Records of the Oldest Institution of Western Education in Asia: Archiving the Hindoo/Presidency College Collection (EAP1230)

Aims and objectives

This Pilot project intends to survey, catalogue and partially digitise pedagogic texts, and the establishment records of Hindoo/Presidency College, the first institution of Western-type secular education in Asia. It aims to assemble a rich body of institutional evidence, the first of its kind in India, for historical studies of the colonial (re)production of Western-type secular education in the non-Western world. The project aims to catalogue approximately 20,000 titles in European and Oriental languages on an astounding variety of subjects, dating between the early 18th and early 20th centuries, and digitise, as samples, around 5000 pages of miscellaneous material, like minutes, letters, reports, and confidential proceedings of the college.

Outcomes

The records copied by this project have been catalogued as:

The following survey of official documents such as admission forms, notices, official letters, salary books, seminar books, library catalogues, gazetteers etc. held at the Presidency College has been submitted as part of the project: