In the world of archival research, every discovery feels like opening a time capsule. Recently, such a moment occurred at SOAS. Amongst the archival materials, four bound volumes of the Formosa Church News—the predecessor to Taiwan’s Taiwan Church News (Tâi-oân Kàu-hōe Kong-pò)—came to light. These volumes are not only significant for their rarity but also for their immense research value, particularly in illuminating Taiwan’s socio-religious history.

Published by the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan, the Formosa Church News is a cornerstone of Taiwanese Christian history and Asia’s first printed newspaper in a Romanised vernacular language. Its historical significance lies in its ability to reflect the interwoven narratives of missionary activities, local culture, and the sociopolitical landscape of Taiwan. This recent rediscovery expands the known collection of the newspaper, especially as it includes editions predating those held at the SOAS archives, dating back to the publication’s inception in 1885.

The Rediscovered Volumes and Their Importance

The newly uncovered bound volumes from the Presbyterian Library 臺灣府城教會報 | SOAS University of London provide critical supplements to the existing SOAS collection. These volumes cover the following periods:

• 1885–1886: The very beginning of its publication.
• 1887–1888: Early expansions of its reporting.
• 1922–1925 and 1926–1927: Key years capturing a transitional period in Taiwan’s history under Japanese colonial rule.

What makes these particular volumes even more remarkable is a handwritten note by Thomas Barclay, a pivotal figure in Taiwan’s missionary history and the founder of the Formosa Church News. Barclay’s personal annotations add a layer of authenticity and provide researchers with a direct connection to the paper’s origins. His involvement highlights the missionary-driven purpose of the publication: to spread Christian teachings and offer a platform for discourse among Taiwanese Christians during a time of significant cultural change.

Supplementing Existing Archives

The SOAS archives house a rich collection of materials from the Presbyterian Church in Taiwan, including the Formosa Church News. However, the rediscovered volumes extend the timeline earlier than the SOAS copies, offering fresh perspectives on its nascent years. Researchers can now explore how the publication evolved in its early stages, both in terms of its content and its role in shaping community identity.

By bridging this gap, these volumes enable scholars to trace the newspaper’s growth from a missionary tool into a broader medium for social commentary. This shift is particularly intriguing given Taiwan’s complex colonial history, first under the Manchus, followed by Japan, and later transitions that influenced local identity and religious practices.

Why These Discoveries Matter

The rediscovery of these early volumes is more than just an archival addition; it’s a testament to the enduring legacy of the Formosa Church News. The newspaper served as a cultural and linguistic bridge, utilising Romanised Taiwanese to empower local readers and provide a sense of community amidst changing political tides. This language choice was a radical and empowering step in the late nineteenth century, emphasising education and accessibility over elitism.

Insights into Local Social Thought

A particularly significant aspect of the Formosa Church News is that it wasn’t solely a missionary-driven publication. Local Taiwanese often contributed to its pages, offering a rare and invaluable glimpse into the social thought of the time.

These writings provide one of the only recorded forms of “bottom-histories,” capturing the voices and perspectives of ordinary people in an era dominated by elite narratives. Through essays, reports, and letters, contributors expressed their views on pressing social issues, community challenges, and the evolving role of faith in their daily lives.

This makes the newspaper a critical resource for understanding how local Taiwanese engaged with early modernisation, colonial rule, and the influence of Christianity. It reveals how they interpreted and reshaped these forces, creating a dialogical space between missionary ideals and indigenous experiences.

Romanized Hokkien: A Linguistic Treasure Trove

The Formosa Church News was written in Romanised Hokkien, a distinctive feature that significantly enhances its linguistic and cultural value. This language choice was strategic, as it allowed the church to reach a broader audience in Taiwan, particularly those who were literate in their spoken language but had limited access to classical Chinese education.

For linguists, this archive offers a rare and expansive database of Romanised Hokkien, providing insights into how the language was codified and used in written form during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Additionally, it serves as an important comparative resource for studying other written languages in Taiwan, including Romanised Indigenous languages, such as Sirayan, and Japanese, offering a richer understanding of Taiwan’s multilingual histories.

