Research Guides: South Asian Studies: British

British Archives

British National Archives
Covers the records of England, Wales, and the United Kingdom and provides links to the records of Scotland and Northern Ireland.
more...less...
Provides a gateway to the services and databases of the Public Record Office (PRO) and the Historical Manuscript Commission. The PRO is the National Archives of the United Kingdom and houses the records of the central government including the archives of the Colonial and Foreign Offices. The PRO's catalogue .(formerly PROCAT) provides access to over 9 million descriptions of documents groups. The Historical Manuscripts Commission provides information about the content and location of historical records in private hands. These include collections of individuals, families, businesses and organizations. The Commission maintains the National Register of Archives (NRA) which provides indexing to these privately held archival records and ARCHON, a directory of the collections covered. Consult the NRA FAQ for more information on what is available online and how to use the indexes. The National Archives website also contains a series of useful research guides in full text. Of special interest are How to Cite Documents in the National Archives and Researching British Colonies and Dominions. The website has important information on visiting the Public Record Office including planning your visit, applying for a reader' ticket (required for onsite research) and ordering documents before your arrival. It also maintains a list of independent researchers for hire. NOTE: Many useful record groups have been microfilmed and may be held by libraries outside the National Archives. Search WorldCat to locate these collections. The PRO is beginning to digitize materials.
British Online Archives
Includes "Indian Papers" of Colonel Clive and Brigadier-General Carnac, 1752-1774 and the First and Fourth Earls of Minto.

British Library

The British Library has perhaps the most comprehensive collection of primary source material on India.

Copac, British merged catalogues database, which includes such likely suspects as SOAS.

British Library's new Main Catalogue, supposed to have an additional six million more records than the old Integrated Catalogue (19 vs 13 million),

Unfortunately, the British Library does not lend out books – they have to be read in the library itself.

If you are travelling there, here is how to apply for a Reader Pass: http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/inrrooms/stp/register/stpregister.html .

You may prefer to inquire about the possibility of having a copy made: http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/inrrooms/stp/copy/rrcopy.html (this page also contains links to information about British copyright law).

Here is their Customer Help Centre: http://www.bl.uk/reshelp/atyourdesk/docsupply/help/index.html

H/T Edward Proctor, Duke University library, for compiling this information.

In addition, the Official Publications of India project resulted in the deposit of more than 23,000 volumes of duplicate volumes from the British Library at the University of Chicago. The Official Publications of India collection includes the pre-1947 publications of the Government of India and of other governments within the subcontinent.. You can search the material online at the U of C library website but still you cannot request Inter Library Loan. You have to travel there to access the material physically.

Also at BL.., "The India Office Records are the documentary archives of the administration in London of the pre-1947 government of India. The 14 kilometres of shelves of volumes, files and boxes of papers, together with 70,000 volumes of official publications and 105,000 manuscript and printed maps, comprise the archives of the East India Company (1600-1858), of the Board of Control or Board of Commissioners for the Affairs of India (1784-1858), of the India Office (1858-1947), of the Burma Office (1937-1948), and of a number of British agencies overseas which were officially linked with one or other of the four main bodies. " Here is the catalog for their "India Office Select materials."

More Archives

More archives in the U.K.

Bengali Endangered Archive
British Library Endangered Archives Programme #341. Mostly Bengali language books and periodicals from public institutions in eastern India published prior to 1950.
more...less...
Archival partner is the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta.
Bodleian Library South Asia Manuscripts and Rare Books
Bodleian Library and Radcliffe Camera South & Inner Asian Manuscripts & Rare Books, University of Oxford, UK. "The Bodleian Library is the repository of some 8,700 Sanskrit manuscripts, the largest known collection of Sanskrit manuscripts outside the Indian sub-continent....
more...less...
The Bodleian Library has a rich collection of 19th century Indic language lithographs and printed books. Many of the rarest 19th-century publications come from the collection of the Indian Institute Library. The Indian Institute, which opened in 1885, was founded in Oxford by the Boden Prof. of Sanskrit, Sir M. Monier-Williams.... " There are also large collections of Tibetan works.
Cambridge University Sanskrit Manuscripts
"more than one thousand documents in Sanskrit and other South Asian languages, written in various scripts and on different supports, such as birch-bark, palm-leaf and paper."
more...less...
"A small portion of them were catalogued by Cecil Bendall in the late 19th century, but the collections were enriched by new acquisitions until the 1990s. The collections include works of great rarity in different genres and on a host of subjects, from religion and philosophy to astronomy, grammar, law and poetry. Among its treasures are some of the oldest extant manuscripts from South Asia, dating from the last centuries of the first millennium C.E., which were collected in Nepal, virtually the only region of the Indian subcontinent where the climate allows their survival for more than a few centuries."
Henry Martyn Centre, Westminster College
Materials on "missionary work in Southern India .... The items in this miscellaneous collection of books, articles and pamphlets were connected with the Reverend R. B. Budgett and range in date from 1913 to 1958...."
Mundus gateway to missionary collections in the U.K.
Contains descriptions of more than 400 collections accumulated in Britain by individuals and societies engaged in the overseas missionary movement between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries.
more...less...
The holdings of over 40 institutions in the United Kingdom are represented.
School of Oriental Studies
SOAS Library, University of London. Documents from British interaction with Africa and Asia over the last 250 years, including archives of missionary societies, NGOs and campaign groups, and business organizations, as well as papers of individuals, including diplomats, campaigners, and academics.
Survey of Buddhist Sanskrit manuscripts
British Library Endangered Archives Project 676: Survey of Buddhist Sanskrit manuscripts in the possession of Vajrayana Viharas and Newar Buddhist families in Lalitpur in the Kathmandu valley, Nepal
UKIRA
Provides access to information about the wide range of resources relating to Asia, the Middle East and North Africa held in university, special and public libraries in the UK.
more...less...
You can search for
Descriptions of library collections
Newspaper titles and holdings information