Lecture | Connecting the East India Company and the Caribbean

Chris Jeppesen is the AHRC cultural engagement fellow working on a project entitled “East Meets West: Caribbean and Asian Colonial Cultures in British Domestic Contexts” with The East India Company at Home team, The Legacies of British Slavery team, and the British Library. From the British Library:

Chris Jeppesen | Uncovering Connections between the East India Company and the Caribbean
British Library, London, 3 July 2013

Chris Jeppesen, Research Associate at the UCL Department of History, talks about his recent work on the Library’s collections tracing links between the East India Company and the Caribbean through the movement and correspondence of families.

Historians have tended to draw a binary between British involvement in India and the Caribbean. Rarely, do they acknowledge the intricate connections between the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds that facilitated the transfer of people, capital and goods during the late eighteenth/early nineteenth centuries. Chris’s ongoing research project based between UCL and the Library, has sought to uncover some of the connections between the East India Company and the Caribbean and to suggest ways that other interested researchers can expand our understanding of these links.

Crucial to many exchanges were family networks that spanned India, Britain and the Caribbean, allowing members access to opportunities that promised wealth and prestige. This talk will seek to demonstrate how by following one family – the Martins of Antigua – through the Library’s collections, one can start to uncover the all too often ignored links between India and the Caribbean.

Organised with support from the Eccles Centre for American Studies. This talk is part of the Summer Scholar’s programme. To book a space please email: summer-scholars@bl.uk

Wednesday, 3 July 2013, 12.30-14.00, Foyle Suite, Centre for Conservation, The British Library. Free, booking essential.