Blog

One of the many collections from AM’s microfilm catalogue which we’ve digitised – and also, we're confident in asserting, the best-named – is The Empire Writes Back. In it, we hear differing accounts from Indian travellers of Christmases spent in Europe and the unfamiliar customs which they encountered.

Before its airport opened in 2016, St Helena was accessible only by a five-day voyage by Royal Mail ship from Cape Town, making it a candidate, given its position in the middle of the Atlantic between Brazil and Angola, for the most isolated inhabited place on earth.

The fourth module of East India Company, Correspondence: Early Voyages, Formation and Conflict, released this week, showcases a vast quantity of archival material from Series E of the India Office Records held at the British Library. Documents relating developments in not only South Asia, but also Venice, Persia, Syria, China, Japan, Madagascar, Singapore and modern-day Indonesia (among other places) all feature.