanistan
Primary Sources: British and US documents on Afghanistan, Central Asia, and Persia
Afghanistan and the U.S., 1945-1963: Records of the U.S. State Department Classified Files
Declassified U.S. State Department files documenting U.S. and Afghan relations during the height of the Cold War and U.S. policies toward Afghanistan. The resource includes 3 subcollections:
- Records of the Department of State relating to Internal Affairs: Afghanistan, 1945-1949
- Records of the Department of State relating to Internal Affairs: Afghanistan, 1960-1963
- Records of the Department of State relating to Political Relations: U.S. and Afghanistan, 1930-1959
Afghanistan in 1919: The Third Anglo-Afghan War
The Third Anglo-Afghan War began 6 May 1919 and ended with an armistice on 8 August 1919 resulted in Afghanistan gaining indpendence from British influence. This collection of British India Office documents includes confidential correspondence, memoranda, orders, reports and other materials that provide a broad spectrum of information on military policy and administration, including the organization, operations and equipment of the British army during the war.
Central Asia, Persia and Afghanistan, 1834-1922: From Silk Road to Soviet Rule
This collection of British Foreign Office files explores the history of Persia (Iran), Central Asia and Afghanistan from the decline of the Silk Road in the first half of the nineteenth century to the establishment of Soviet rule over parts of the region in the early 1920s. It encompasses the era of “The Great Game” – a political and diplomatic confrontation between the Russian and British Empires for influence, territory and trade across a vast region, from the Black Sea in the west to the Pamir Mountains in the east.
Comprised of correspondence, intelligence reports, agents’ diaries, minutes, maps, newspaper excerpts and other materials from the FO 65, FO 106, FO 371 and FO 539 series, this resource forms one of the greatest existing sets of historical documents relating to this region, offering insights not only into the impact of Great Power politics on the region, but also the region’s peoples, cultures and societies.
Trial of Afghan Central Press at UC Berkeley Library
We have set up a thirty-day trial of Afghan Central Press at UC Berkeley Library beginning November 15, 2022.
The vendor description is as follows,
“The Afghan Central Press collection brings together four national, Kabul-based publications of Afghanistan whose long runs and prominence provide a concentrated vantage point for understanding developments in Afghanistan for much of the twentieth century. The English-language Kabul Times is presented alongside Pushto publications Anīs (انیس, Companion), Hewād (هیواد, Homeland), and Iṣlāḥ (اصلاح, Reform).”
The collection provides full-text access to over fifty thousand individual issues in Dari (Persian), Pushto, and English languages.
The Afghan Central Press collection is hosted on Eastview’s Global Press Archive platform.
[Webinar-UC Berkeley Library] Afghanistan: One Year Later!
We invite you to attend a ninety-minute Afghanistan-related webinar sponsored by multiple Area and International Studies-related centers and Institutes (CMES, ISAS, ISEEES, IEAS) and the library at UC Berkeley.
Title of the webinar: Afghanistan: One Year Later!
Date: August 16, 2022
Day: Tuesday
Time:
11:30 am to 1 pm PDT
1:30 pm to 3 pm CDT
2:30 pm to 4 pm EDT
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7:30 pm to 9 pm UK time
11:00 to midnight Kabul time
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Registration
The webinar is free and open to all with prior registration: http://ucberk.li/3r3
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Speakers
- PROFESSOR CARTER MALKASIAN, PH.D., Chair, Defense Analysis Department, Naval Postgraduate School
- PROFESSOR SHER JAN AHMADZAI, Director of the Center for Afghanistan Studies, University of Nebraska at Omaha
- PROFESSOR DIPALI MUKHOPADHYAY, PH.D., Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota
- PROFESSOR SHAH MAHMOUD HANIFI, PH.D., Department of History, James Madison University
- Moderator: Dr. Liladhar R. Pendse, Librarian, UC Berkeley
A special note of gratitude to the Library’s Communications Team, Professors Asad Q. Ahmed of Middle Eastern Languages & Cultures, Wali Ahmadi of Middle Eastern Languages & Cultures, and Munis Faruqui of Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies, Central Asia Working Group at the IEAS.
Afghanistan: At the Heart of the Silk Roads Virtual Talk
Afghanistan: At the Heart of the Silk Roads
Sanjyot Mehendale, UC Berkeley
Thursday, October 21, 2021, 7 pm (ET)
A talk organized by the Dunhuang Foundation
PO Box 8309, Houston, TX 77288
Register for the virtual talk here
This talk aims to counterbalance the popularly imagined Afghanistan—filtered by the mass media through the lens of terrorism and war— as a barren and backward place. Instead, presenting a place that lies at the heart of vibrant, millennia-old regional and international trade and exchange networks, with a culture not only rich but richly diverse, not isolated and insulated but deeply and complexly engaged with other cultures near and far.
Sanjyot Mehendale received her B.A. (Art and Archaeology) from the University of Amsterdam and her M.A. (Art and Archaeology) from the Rijksuniversity of Leiden, The Netherlands. She obtained her Ph.D. (Near Eastern Studies) in 1997 from the University of California at Berkeley. Since 1997, she has been teaching Central Asian and Silk Roads art and archaeology in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Berkeley. From 2001-2005, she was the co-director of the Uzbek-Berkeley Archaeological Mission (UBAM). During the same period, she was Executive Director of the Caucasus and Central Asia Program. Among Dr. Mehendale’s main research concerns is a focus on the Kushan period, in particular on trade and cultural exchange and the relationship between Kushan kingship and Buddhist institutions. A recipient of a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, she has developed, in collaboration with the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative, a digital archive of the Begram ivory and bone carvings, which were once housed in the National Museum in Kabul, Afghanistan (www.ecai.org/begramweb). The author of several articles on Silk Roads art and archaeology, she is the co-editor of Central Asia and the Caucasus: Transnationalism and Diaspora (Routledge, 2005). At Berkeley, Sanjyot Mehendale is Chair of the P.Y. and Kinmay W. Tang Center for Silk Road Studies and Vice-Chair of the Center for Buddhist Studies.