Colonial and Indigenous Interactions

Early editions provide glimpses into how missionaries documented and interacted with Indigenous Taiwanese communities, offering invaluable ethnographic data. These records are especially significant for understanding how Indigenous groups were perceived and engaged within the broader social fabric of Taiwan during a time of rapid change.

Resistance and Adaptation Under Colonial Rule

The later volumes (1922–1927) coincide with Taiwan’s Japanese colonial period, a time when the newspaper subtly reflected and responded to shifting cultural dynamics and political pressures. The Formosa Church News offers clues about how Christian communities navigated and negotiated their faith and identity under colonial rule, making it a vital resource for scholars of colonial history.

By incorporating these aspects into the rediscovered volumes’ narrative, we see how the Formosa Church News functioned as more than a missionary publication. It became a platform for local voices, a tool for linguistic preservation, and a record of Taiwan’s evolving identity, leaving an indelible mark on the island’s historical and cultural landscape.

About the author

Niki Alsford is Professor of Anthropology and Human Geography, and Director for the Institutes for the Study of the Asia Pacific (ISAP), and the Institute for Area and Migration Studies (AMIS) at the University of Central Lancashire. He is a Research Associate at the Centre of Taiwan Studies at SOAS and an Associate Member of the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oxford.

Alsford’s research focuses primarily on Taiwan, Korea, and the Pacific Islands. He is the book series editor for the Taiwan Series at BRILL, the Korean series at Routledge, and a new series on Asia Pacific Cultures, Communities, and Landscapes at Palgrave Macmillan. Alsford is the author of Taiwan Lives: A Socio-Political History, published by the University of Washington Press in 2024 and Transitions to Modernity in Taiwan: The Spirit of 1895 and the Cession of Formosa to Japan, published by Routledge in 2017.

In today’s blog, we consider the question of how, as archivists, researchers, and communities, we might critically engage with colonial histories in the archives to understand and acknowledge the legacies of enslavement and the transatlantic slave trade. By looking at some recent initiatives around 19^th century missionary archives held by SOAS Special Collections, we reflect on how we might explore histories of resistance and begin to respond to the silences in the historical record.

AI recreation of Quamina (1778-1823), a key figure in the history of the church in Guyana and the Demerara Rebellion of 1823.

Mandisa Baptiste, QUAMINA, 2023, Fine Art Photo Al on Canvas, 52 x 52 inches. Copyright: Mandisa Baptiste (2023)

Recovering voices from the archives

While invaluable for historical research and evidencing the past, sources in colonial archives are unquestionably biased towards the voices of those in positions of power. The gaps and the silences are tangible. Acknowledging the difficulty of working with these sources, which document violence and oppression, it is our responsibility as archivists and researchers to recover the voices of those who were subject to colonial exploitation wherever possible, hidden as they often are in the materials and the catalogues that describe them.

If we consider the archives of British missionary societies working in the Caribbean in the early 19^th century, the evidence that they provide can inform our understanding of the history of enslavement and the transatlantic slave trade. Missionaries were not impartial, being an integral part of colonial networks and systems of power, but in their encounters with enslaved Africans on plantations in the region they bore witness to acts of resistance as well as acts of violence.

An initiative to digitise the archives of the London Missionary Society’s West Indies mission, including 19^th century letters and journals written from Trinidad, Tobago, Jamaica and Guyana, along with contemporary newspapers, has been made possible with funding from the Council for World Mission, the successor body to the original Missionary Society. With open access to these materials now possible through SOAS Digital Collections, we hope to facilitate meaningful opportunities for engagement, including with communities in the Caribbean whose history they document. Some of these initiatives are detailed below and others will be highlighted in future blogs.

Documenting resistance

This November, SOAS Library welcomed a delegation from Guyana, led by Mr Charles Ramson, Minister of Culture, Youth and Sports in Guyana (pictured below). This was the second visit from Guyana this year, with a delegation in June led by Mr Eric Phillips, Chair of Guyana Reparations Committee and Vice Chair of the CARICOM Reparations Commission, and accompanied by representatives from the Council for World Mission. The visits were in connection with Bicentennial events planned in Guyana this year to mark the 1823 Demerara Rebellion, recognised as a key moment in the struggle for emancipation of enslaved Africans. Events through 2023 will include a year-long exhibition of artefacts and documents hosted at the Museum of African Heritage, Georgetown, Guyana, promoted through schools, the University of Guyana, and the media. 

