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The title makes clear that this book is not directed at genealogists or even family historians. Yet such is the massive (but apparently not exhaustive) collection of references included that this book may indeed prove to be a work of significant value to family researchers seeking added information about the circumstances which impacted on their ancestors’ lives and professions in India.
As with defencedefense, administration, planting and trade, scientific enquiry was carried out by men who may have been our ancestors. In David Arnold’s Foreward Foreword he points out that from about 1780 scientific study focussed on enhancing the material condition of Indian life through famine prevention, agriculture, and identification of products to benefit British and Indian commerce. This early period of scientific interest was reflected in the formation of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784 by senior EIC military and civil officers.
The introductory and explanatory sections absorb 23 pages, which are followed by these 11 chapters or divisions: 1. Plants and Botanic Gardens, 2. Agriculture, 3. Forests and Forestry,
4. Animals and Animal Husbandry, 5. Geology, 6. Meteorology, 7. Health and Disease, 8. Irrigation and Water Control, 9. Communications and the Built Environment, 10. Ethnography, and 11. Landscape and Topography. Each section starts with a brief introduction and outline of the major subdivisions of that section. These major subdivisions are further divided most often by location, or by specific topic such as plants, diseases etc.
Researchers with Planting ancestors will find the chapter on Agriculture worthwhile. For Indigo Planters, F/4/1277, no.51242 includes lists of plantations and factories with names of their European owners 1829-1830; papers re Land Grants for Coffee Cultivation 1827-1831 can be found at F/4/1398, and of course there are numerous references to Tea cultivation. We learn that Soldiers were encouraged in gardening as “Prizes awarded to the men who have been the most industrious and successful in the cultivation of barrack and soldiers’ gardens in the Bengal Presidency 1856-1857” can be found at F/4/2685 no.186678 and F/4/2695 no.191082. Chapter 7 on Health and Disease covers the whole range of hospitals, sanitoriums sanatoriums and asylums, including lunatic asylums, in which respect reference is made to “Returns of public patients (European and native) treated at Bhawanipur and Dullunda asylums from 1840-1858” to be found in P/13-P/15. Chapter 6 on Meteorology is valuable for its references to extreme weather events such as cyclones in which our ancestors may have been caught up or lost their lives.
The concluding part is an amazing 43 page index which makes the entire contents very accessible. It includes many personal names.