Announcing a launch of new quarterly webinar series!-Save the Date, March 18, 2021
This event is the first quarterly event in a four-part series entitled “Connecting and collecting to empower.” The series will focus on libraries and library collections from different regions of the globe to highlight the collections, print, and electronic resources from often “forgotten” or “exoticized” parts of our world. No library is an island and as curators, we are often interconnected. It is a known fact that today academic libraries can no longer serve as an archive of all that was printed from a specific region. This series is geared towards students, faculty, and researchers, and the presenters in these webinars will be faculty, academic librarians, curators, researchers, and doctoral students. Each presenter will present how the library’s collections have aided them in their academic pursuits. What were some of the challenges they had to face when they were looking for specific resources and how and if the librarians helped them overcome them?
First Webinar: The Other Asia: Central Asia and Library Collections (Spring 2021)
This 90 minutes webinar is dedicated to various library sources in Central Asia. Often, just like the Great Game in the 19th century, Central Asian Studies library collections are contested and relegated between the North American librarians for East European/ Eurasian Studies and Middle Eastern/ Near Eastern Studies. The US State Department, on the other hand, has attributed Central Asia alongside South Asia. Thus collecting Central Asian materials marks extensive collaboration among various librarians. The speakers at this webinar will speak to their efforts in collaborating to build a sustainable collection at their institutions. In this meeting, they will discuss some of the strategies they have used to develop research-level collections and collaborate with their colleagues in Central Asia. They will also focus on some open access resources.
This zoom event is free and open to all with prior registration here.
Thursday, March 18, 202111 am-12:30 PST/ 1 pm-2:30 EST
Opening Remarks: Professor David W. Roland-Holst, Agricultural and Resource Economics, UC Berkeley
Speakers:
Mr. Andy Spencer, Librarian, Middle Eastern & Central Asian Studies Librarian, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Dr. Akram Habibulla, Librarian for Middle Eastern, Islamic, and Central Eurasian Studies, Indiana University
Dr. Shah Mahmoud Hanifi, Professor of History and the founding coordinator of the Middle Eastern Communities and Migrations minor, James Madison University
Emily Laskin, Ph.D. Candidate Slavic Languages and Literatures, UC Berkeley
Organizer: Dr. Liladhar R. Pendse, UC Berkeley
(Open Access) KĀRAWĀN- Afghanistan Newspaper Digitized by University of Nebraska Libraries
Since the US invasion of Afghanistan, we continue to hear about the success of US policies when it comes to the nation-building in a war-torn land. We also continue hearing the ongoing violence in the country, and how we are winning the war. Policies aside, I personally support and stand by our American troops our soldiers overseas!
We rarely hear about the projects that lead to a sort of cultural memory preservation or often these are relegated to backstage. And our homeland is a major sponsor of such projects overseas. Domestically, public institutions of higher education continue to perform miracles by offering more and more digitized resources. Open Access matters!
Karawan is indeed a breath of fresh air in the OA domain. The University of Nebraska has digitized its issues. That can be accessed here.
The site-description states that it was established by Sạbahuddin̄ Kushkakī (not to be confused with Burhanuddin Kushkaki) on 24 September 1968. Who was Sạbahuddin̄ Kushkakī is the question to which the answer cannot be simple? The US National Security Archive at GW University provides some insight on him in the context of National Endowment for Democracy (NED). A document entitled Afghanistan Democratic Education Project is informative of the early US efforts to carry out democratic goodwill projects. One can also find more information about him through the FOIA releases here (page.3) I will not dwell upon the trajectory of “the American Friends of Afghanistan, as one can read into who could have been its executive director at one point: z.k.”
The point here is that due to these policies we have an effect of unintended consequences– we have access to Karawan!
Primary Sources: Indian Army and Colonial Warfare on the Frontiers of India, 1914-1920
The Library has recently acquired Indian Army and Colonial Warfare on the Frontiers of India, 1914-1920, part of the India Office Records held by the British Library (IOR/L/MIL/17/5/4115).
For generations of British and Indian Officers and men, the North-West Frontier was the scene of repeated skirmishes and major campaigns against the trans-border Pathan tribes who inhabited the mountainous no-man’s land between India and Afghanistan. This collection contains Army Lists; Orders; Instructions; Regulations; Acts; Manuals; Strength Returns; Orders of Battle; Administration Summaries; organization, commissions, committees, reports, maneuvers; departments of the Indian Army; and regimental narratives.
Resource: The History of Afghanistan Online
The Library has recently required an online version of The History of Afghanistan (Sirāj al-tawārīkh) written by the scribe Fayz Muhammed Kahn (also known as Katib), who was commissioned by the Afghan prince, later amir, Habib Allah Khan. It covers the period between 1747 when the country emerged as an independent political entity until 1919. The work was translated and edited by R.D. McChesney and M.M. Khorrami.