Delegates were particularly interested in the role of Christianised Africans and the Church in the Rebellion and engaged with a display of materials in Special Collections drawn from the archives of the London Missionary Society (LMS). This included letters written by missionaries from the plantations in Demerara which became the focus for the uprising, letters from notable Africans including Quamina, hand-written journals including eye-witness accounts of events, contemporary regional newspapers reporting on the Rebellion and its aftermath including important testimonies in the subsequent trials, and visual materials. 

Quamina (1778-1823), was an enslaved Guyanese man on an estate owned by John Gladstone. He also served as a deacon of the mission church established by the LMS missionary, John Wray, at ‘Le Resouvenir’. Quamina, his son Jack and other senior members of their church group were accused of leading the Demerara Rebellion, along with a British missionary, John Smith, who was found guilty of inciting the rebels and died in prison before his death sentence could be enacted. Quamina was killed by British soldiers on 16^th September 1823. He is commemorated as a national hero in Guyana.

A letter from Quamina (pictured below) to the London Missionary Society Directors, dated December 14th 1817, can be seen on our Digital Library, along with other materials on Guyana at https://digital.soas.ac.uk/r_guy/all/. Copies of materials from the archive feature in the exhibition in Guyana.

Silences in the archive

In many cases, however, the archive is silent on the experiences of enslaved men and women in the Caribbean. It sometimes therefore lies within the realm of others to address these silences, including through instances of creative expression. SOAS recently welcomed Esther Phillips, First Poet Laureate of Barbados, who was based in London over the summer as a Visiting Fellow. While she was with us, Esther spent some time conducting research using the library’s missionary archives, unearthing the experiences of those who endured the horrors of slavery, and seeking to honour their narratives. She was particularly interested in locating the voices of enslaved women and giving them a voice through her poems. She gave a powerful reading of her current work at SOAS on 27^th September.

Confronting legacies

Research in their archives, held by SOAS Library since the early 1970s, has been at the core of work undertaken by the Council for World Mission (CWM) to acknowledge and examine its own historical roots. The Onesimus Project, previously known as the Legacies of Slavery Project was initiated by CWM in 2017. Bearing in mind its origins as the London Missionary Society (LMS), which was founded before slavery was abolished, CWM has sought to assess its story and complicity with the systems of slavery, while finding ways to advocate reparation with its member churches. This has included four Legacies of Slavery hearings based in several countries in 2017 and 2018, with follow up recommendations submitted to the CWM Board outlining a commitment towards financial reparation, among other initiatives. More information on the Council’s work in this area can be found in their magazine, INSiGHT, Issue 26 (November 2022). Research on legacies of slavery using the missionary archives is ongoing and has been highlighted as part of a recent CWM seminar series hosted by SOAS Library entitled ‘Decolonizing Mission Studies’.

SOAS Special Collections recently partnered with Adrian Wisnicki of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln to study Victorian periodicals as sources for BIPOC writers and voices (Black, Indigenous and People of Colour), and to derive strategies both for identifying and reading those which were located. SOAS Special Collections has a longstanding working partnership with Adrian and the One More Voice initiative through their support of an earlier project Livingstoneonline. Special Collections holds full sets of periodicals or magazines produced by a number of British missionary societies and were keen to surface these voices as part of decolonial thinking around the use of colonial archives such as mission archives in contemporary scholarship. The project was a perfect opportunity to accomplish this. Over five months, SOAS CWC Research Associate Dr Jo Davis looked at London Missionary Society and Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society print periodical holdings, and at UNL, Cassie Fletcher read AMD digital periodical holdings online. Between them they found over 250 documents by BIPOC authors. The sources retrieved from collections held at SOAS and the digital RSVP texts are included through the project website.

As part of this project, several encoders were then tasked with learning to encode and digitise items to be hosted online, equipping them for the growing demands of digitised humanities for these sources. 64 were encoded and are hosted on this page in chronological order for immediate access. Eight scholars contributed peer-reviewed critical essays interrogating critical issues around accessing, recovering and representing these BIPOC voices and identities. Annotated bibliographies are included for the use of scholars to increase fields of experience and aid in speedy research methodologies. These contribute as a way to open up fields, and highlight the scholarship on the sources. All of these resources are freely available for anyone to use. It is a learning and teaching resource haven.

