Women, Environment and Networks of Empire: Elizabeth Gwillim and Mary Symonds in Madras (MQUP, 2023) is now available. Celebrate the launch of this publication with authors and editors on at the McGill Library’s Rare and Special Collections.
Elizabeth Gwillim (1763-1807) and her sister Mary Symonds (1772-1854) lived in Madras (now Chennai) between 1801 and 1807. Despite this relatively short stay, their paintings and letters provide a unique insight into the natural and social environments of the city. Elizabeth Gwillim is best known for her large-scale bird paintings, kept in the Blacker-Wood library at McGill (https://www.mcgill.ca/historicalcollections/library-archival/blacker-wood). She and Mary Symonds also painted landscapes and people, 78 of which remain at the South Asia Museum in Norwich (https://thesouthasiacollection.co.uk/research/the-gwillim-project/). Their descriptive letters to their mother in Hereford and sister in London fill four large volumes in the British Library.
Jacquelyn Sundberg, McGill Library
2:49 – Prof. Elizabeth Elbourne, McGill University
7:52 – Lauren Williams, McGill Library
11:00 – Victoria Dickenson, McGill Library
20:14 – Anna Winterbottom, McGill University
26:22 – Prof. Vikram Bhatt, McGill University
32:49 – Ann Wass
38:04 – Prof. Nathalie Cooke, McGill University
44:35 – Minakshi Menon, McGill University
Welcome everyone I’ll introduce myself my name is jacqulyn sunberg and to those of you on Zoom I extend a special invitation today to turn on your videos if you are comfortable with doing so we are recording today’s meeting but only the presenter video will be recorded So
You are on screen just to show the people in the room who is joining us and from where so if you are willing let us know in the chat where you’re tuning in from and you’re joining about I don’t know say 20 25 people here in the room
Um unfortunately we can’t provide coffee for those of you joining us remotely but there will be coffee at the back of the room for those of you who are here in person my name is Jac sunberg I might have mentioned that story uh I’m Outreach librarian and it’s a real
Pleasure to welcome all of you here on today for this event to celebrate with our editors the authors the project participants and the network uh yes waving Unfortunately they can’t see you but just a moment just a moment everyone can wave to everyone online and they’re waving back I want to
Start today with a land acknowledgement we are on Mill’s downtown campus and it’s a place that has long served as a as a site of meeting and exchange amongst indigenous peoples including the hodon Confederacy and and Nish Nations We are continuing the tradition of the exchange of ideas um that has
Been sign ire and an important part of this piece of land for a very very long time for Generations before there were senters here long before possibly these sisters were corresponding in Madras so today it really is a pleasure to launch this book which is the culmination of a
Network effort it’s much more than the people in the room today and you can see the messages popping up in the chat which is kind of nice for you here in person I will keep closing them as they come up however so for today we really are celebrating all of the different people
Who went into making this publication of reality and that is a large Network I saw the very beginnings of this project when Victoria and Lauren and the partners and Anna were dreaming up what the Gillam project could be at the grant stage so I was there uh when they were
Putting in their first Sherk application and it was a it’s a milestone every time you get a Sherk application in and to see this one come to fruition to Bear such fruit and to grow such a network internationally is really a feather in the capit all participants but it’s nice
To see a project from beginning to end so it’s a pleasure for me personally to launch this today so I’m going to pass the microphone down I’m going to invite our colleague from the history Department to come up who’s going to be moderating today and we’ll give introductions to all of our
Speakers thank you so so much I I wanted to start with just a personal congratulations on this wonderful book it’s been such a treat to read read it and also such a beautiful such a physically beautiful book um I’m imagine that most people here um know the the
Project and its content and people will be talking about it but I thought just to start I would just very briefly read from the description at the back of the um the book um just to contextualize it and then I’ll introduce the people who are here and
Then we will have people come up and talk about their their work in women environments and networks of Empire um Elizabeth gam and Mary Simmons in Madras an inter disciplinary group of Scholars use the paintings and writings of Elizabeth William and Mary Simmons to explore Natural History the changing environment colonialism and women’s
Lives at the turn of the 19th century and shair of York University comments for those who value close historical study of a time and a place and new historical sources this book and the Trove of primary materials Unearthed by the researchers of the project that it contains give us a window onto British
Indian Imperial worlds 19th century material culture food ways clothing and textiles and natural history as well as women’s work in Art and Science um it’s an extraordinary plethora of things that flow from this truly remarkable archive um the contributors who are here today who will be talking to you include
Lauren Williams who’s the curator of the blacker wood Natural History collection in the rare books and special collections department of the Migel University library and one of the principal investigators with Victoria Dickinson on the project Victoria Dickinson is a former curator and Museum director who work writes in the areas of
Museums and material culture she has a PHD in history of science from Carlton and has also published extensively in the history of natural history as well as environmental culinary history uh she’s currently professor of practice rare books and special collections at the bill library and has a number of
