Cross-cultural encounters in the Survey of India in the mid-nineteenth century
Cross-cultural encounters in the Survey of India in the mid-nineteenth century
Cross-cultural encounters in the Survey of India in the mid-nineteenth century
My aims with the Fellowship were to show the opportunities in the IOR Map Collection to identify surveyors in the Survey of India. I chose a series of printed reports covering Topographical Surveys from 1861 to 1877. These are bound in three volumes in the India Office Records Map Collection. I aimed to demonstrate the information that can be extracted from those reports, and to reveal its potential in understanding cross-cultural relationships in this context. Survey of India Maps from this period rarely show the names of the people who did the hardest work, least of all those referred to at the time as Native/Sub Surveyors. However, the printed reports provide important details of the staffing and work of the Topographical Surveys. A main aim of the research was to identify the names, roles and, if possible, the working relationships of the people who were on the ground working in very difficult conditions to survey the land and produce maps of it. A parallel core aim was to develop my understanding of and skills in digital research methods. This latter aim stems from both a personal interest and a recognition that there is a huge amount of untapped printed material, the contents of which can enhance our understanding of who made the maps in our collections and how they and their teams worked. So, I developed a list of research questions covering both content and method.
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Item type:Blog post, A Geographer's Initiation Digital Humanities - Part 3(2026-06-10)Rowlands, HuwThis blog post is the third in a series of three written for the British Library’s Digital Research blog about the Coleridge Fellowship 2025-26. The research used digital methods to extract data from ten printed reports of the Survey of India’s Topographical Survey from 1864 and 1873. This post describes the use of Large Language Models (AI) platforms to extract data from the transcribed reports. All text is © British Library Board and is available under a CC-BY Licence except where otherwise stated. This license does not apply to images or other media. For any image without an explicit license notice, users are responsible for determining its copyright status before reuse.3 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Blog post, A Geographer's Initiation Digital Humanities - Part 1(2026-06-10)Rowlands, HuwThis blog post is the first in a series of three written for the British Library’s Digital Research blog about the Coleridge Fellowship 2025-26. The research used digital methods to extract data from ten printed reports of the Survey of India’s Topographical Survey from 1864 and 1873. This post describes the background to the research, early team planning meetings, and the start of transcription work using Transkribus. All text is © British Library Board and is available under a CC-BY Licence except where otherwise stated. This license does not apply to images or other media. For any image without an explicit license notice, users are responsible for determining its copyright status before reuse.2 2 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Blog post, A Geographer's Initiation Digital Humanities - Part 2(2026-06-10)Rowlands, HuwThis blog post is the second in a series of three written for the British Library’s Digital Research blog about the Coleridge Fellowship 2025-26. The research used digital methods to extract data from ten printed reports of the Survey of India’s Topographical Survey from 1864 and 1873. This post describes the details and complications of tagging in Transkribus, the use of ChatGPT to transcribe tables, and the use of elephants by surveying parties. All text is © British Library Board and is available under a CC-BY Licence except where otherwise stated. This license does not apply to images or other media. For any image without an explicit license notice, users are responsible for determining its copyright status before reuse.3 2 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Blog post, ‘Native Surveyors’ of the Survey of India in the Mid-nineteenth Century(2026-06-10)Rowlands, HuwThis blog post was written for the British Library’s Untold Lives blog. It describes the research project undertaken in the Coleridge Fellowship 2025-26. The research used digital methods to extract data from ten printed reports of the Survey of India’s Topographical Survey from 1864 and 1873. This post gives an overview of the research and lists the names of the ‘Native Surveyors’ we identified. It also describes how the extracted data formed the basis for biographical research in the India Office Records and online. Future research opportunities that build on this work are also explored. All text is © British Library Board and is available under a CC-BY Licence except where otherwise stated. This license does not apply to images or other media. For any image without an explicit license notice, users are responsible for determining its copyright status before reuse.3 10