Legal Treasure Tours
In this series we explore the legal treasure--manuscripts, photographs, maps, audio-visual material, rare books, ephemera, works of art with a legal dimension--hidden or showcased in world leading collections. The tours are constructed and lead by archivists, curators and librarians. They are opportunities to see and touch unique materials, to place them in the historical and social contexts that render them 'legal' phenomena, and in so doing to consider their moral subtext.
Our first port of call was the SOAS Archives and Special Collections with Susannah Rayner. There we viewed, among other things, material from the Restatement of African Law Project at SOAS, papers documenting the mid 1800s property transactions of entrepreneur Henry Alexander Ince in the British Settlement in Shanghai, campaign posters from War on Want and the heated correspondence they generated between George Galloway and the Charities Commission and letters and images relating to the role of missionary John Smith in the 1823 Demerara Uprising in Jamaica.
Our second port of call was the India Office Records at the British Library with Antonia Moon. There we viewed, among other things, the diaries of a C18th magistrate in Surat, the enchanting strategies employed by Thief Detector Sheikh Khyrulla of Madras, an opinion of the solicitors of the East India Company as to whether the estate of a wildly disorganised employee might be pursued for compensation, proceedings of the Sedition Committee, and certificates of freedom issued to those walking away from slavery in Aden.
For more information please contact the academic coordinator Amanda Perry-Kessaris.