Ongoing research projects in the black of wood Natural History collection including the new project that uh we will be hearing about Anna winterbottom is a research associate at McGill University she’s a historian of science medicine and environment in the Indian Ocean region she’s the author of hybrid knowledge in the early East India
Company world and co-editor of the East India Company and the natural world and histories of medicine and healing in the Indian Ocean World vicam Professor vickram Bart uh is a eminent professor emeritus of architecture at McGill um among other things he is the author of resorts of
The Raj Hill stations of India and he’s co-author of after the Masters Contemporary Indian architecture and blueprint for a hack um he’s an expert on Housing and Urban Design and is very interested in colonial Urban Development an was is an independent costume history scholar who had an earlier career with the riversdale House
Museum in Maryland in the United States and her research interests include Federal Regency Era costume and social history as well as the clothing of enslaved African-Americans and she has a distinguished career presenting in both academic and popular audiences Professor Natalie cook um is professor of English at migil University
Um whose Publications Focus many Publications focus on the shaping of culture and literary taste and she was the associate dean of Migel University Library from 2016 to 20 2022 with an oversight for rare books and special collections um and does many other things and finally uh Dr m shiman is a
Research associate in social studies of medicine at Mill University she has led a research group a working group at the max plank Institute for the history of Science in Berlin she recently edited a special issue of the journal South Asian history and culture in entitled indigenous knowledges and Colonial Sciences in
South Asia and she’s working on a monograph with the working title empirism Empire Natural knowledge making statem and governance in East India Company India 1784 to 1840 and I think just giving you a sense of the biographies of the people just in this room gives you a sense of the remarkable collaborations and
Interdisplinary work that this project has involved I wanted to start by asking Lauren Williams um the creator of the black and wood Natural History collection um can you tell us something about the collection that sparked this project what is the collection what is it importance and who are the sisters at
The heart of it thanks very much and thank you for that introduction uh it’s great to see everybody here today so uh as was mentioned I’m the curator of the black wood Natural History collection which is the collection within rare books where the Gillum paintings are held and uh the
Blacker wood collection was established in 1920 through the efforts of Dr Casey Wood and he was an opthalmologist who toward the end of his medical career became fascinated with the study of bird vision and this interest led him to begin collecting works on Ornithology but his Library soon grew to include
Material on all aspects of zoology and then after it was donated to McGill the collection continued to grow and it now holds material covering all of the Natural Sciences from the medieval period right up to the 20th century and we now hold more than 20,000 books and over 10,000 pieces of original
Artwork making us the largest natural history Library collection in Canada and one of the most significant collections in North America and I’m I feel like gesturing this way because it’s just behind this wall here if anyone is interested um but it’s really the unique items like manuscripts like letters
Field notebooks and paintings which make this collection really special and the Gillum uh paintings are a very important part of that it was actually Dr Casey Wood who acquired the gum paintings for the collection back in 1924 and he describes having found them at a London rare book seller’s shop uh
And he went into the shop and asked the seller if he had any material relating to animals and apparently the seller went down into the basement and pulled up a massive Dusty portfolio full of these paintings which must have been sitting down there for decades and as wood started to look through the
Paintings he recognized immediately not only the artistic skill uh of the sisters but also the uh scientific accuracy with which they depicted the birds and flowers and fish in the paintings um and so he immediately decided to buy the collection for Miguel and we really owe everything to the Keen
Eye of wood that day in 1924 because if he hadn’t uh recognize the value of these paintings we might never know the work of the gillums um and since the the paintings are arrived at Migel we’ve known bits and pieces but we haven’t actually had a very full picture of who
They were what their lives were like and context in which they created these paintings and so it really takes uh dedicated Scholars and interested patrons to bring a collection like this to life uh and so we’re also very indebted to the work of Victoria Dickinson and all of the contributors to
The gulum Sher research project because we now have this incredibly rich and detailed picture of of not only the gum’s lives but also the context in which they created these paintings and this will serve as just an incredible resource for all future students and Scholars who are interested in studying
The collection so thank you and I’ll leave it to them to tell you more about the project and the sisters thank well that Segways very nicely um vioria Dickinson can you tell us about this project can you describe the aims of the group and the collaborations that arose around it
Well thank you Elizabeth and it’s a delight to be able to talk about this project uh because it’s a wonderful moment to have the culmination in the publication um I want to say you thanks to Casey Wood and thanks to Ellena mlan who began a catalog of the Gillam
