Ngaio Palmer and Professor Paul Kerry, History

In May 2000, I traveled to England to pursue research for my honors thesis at the British Library and the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford. In the course of my research, I happened to come across two case files of documents relating to the dubious business relationship between the private press of my great, great, great-grandfather, George Wood, and Dr. James Rind, the superintendent of the Government Lithographic Press of Calcutta, ca. 1829.

Upon returning to the United States, I decided to utilize these documents as the basis of my honors thesis. However, I was faced with two main problems. First there was very limited secondary source information about the history and operation of the Government Lithographic Press of Calcutta, ca. 1823-1840. In order to find more information about the role of the Government Press, I needed additional clues. Second, I was not exactly sure what was contained within these documents. Due to time constraints, I had only skimmed brief portions of the files while I was in England. Therefore, I needed to completely transcribe the microfilmed documents.

Although I was a history major, I had received no formal training in paleography and transcription. With the assistance and expertise of various professors and upper-classmen in the Family History program, I created a personalized introductory. Over a period of two months, I read and consulted numerous books on the handwriting style and vocabulary of documents from the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. These books proved to be invaluable learning resources because they contained exercises and samples from similar documents. With repeated practice, I developed the necessary skills required to read and transcribe the documents my microfilms.

In late February, I began the actual transcription of the microfilms. During my first sessions, I was assisted and tutored by Amanda Forson, an upper-classman majoring in Family History. She had received extensive training and experience in paleography and transcription and was more than willing to assist me. Even with this assistance, the early transcription sessions were extremely slow and tedious. Due to the deteriorating condition of the original documents, the microfilms were almost illegible; the background of the pages was completely black and the handwriting was extremely faint and difficult to read. In addition, the librarian at the Family History Library would not allow me to use a Canon back-lit microfilm reader, which would have greatly enhanced the resolution and readability of the microfilms.

Over the next two months, I tried to work on the transcription for at least five hours each week. However, I was still only able to transcribe 2-3 pages per hour. By April, I had barely completed one hundred pages of the microfilmed documents and I still had another four hundred pages to go. As I had committed to write my senior history thesis and the first draft of my honors thesis over the summer, I had to complete the transcription by June.

In April 2001, I returned home to Chicago somewhat discouraged, but determined to finish my project. I recognized that in order to expedite the transcription process, I needed to gain access to better equipment. With the assistance of some acquaintances at Northwestern University, I received permission to use a Canon back-lit microfilm reader at the Northwestern Library to complete my transcription. I also created a very strict, regimented work schedule. Over a period of 6 weeks, I spent every single night at the library working on the transcription. I would arrive at the library with my laptop and my microfilms between 5 and 6 p.m. and leave at midnight. The usage of the back-lit microfilm reader, greatly enhanced my productivity and the accuracy of my transcription. Within a day or two, I was averaging between 5-6 pages of transcription per hour. I successfully completed the whole transcription by the end of May.

In late June, I returned back to BYU to write my senior history thesis. Using my transcription of these documents, I discovered that the Government Lithographic Press had been involved in the publication of textbooks and educational materials into native Indian languages. From this piece of information, I was able to consult numerous secondary source materials and construct a comprehensive history and analysis of the importance of the press during the 1820’s and 1830’s.

The Government Lithographic Press had been established in late 1823 by the Board of Directors of the British East India Company for the express purpose of implementing an orientalist educational policy in Bengal and controlling the type and amount of information that was being diffused to the native population. However, as indicated by the documents that I transcribed, the revelation of Dr. Rind’s professional relationship with a rival private press potentially compromised the government’s absolute control over the Government Lithographic Press. The government was placed in a difficult position: the press was too valuable to abolish and there was no one to replace Dr. Rind. Ultimately, in an attempt to reassert control over the press, the government allowed Dr. Rind to remain superintendent of the press and fired all of the qualified assistants at the press. However, the lack of qualified replacements compromised the overall quality of the work being produced by the press for the next ten years. The gradual decline of the Government Lithographic Press was one of the main contributing factors that led to the collapse of various colleges in Bengal and the eventual rejection of the orientalist educational policy in India during the 1830’s. After the death of Dr. Rind in 1840, the government was finally forced to abolish the press.

Overall, my ORCA project proved to be an invaluable learning experience. I am graduating with honors in December and am now in the process of applying to graduate school at Oxford University and Cambridge University. I want to major in British Commonwealth History, with a specialization in 18th and 19th century educational policies in India. In addition to publishing a paper based on my research in a BYU journal and submitting my research to other scholarly journals, I am also planning to utilize my ORCA project as the basis of my masters’ thesis.