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Overview
East India Company is a digital collection of the official records of the East India Company (1595-1858) and the India Office (1858-1947) held at the British Library. Adam Matthew is digitizing the IOR archive over the next five years in conjunction with the British Library, .
This collection will include the charters and minute books of the East India Company and the minute books of the post-1858 governing agency, the Council of India.
The modules are as follows:
- Module I: Trade, Governance and Empire, 1600-1947
- Modules II and III: Factory Records for South Asia, South-East Asia, China, Japan and the Middle East (1595-1870)
The first module is scheduled to launch in January 2017. Module 2 is planned for release in spring 2018, and Module 3 in summer 2019.
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Collection Content
East India Company (EIC) is a digital collection of the official records of the East India Company (1595-1858), and the India Office (1858-1947), held at the British Library. This collection will include the charters and minute books of the Company and the minute books of the post-1858 governing agency, the Council of India. It will also include official trading diaries plus correspondence from the "factories," or individual trading posts, to the London headquarters of the Company.
Archival content of the modules includes:
Module I: Trade, Governance and Empire, 1600-1947
- IOR/A Charters, deeds, statutes and treaties, 1600-1947
- IOR/B Meeting minutes of the Courts of Directors and Proprietors, 1599-1858
- IOR/C Minutes and memoranda of the Council of India, 1858-1947
- IOR/D Minutes and memoranda of the general committees and offices of the East India Comapny, 1700-1858
Modules II and III: Factory Records for South Asia, South-East Asia, China, Japan and the Middle East (1595-1870)
- IOR/G Letters between the "factories" (trading posts) and London office, official trading diaries, Company embassy accounts, proceedings of provincial councils and revenue boards, military documents, and account books.
The completed modules are expected to comprise over 1.2 million pages. The original source material is in paper form, primarily in bound volumes.
Additional enriched content will include: a chronology of events in India and the broader areas of Asia impacted by the Company; interactive maps and graphs of trade statistics; and contextual essays.
The publisher describes the historical significance of this material: "By the mid-18th century, the company had unprecedented powers to raise armies, purchase territories, mint currency and administer criminal justice to citizens of its dominions. It . . . generated over a quarter of the world's entire trade. The Indian Uprising of 1857 was the death knell for the Company, which was . . . replaced by direct governance of India by the British Raj [through the Council of India]."
Delivery
EIC will have its own platform. That platform will be separate from Archives Direct, which is the shared platform delivering the Adam Matthew digital collections sourced from The National Archives,UK.The EIC database is planned to have many of the same interface features as the Archives Direct platform, however.
In addition to supporting browsing and searching of the archival material, the database will offer interactive maps and graphs.
Terms
Unlimited number of concurrent users, remote access, downloads and scholarly sharing are all permitted. The 2017 pricing on the database for ARL libraries is considered by many to be exorbitant, even prohibitive.
Strengths and Weaknesses
By comprehensively digitizing directly from the original source documents of this historically powerful trading company the publishers will make accessible important primary material for both scholars and students. The documents targeted extend beyond a record of the commercial enterprise, incorporating official records of governments and their interaction with this immense colonial power.
It would be helpful if this collection could be cross-searched with the extensive colonial materials the publisher has digitized from the holdings of The National Archives, as found in Foreign Office Files for India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, 1947-1980, as well as the archival content in the India Raj and Empire database.
Additional Reviews in Other Sources
Appendix
Video of Adam Matthew's webinar on the East India Company is now available, click here to view.
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