Paintings when she was the librarian of the blacker wood and I happened to come upon them and started to look through the Gillam paintings and elener told me she always wanted to work on them and hadn’t quite had enough time I thought well that’s interesting so I started to
Look at them and as I looked at them it led me to a number of people and this was the beginning of the network the first person he’s on screen actually well he’s off screen right now Jeffrey Jeffrey get back here we can’t see you anyway Jeffrey spear at New York
University who was working on the devadasi or the temple dancers in ch in Madras and he had discovered in uh the British Library correspondence by lady gulum about the temple Le dancers so he found that this material was at the blacker wood and he actually funded the digitization of the paintings of the
Birds in 2006 so thanks to Jeffrey it started the whole process of digitization and also thanks to Jeffrey who will eventually come back on screen he led me to the correspondence of the gam sisters at the British Library there are over 700 pages of correspondence from Elizabeth and her sister Elizabeth
Lady Gillam and her sister Mary Simons and at the time they were not digitized they were not available but they are now available thanks to the British Library as scans and thanks to some of our students as transcriptions and I particularly want to acknowledge Rebecca mcallum uh who was Lady Elizabeth and um
Sorry who is Mary and emelan Greenfield Greenfield who was Lady Elizabeth they basically um made the transcriptions possible those transcriptions are also going to become available on the Oxford Tex archive and thanks to Anna winterbottom for initiating that so the Gillum letters are now much more available to a wider audience and
They’re wonderful letters I used to read them and think I was reading Jane Austin so um wonderful wonderful correspondence that the British Library connection led us to norch and the South Asian Museum and the South asiia Museum Co our co-editor Ben cartright who can’t be with us today but at least not in
Person but Ben uh had acquired with the South asiia Museum Mary Simon’s watercolors in the early 2s so here is the other sisters watercolors and they are the subject of a catalog which is being published by the South Asian Museum discussion with the South Asian Museum and the British Library led us to
Rosemary Rell Rosemary Riddell was an Ottawa scholar who had started to work on the gulam sisters again fascinated by their correspondence she connected with the her for archives learned a lot about them and her her daughter Rosemary Rell is um deceased but her daughter Jane Rell the archist of the Mercers Guild in
London made available all her mother’s notes and transcriptions to us and that so that was a wonderful way to begin the project but of course the The Bird Paintings were the critical to the project and um I found an article in 1994 by subu super manum so this article
Was on lady gulam birs and that introduced us to subu so subu who is I know with us today on online had written an article on lady Gillam’s birds at the same time madav badami who’s here in the in person in the room said you know you really should connect with more people
In Madras and Janai and then he mentioned vicam bot and then Along Came vickram who written on Garden houses so he became part of our Network I realized too that my colleague Natalie cook had a real interest in culinary history and a particular interest in curries and uh having being
Grown up in India and so this became another interest so you see the beginning of the network this interest uh coming from the material culture and spreading to people interested in it an a winter bottom then came into the project and introduced other people with the i the Indian Ocean World Center here
At Mill Venita dador for example at the University of Sussex and we put together a Sherk application it was a partnership development Grant coming from the OWC and the library and thanks to jacene who I remember tracked everybody down on the Grant in the early days of uh trying to
Get all the material in we were successful in 2018 we also received funding from the shastry foundation uh again madav had suggested that as well as digital museums of Canada so this was going really well we did worked on transcriptions from 2018 to 19 and in 2020 April we planned our first
Symposium and I’m sure all of you remember what happened around February 2020 so our first Symposium never took place in person but we were able to segue to an online format and I particularly want to thank Emily Zinger from who now was the so the um East Asian digital librarian at Cornell who
Tested online presentation platforms this is she tested them to see which one we should choose and we chose thank heaven Zoom so we did our nine webinars on Zoom uh so um people in the room are participa in those webinars but people from the entire network which now
Numbered over 50 people participa in those webinars and they’ve had over 30,000 views so far more than we could have had for a symposium and Mill so a wonderful collaboration there we also thanks to our students developed a website and a network newsletter and I
Noticed that c is online here and C has been working on a podcast for which he received special funding uh so that we will be hearing um in sort of their own words and they’re in different voices the Gams the gum and Mary sigin as they
Read their letters so uh I can’t mention all our students but we had over 15 students working on the project and they all contributed amazingly to the project this network That Grew was small as I mentioned it grew to over 50 people an was is here from Baltimore and I also
Want to acknowledge she worked with Alexander Kim and I noticed that Tia Gupta is online from Delhi which is great manaki is in the room she was in Berlin at the time now here at Mill and we also started to um add uh participants from other museums so we
Worked with the aaan museum the dsh chetra museum in Chennai and I particularly want to thank Deborah Thea gajin the director there for all her wonderful work and with IIT Madras and I want to thank um Professor AJ FY and uh John lordus Swami who are there um the result of this
