Donal Thomas

Graduate Recipient, Department of History

Guiliano Fellow, Fall 2022

Knowledge Transfer from the Natural World of the Western Ghats and the Making of Imperial Metropolitan Institutions, 1770-1905 (London and Kew, UK)

My research visit to the UK in the winter of 2023 was done with the support of the  Edward Giuliano Global Fellowship from the College of Arts and Sciences at Stony Brook  University. The Fellowship allowed me to visit British Library and British Museum in London  and Kew Gardens, Richmond. 

The visit to British Library helped me access the plethora of primary documents in the  Asian and African Reading Room and Maps collections. I used a couple of the sources from  these collections for my paper at the American Society for Environmental History Annual  Conference in Boston, Massachusetts, from March 22-26, 2023. The collections at British  Library I accessed includes revenue reports, letter, photographs, official correspondences,  maps, etc. The access to Maps collections helped me to have a unique idea about various places  in relation to tribal communities in South Asia and also to locate how various spaces and places  developed over centuries with regard to trade and commerce. I was able to locate the early  twentieth-century map of Munnar (British hill station during the colonial period) by combining  various maps, which helped me to have a more nuanced understanding of the development of hill  station in the Western Ghats and how the geography is marked according to the changing  landscapes during the period. The revenue reports from various mountainous regions in South  Asia during the British colonial period helped to understand how various resources were  collected and how colonial administrative structures systematically codified the commodities for  export to Britain and across the globe. The letters, including official correspondences from the  collections, helped me to have more individual perspectives of various knowledge systems and  resources and how the administrators valued them according to their needs and necessities. 

The visit to Kew Gardens Archives and Library allowed me to get access to records in  relation to floral knowledge of South Asia and also how systematically those resources are  documented in relation to their usage. I was able to go through official correspondence between  various Kew Gardens directors, including Joseph Dalton Hooker, and others with various officials in South Asia, including Robert Wight, Charles Dew, H. Cleghorn, and many others.  These interactions helped to know how Kew Gardens was directly interested in South Asia's  floral knowledge, especially in the Western Ghats. The official correspondence also helped  locate certain floral varieties during the long nineteenth century. The travelogue that I accessed  at Kew helped me to have a better understanding of the different ways in which the life of  common people is intrigued by floral knowledge systems. 

In short, the research trip to the UK opened the colonial depository of South Asian  sources to my research, and the access to the documents helped to understand the imperial  narratives of knowledge transfer. Thanks to Edward Giuliano Global Fellowship, without which  the research trip would have never been possible.

 

The Guiliano Global Fellowship Program offers students the opportunity to carry out research, creative expression and cultural activities for personal development through traveling outside of their comfort zone.

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