Tag: Central Asian Studies
Library Trial: Brill’s British Intelligence on Russia in Central Asia, c. 1865–1949
The UC Berkeley Library has initiated a thirty-day trial of British Intelligence on Russia in Central Asia, c. 1865–1949’s database. The trial ends on November 17, 2024
One may access the trial here: Brill’s British Intelligence on Russia in Central Asia.
Please log in using proxy or VPN if you are accessing the resource from an off-campus location.
The database contains the following primary sources according to the self-description below, ”
Michell’s Russian Abstracts
During the 1870s and 1880s, the India Office Political and Secret Department considered the Russian and Central Asian question so vital that it employed an interpreter, Robert Michell, whose task was to review and translate Russian printed reports and extracts from Russian newspapers and other publications. Newspapers and journals regularly monitored included the Moscow Gazette, Turkestan Gazette, Journal de St Petersbourg, Russian Invalid, St Petersburg Gazette, Golos, Turkestan Gazette, and Novoye Vremia.
Michell’s Russian Abstracts and Memories, 1872-1883
Year
1879
Institution
London: War Office, Intelligence Division
Political and Secret Memoranda
At about the same time, as a result of the increasing quantity of intelligence now being regularly received, the India Office Political and Secret Department began to produce printed memoranda in order to provide ministers with easily digestible précis of the information they needed to formulate policy. For officials in India and London, processing information from the frontiers and providing background papers for successive incoming governments and their ministers became an almost full-time occupation. The Memoranda was arranged and numbered by contemporary India Office officials in an alphanumeric sequence that reflected the geographical subject area. Memoranda relating to Central Asia, which included items reflecting the great political debate and guessing game over the nature of Russian intentions in the region, were usually put away in series “C”.
Political and Secret Files on Soviet Central Asia
Although Anglo-Russian rivalry officially ended with the Convention of 1907, Russian ascendancy in Central Asia continued to interest the British imperial administrations. The two powers confronted each other again after the First World War and the Russian Revolution. With the creation of Soviet Socialist Republics in the period between the two World Wars, the British rulers of India were increasingly concerned with infiltrating Indian politics of communist and nationalist agents and ideas. During this period, a new generation of British military and political intelligence officers, spies, and adventurers made courageous, sometimes unofficial, journeys into the Central Asian republics and beyond into Sinkiang. A British Indian agent was stationed at Kashgar in 1893, but 1911 the post was upgraded to Consulate-General. Kashgar became the listening post and source of regular intelligence briefings, political diaries, and trade reports.
Provenance and Archival Background
The archives of the India Office Political and Secret Department (and Military Department) form part of the Oriental and India Office Collections (OIOC) now within the Asia, Pacific, and Africa Collections at the British Library. The Political and Secret Department papers and printed material have now been catalogued under the OIOC reference L/PS. Military Department papers are located under the reference L/MIL.
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.
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