Collaboration it it’s more than just the book but I’m delighted to see the book um is being launched today and I want to thank all the authors including two of our students Hannah Nix savich and saraphina Masters both of who went on to do phds and get jobs in their chosen
Fields and who have contributed to the book my special thanks to Lauren Williams who gave so much access to the uh the blacker wood Collections and made uh all those queries that we had over the many years she was very patient with Jennifer and Chris from Black from the
Royal um the Royal from the uh rare books and special collections who supported the project Greg Houston who digitized the the flower the birds had been done but Greg did the fish in the flowers and then he would redo stuff when I had special queries so thank you
Greg I really want to give a big hand to Migel Queens Jonathan is here Jonathan kago and he believed in the book at the beginning and it is a wonderful book it’s beautiful so they’ve made this book possible and lovely and I want to thank all the participants of the network who
I cannot all name and to just acknowledge the power of collaboration it makes such a difference to to work with colleagues who have a a share in interests but come from so many different backgrounds it’s been so enriching and also thanks to um all our students who were perhaps more Savvy
With technology than we were and who made it possible for us to use new means of communication to bring a truly Global Network together so thank you very much a thank you it might be interesting to switch to thinking about some of the uh themes and
Ideas that came out of the project so I wanted to ask Anna who’s the one of the the lead editors and authors um what were the main themes that emerged for you from your work on uh the Elizabeth gam and Mary Simmons well um thanks so much Elizabeth
Thanks for the question and thanks for for talking to us today and um I just Echo uh Lauren and Victorious thanks to everyone in the network and as well as all of you here today um uh I think there were so many themes that came up
And many of them did emerge from the network and also from our students um so perhaps I’ll just talk about the three main ones which ended off in the title of the book so women environment and networks of Empire um so personally I’m really interested in how knowledge is created in colonial
Spaces and for me uh a big interest in this uh project was to think about how uh women um how female natural historians or sort of protoc scientists worked in these spaces did they interact differently with their environments uh compared with their male counterparts um and I think in many ways
We found that the answer was no they were looking for similar things they were looking for recognition from the scientific Community uh they were participating in in projects of the day such as transplantation and economic botany um but one thing we did find is that as women they tended to document their
Surroundings in perhaps more complete whales than their male counterparts so as well as um their Botanical work um and their orthological work they also painted their surroundings so they painted people that they interacted with and they painted Landscapes and this allowed us to understand a bit more about their networks and and the
Networks um that were so important in the creation of knowledge in this colonial space and I think the most important of these networks were with Indian experts so they interacted with uh local physicians in Madras they interacted with um the people who collected uh plant specimens for them and told them
About their medicinal virtues and they interacted with people who caught the um birds for them and um one example of how this sort of multi-dimensional approach uh to documenting their surroundings that we found particularly interesting was Mary Simmons’s image of the bird catchers and um saraphina Masters one of the research
Assistants did a very nice detailed case study of this for the book but the image of the bird catcher shows how important these people were and not only catching the birds but keeping them alive so the bird catchers have the birds swaddled and cloth and so you can see how this expertise enabled
The very realistic depictions of birds that Elizabeth G produced so these were their local networks on the ground they also networked with um East India Company Physicians who were very important participants in uh company science and who also um were important in transferring um specimens and knowledge
To and from between uh Europe and India in this time um and beyond that they also had other networks so networks with women and again they uh they interacted with the environment in very specific ways I think because of their gender so they were thinking about um how which
Plants could they grow in their Gardens what might they cook and Natalie cook can tell you more about that um and um how were plants used for textiles and and W who’s here can speak more to that um so and and a lot of their networks also involved other other female
Experts um so um and finally environment I think um again the ways in which they documented their their surroundings were very important in understanding the environment so in the landscape pictures we can see how um different the landscape was um from what we see today in chenai so we see a very watery
Landscape we see marshlands and rivers and irrigation networks of networks of tanks for irrigation um so that’s a very striking um way in which they documented the natural environment um I think also our collaborations with Scientists were so important in the environmental aspect of the project so uh subu super manum was
Able to identify all of the bird species um that Elizabeth Willam painted and several of these birds are now endangered or they’re they’re rare in the region and similarly we worked with experts to identify many of the fish which is shown and again that tells us something about the the uh marine
Environment um so uh I think lots of our Network who are here today and lots of the other authors will have more things to say about these themes and about others so thank you so much so we will have have time at the end for questions so
Save your questions uh for an open discussion um I we thought it would be very interesting however to have people talk a bit about their individual contribution um so I wanted to ask vicam um if he could tell us about the environment that the sisters come to what is the built
Environment of Madras and how did the sisters interact with it how did the environment change them if it did and maybe also what did they leave out when they talked about it tricky as always aren’t you no it’s a pleasure to be here with all of you we have to
Situate the two sisters and their husband one husband coming to Madras in a kind of historical cycle they arrive at the beginning of 1800 the travel from Europe to India took more than three months you came around came around the C and you s that means the and the amount
Of stuff you can bring with you is very limited so these two sisters who arrive there they have to set up a household to set up a household so they are the real Frontline individuals who are confronting the reality of a totally different climate totally different physical setting and the daytoday
Necessities of home so this is it kind of reminded me of me coming here at the beginning of the 70s where I couldn’t find coriander and ginger so that is the and I was strict with vegetarian when I arrived it changed quickly but so here the women
Are arriving and they have to set up a household in extremely hot climate so what they have recorded in different ways especially Mary their own Homestead their own garden surrounding the homestead how the house hous were built how the house is organized how in their correspondence they kind of describe this Homestead
Where they’re having a dinner party how the breezes passed through this very beautiful Verandas and Open Spaces how they are um fann when they go for a party to a big higher officials place at the end of the day where the fans are made with Vey
Wear and water is sprayed on them and how this built environment goes into it so you ask how they were changed they were more immerse than change in this place the other aspect worth remembering historically is M sir Gillum is the first puny judge so the establishment of the colonial
Kind of project is just beginning and it would be um at least a decade after that the trade between Europe and South Asia change starts to change the direction here they are at the stage where the riches from the south Asia are to be sent there is
No trade coming from the other side the Posh travel will take 100 more years all of you know the meaning of Posh how the word comes [Laughter] from and that was because the steam travel that began where in M vessels which were made of which were very hot before air
Conditioning so if you cabin was on the other side you would be in the sun all through your journey and so therefore you would not take the rooms on that side so this comfortable travel how you set up the household all these things was much much after so the way
They interacted with these places is very important the other very important aspect we learn about this is their world view of Madras is their world view they didn’t move around or travel through whole of British colonial territory they were primarily within 100 kilometers of MRA so what they documented
Physically in terms of their Landscapes is quite St what do we find in Birds Bird Paintings that’s where it was quite revealing one set of birds that Elizabeth did is like landscape insight into the real physical setting within which these birds and humans were all living so there are two
Paintings outside in the cabin where you will be able to see see the bird of coil the cucko birds and there you will see how they relate with the landscape but also the physical burial shrines which are integrated with these things and so on so by looking at just Bird Painting you
Are learning so much about the physical environment and the way in which they interacted and their correspondence describes it house plans are drawn how what kind of gardens they will be making what plants and so on so it’s a journey and a time capsule that
We just have opened we still have a lot to learn thank you um an um wrote on textiles uh what can we learn from the material history of textiles and particularly in this colonial context well before I answer Elizabeth’s question I just want to set the stage we
As fascinating as the paintings are we relied heavily on the letters of the sisters and what we have from the sisters is their letters back home asking to be sent things and then responding when they received things of course in their social environment and the fact that they couldn’t bring very
Much with them and the fact that the laundry practices were particularly harsh on their garments they needed to have things sent from from England and then they sent things back to England as souvenirs as gifts and this is where we find then obviously clothing is made of
Textiles but they also sent textiles and we look at the early 19th century those of you who know what styles are in the early 19th century the quintessential vision of what a Regen are a woman war of course they’re pre- Regency but it continues into the through the early
19th century is a white muslin dress and a a luxurious Kashmere Shaw muslin it was a very fine white fabric originally made in India however the sisters found that it was expensive to buy in India they had to get it from Bengal so they’d have to
Have someone send it to them from Bengal and one of the sisters said once and you always have to buy more than you want so it would be expensive um so they actually got muslin that was produced in England from their uh Network back in London so we have English muslin coming
Out to India sometimes made up as a dress but sometimes just in fabric but they did send some muslin back as well and we also see how the East India Company was keeping an eye on things and with tariffs and all once uh they mentioned the delicate strategy of
Sending fabric out folded up in a letter so it didn’t look like a big text package of textiles once they sent muslin back from India um kind of based together to look like a madeup dress instead of like V Goods so we see that we also do see that they bought Shaws
Shaws were often though bought used but one interesting thing that we did not know um as dress historians until we started reading their letters is that they would send Shaws but they would be cut up when they got back to England they might cut a long shawl in half and
We’re like how in the world did you do that and get a finished Edge they would also cut Shaws up to make men’s waste coats and that’s something we see very very few of we went looking to see if there are any exent examples of waste
Coats made out of Shaws we found like three we figured the fact that they were made out of wool um probably meant that they were worn out in in m eaten but in but in the case of Shaws also you begin to see in then in Europe Shaws being
Made an imitation of the Indian Shaws spec uh especially in the Scottish town of Paisley This would have been a little bit later than them but about 1812 they start weaving Shaws in Paisley Scotland and so now we call tend to call that uh Motif that’s so characteristic on a Shaw The
Paisley so we see that the the English first were getting raw cotton from India and then of course starting to manufacture it into fabrics and Muslim could be in all different grades there might be very fine sheer Muslims there might be ones that Jane Austin herself complained um didn’t wander very well
They fell apart um but then of course in the early 19th century England starts importing raw cotton from the United States and along with that the United States and the Southern States was using slave labor to produce the cotton so the fear the simple C clothing and textiles
Again kind of expands to to look at all kinds of different aspects of international trade um and networks and we just found it very very satisfying to be able to work with our own colleagues um which we very seld them get a chance to do and then to be part of the network
Too and it we just found it it just extremely Gra ifying we’re so grateful to Victoria for getting us on board Natalie cook wrote about food um Natalie um maybe how do how do Colonial encounters shape the globalization of food Wass but maybe more specifically what is the example of these sisters
Writing about food suggest about you know larger histories perhaps of the emergence of what you term Anglo Indian Cuisine thanks so much Elizabeth thanks to everybody who’s here today and thank you for those of you who’ve turned on your cameras because it’s showing us um some of the ironies of this project so
My last name is cook and I was looking at Food history um I I look at Social food history and so I was very interested Ed in Anglo Indian Cuisine before I came to this project and it became very clear that I was actually looking at very detailed
Evidence at a relatively minute scale so we were looking at correspondence an and I scrutinized those The Correspondents for the kinds of details it would give us about daytoday life so while Anne was looking at Fabrics what people were wearing how they were you know transforming s into wcets I was looking
At some of the ingredients and how they were being used and how they were being tasted in the household um and so what I looked at was actually the adaptation of food ways and you heard the best example already vicam got up here and said you know I I
Arrived in Montreal and there was no Ginger and no coriander and we all went what an impoverished life life we LED right um and we see something very similar in the letters so we see three stages of culinary adaptation so we see um the sisters who are actually very
Adventurous as you can imagine they’re drawing beautiful images of the birds and they’re observing what’s going on around them but the first thing they notice is they don’t have the things they want and that they really really think are just the luxuries of life and for them the biggest symbol of this was
Strawberries so when they arrived they just couldn’t find strawberries of the kind that they had appreciated in England and there was quite a lot of um ink and pencil pencil ink that was spent on strawberries um about 80 years later they would actually have extraordinary strawberries in that part of India but
When they arrived they really were finding that they had to adapt to a very different food taste on the other hand and this was the first stage they were upset about the things they couldn’t find and they were needing to either get from England the second stage was they
Actually started to see all the wonderful things around them the more than a thousand species of fish many of which they’d never seen before and and quite a few of which they they drew in beautiful ways right so they would see this wonderful richness and they would
Start to realize that there were things in this new environment that were different but not only could approximate what their English food tastes and pallets enjoyed but could actually lead them to new and enriched tastes think of coriander think of Ginger and just reverse it you know that they were
Starting to to find this um wonderful sensor experience and they were really willing to try and then the third stage is where they really actually have adapted and they’re starting to put things on their table that um are not just appr proximations of what they had in England um but but are really
Actually um what we would Now call anlow engine Cuisine but it was a Cuisine of adaptation so I just want to end with a cou couple of ironies so first of all I’m looking out at the the live audience here and includes some of our library colleagues who haven’t been mentioned
Yet but who helped us with the digital aspects of this particular project so I’m looking in particular at Jen Riley back there whose team included Greg the digitization expert um but who managed to put an a number of these um gorgeous images and projects online at a time
When we weren’t able to see one another and then I’d like to um figuratively look behind me because that’s where the the two-dimensional faces are and just say when we walk walked into this room today to celebrate a physical book which we can hold right we saw people who
We’ve been interacting with for what a couple of years now in three dimensions and I we’ve done it at least at least I’ve done it five times looked at people and said and Ann’s my example here and and there was this moment there was this moment of recognition you’re in three dimensions
And so there was this amazing irony in this project that we were working internationally Victoria brought together a fabulous group um Jacqueline and I have seen it through from the beginning through this um Anna was an extraordinary diligent editor with a a fine eye and a kind of sophisticated Nuance in terms of
Encouraging us to change our material um but it was you know what I mean by that right um the book is much the better for some very um uh a subtle and um diplomatic editing going on but it was this wonderful compromise between um an international group and yet a study
That involved absolute minute detail and as you’ve heard a focus on a particular area and region in India and a particular set of Correspondence and images over roughly a decade so thank you very much and thanks to everyone and finally manaki manol um who I think maybe could I say you wrote
About language and power and colonialism and language um anyway manaki um how would you say postcolonial approaches and form our understanding of the sisters writing and perhaps its interaction with its Imperial context yes theic book oh yesal book absolutely so here I am about the physical book Elizabeth’s question is really a
Very very interesting question and it’s something I started to think about almost as soon as Anna invited me to come on board read the letters and decide if I would write something based on one of the letters now as I examined the project I realized that it’s it’s
Basically we are going to have a volume that has a great deal of wonderful descriptive detail about the natural history of Madras presidency um in the early 19th century and I knew we’d get lots of wonderful details about material objects about birds about plants which is something very clear close to my
Heart but I was also um a little anxious that we not take our eye off the fact that the M the context is one of British colonialism it’s already by 1800 we’re already at a point where British actors themselves have recognized that they are indeed ruling an Empire so to think
About that a little I mean if we think about the word colony itself where does it come from well it comes from the Latin Colonia which means possessing somebody else’s land holding land from which original owners have been displaced what happens when you think about the word Imperial and imperialism
Correct now as many of us um who work on the history of imperialism know the origins of this word and the origins of the word uh Emperor lie in the ancient Roman context where initially the word Imperium meant the authority exercised the executive Authority exercised by a Roman administrator and
Of course its meaning shifted over time so when I think about postcolonial Theory and ideas of difference that postcolonial theory has given us and it’s a huge gift one thing that postcolonial theory has taught us to think is how certain groups of people are distinguished as other as different
As in need of governance and as in need of certain special forms of surveillance now as I thought about this I wondered what I could do with the letters because the letters are describing wonderful everyday occurrences um bonnets flowers lovely dinners but nothing really very specific about the coded violence of the colonial
Encounter so I was absolutely delighted when I found the letter on which I uh I based my case study because that letter immediately tells you that both the sisters were completely aware of the violence of the encounter now in writing about black English I mean what Mary
Does and she does a remarkable job that allows us to perform discursive analysis on that letter is she shows us how clear subordinates you know the the the lower half in colonial social relations were aware that they were in a position of subordination and governance and how much that stress that tension
Simmered on the surface and occasionally broke out as it did in the colonial as it did in the B Mutiny which uh you can find written about in the letters so to address your question again about postcolonial Theory I think what postcolonial theory in this particular context of this volume has actually
Given us is the ability to do discursive analysis to be able to look at recovering voices that are not immediately audible in the alive yeah yes yes okay thank you I’m going to stop that thank you very much you so much um for all those wonderful contributions I had some big picture
Questions but I decided there may not be time so I think what we might do is open up to um anybody who would like to come in um from the zoom world or in person does anybody have uh questions or comments 17 okay yes sorry I will just pop in there um
We just had a camera change um but the 17 comments are not all questions it’s apologies it’s people tuning in from all over but this is the moment to say if you are joining us remotely and you have a question for the speakers do put it in
The chat and we can voice that on your behalf um and I will do that on behalf of everyone but um yes you can open up to questions in the room we just ask that if you do have a question in the room we will repeat it from the podium
Or you can come up to the microphone up here just so our Zoom friends can hear you and hopefully everything is still good in Zoom land yes we have lights we have my sound great yes I just have a comment first of all this is wonderful I’m so glad I
Participated notal it’s wonderful to see so I just want to be clear I’m not a librarian or an academic so please take whatever I say in that spirit so what’s your name by the way Elizabeth elor I’m sorry Elizabeth elor in history and classical studies you know the name not
Speak about you only nice things so you open up your comments or somebody did about Casey Wood so I just find it fascinating over the last little bit the library World here seems to revolve around Casey last week I attended a wonderful event in the old library I don’t
Remember the person’s name he was visiting from Sri Lanka and he talked about you were there right so he talked about Olas which are he was talking about the medical manuscripts on cley that are in the oer library and I think some of them are here too the other thing is about Casey
Wood I have some friends Poes including this young man over here who were involved in a book that was published by the papers of the Canadian bibliographic Society all about Casey Wood and it’s also available online and it’s really interesting to read about Casey Wood his involvement with oer his
Collecting it’s worked as anol but I’m deny before I read several of the articles I learned that hasted wood was also a big admir of f fascism for those of you online I apologize this is there is possibly a comment coming if you can’t hear quite clearly we’ll summarize in a couple
Minutes okay one last plug is for Natalie while you were talking I was reminded of that wonderful book that you were involved in many voices many women that just you know ties in very well to this so if people have a chance they should look out for that
Work I’ll stop I’m doing the Vana White Show and Tell here for the online P just a few a few shots of it I did put the link to the mill Queens University press website in the chat so if you are online and you want to order a copy just before I pass
It to Victoria for some thank yous I will put in the plug this book as you can see has some heft it’s also beautifully illustrated by some of the images from these sisters paintings that are held here and from other Collections and the other thing I will say is you
Can buy this book for your library if you’re a librarian please do I encourage it for your collection also you can buy it for your coffee table because it’s a beautiful one or for your classroom it has multi-purpose publication so there’s my pitch even though I had no hand in
Getting this book to print so impartial plug from Jaclyn for your library collections we do for those in the room just housekeeping notes to close there is coffee and snacks at the back of the room and also you can buy a physical Coffey today it looks like we have three
Questions and I will go look at the you look at the questions and well while Jac’s looking at the questions I’ll just repeat a little bit of what Stephen said to us from the room he talked about Casey Wood the donor um who uh basically um in in initiated the blacker wood
Collection um and Casey Wood was extremely interested anything to do with zoology so he did bring uh the uh material from the GM project um for the GM project together here but he also um as Stephen was saying he also collected something called Olas which are palm
Leaf manuscripts from Sri Lanka and this is a nice segue in to the project which grew out of of the Gillum project which is our next project Anna mentioned it briefly Anna winterbottom that we looked at the bird catchers and we said who are the people who have made Elizabeth
Gillam’s wonderful paintings possible and we started to think are there other collections in the blacker wood in McGill at the red path Museum which would benefit from trying to look behind what we know about them from the surface documentation to find out in a sense when actually’s nodding who made these
Possible so we have a new project called hidden hands in colonial Natural History Collections and Stephen uh you were mentioning the Olas these are part of the hidden hands project we’re looking at four different Collections and the Olas we had Dr danis Pereira here last
Week with us um he was here for five weeks thanks to the Osler a fellowship from the oser library to look at the Ola Collections and to really help us understand them as well as we’re have we’re looking at a collection of um material from uh Flor and fauna
Paintings of Flor and fauna from the from Haiti what was sand deing in the mid 18th century we’re looking at the James Forbes collection Made in India again at the end of the 18th century and we’re looking at the Francis Simpson um herbarium at the McDonald college and
We’re looking at in connection with matey U matey knowledge of the natural ual world so we’re looking at a woman a British young British woman who lived in the Red River and we’re looking at matey knowledge of plants at the same time so we’re looking for these hidden hands and
I think this project has benefited immensely from the work of Anna winterbottom and I just want to acknowledge her again um let’s give her a big hand Anna has made the book possible Natalie was very kind in saying she looked uh she gave suggestions she basically was amazing in terms of her
Editorial oversight of the book so thank you Anna and she is also the research associate on the hidden hands project and is working on James Forbes and the Aller Collections and finally something a Luna that we had we didn’t introduce Elizabeth elborne who started off asking all these wonderful questions and I’d
Like to thank Elizabeth urn professor in the history and classical studies Department who works on colonialism and settlers and and is working in South Africa another interesting area because of course everyone who went to India as vicam said stopped in South Africa including Mary Simons and including
James Forbes so we have a whole bunch of interesting things to connect so the network continues to connect and spread so thank you Elizabeth too so I want to get those thank yous in um thank you to everybody who came and um my just congrat ulations on this absolutely fabulous project to everybody
Who is involved there are tons more questions there was a Jeffrey Spar asks about the role of servants but I think we don’t have time so I’m gonna say maybe that could be answered in future the future project um so maybe we could take the questions in person to people
Here and thank you everybody for coming please enjoy some refreshments and please go and look at the book many many congratulations to everybody