Finding the object of your research project is not necessarily easy. Project scholars co-wrote two sets of guidelines around research methodologies. The first was for researchers who are searching specifically for unidentified black and racialised voices on how to approach these periodicals to find them. Whilst reflecting on this outcome we were able to provide a second unforeseen set of guidelines which digital publishers may consider whilst preparing documentation for the digital medium in order to enable a focused, page by page, word-for-word reading, which we had learned was the only way to truly assess each periodical for these voices. Having digital, digitised aspects of missionary archives means that they are available to all and access to them is immeasurably improved, but reading them on the screen is also demanding. This was beneficial as it once again supported the aim of our project, namely, to increase access to these materials. 

This was a truly enjoyable and fascinating collaborative project with fascinating results. It was an example of collaboration at its best, with development of skills delivered across both sides of the Atlantic. 

SOAS Corporate Archive holds an extensive collection of material, including correspondence, meeting minutes, notes, reports, schedules and press cuttings which track the major milestones of the design, build and funding of the Philips Library, along with the successes and challenges encountered along the way. 

A major goal of the project will be the professional cataloguing of this material to international standards and the publication of the description on the SOAS Archive Catalogue, from where internal and external users will be able to order material to view in the Reading Room. We will also be identifying material for digitisation so that it can be accessible offsite via SOAS Digital Collections.

To deliver this project, we are delighted to welcome to SOAS as Project Archivist experienced architectural archivist and cataloguer Josie Sommer, who comes to us from RIBA. She is currently working through the extensive (and at times not especially tidy!) collection of material, teasing out the different iterations of the planning and build to better understand the material and how it can be made accessible, as well as better preserved so that we can provide access to the records into the future to support research into the history of the building, and also ensure that the School can more easily preserve and maintain the building itself for the next 50 years and beyond.

We will also be taking the opportunity to plan some community engagement themed around the anniversary of our beloved Library, and sharing our progress and key finds online and via our onsite exhibition spaces – so do keep an eye on our blog, Twitter and Instagram!

Even after the signing of the 1895 peace treaty marking the end of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95, Taiwanese resistance forces, led by General Liu Yongfu (1837-1917) of the Black Flag Army, continued to attack the occupying Japanese troops. Madam Zhang (in the middle, on a blue horse), wife of Commander-in-chief Sun, formed the women’s resistance force to avenge the death of her husband. She was accompanied into battle by the Liu sisters, probably daughters of General Liu, who is shown in the top right. The scene represents their victorious battle in Zhanghua, which took place on the 27th day of the seventh lunar month of 1895. 

The battle scene depicted here refers to the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95. Although China was defeated this print nevertheless acknowledges one of their few victorious battles against the Japanese aggressor. In 1894 the Cantonese general Liu Yongfu (1837-1917), whose reputation was legendary for his resistance against the Taiping rebels in 1864 and his assistance in the Franco-Vietnamese war against the French in 1873, had now been appointed to help defend Taiwan. Under his command the Black Flag Army carried on a tenacious struggle against the Japanese. In this scene he is watching the battle of the 27th of the seventh lunar month in which several thousand Chinese soldiers died. The print was commissioned by Commander-in-chief Sun, whose heroic wife Madam Zhang died in battle, to cherish her memory. Both Madam Zhang and Miss Liu? who is probably affiliated to general Liu, were appointed commander of their troops and they are seen here recapturing a Taiwanese city from the Japanese.

See this and more images from the Chinese Woodblock collection at SOAS Library on our Digital Collections.

Collection Care & Digitisation (CCD), part of our Library Services Directorate, is home to our small digitisation team and a recently appointed Conservator (a first for SOAS) who is tasked with overseeing the care of our unique and internationally important library collections – SOAS Library is one of only 5 National Research Libraries in the UK. 

The new CCD suite will build capacity around the physical care of our collections. It will help to revive binding and book repair programmes and enable us to develop environmental monitoring, integrated pest management, and disaster preparedness to help preserve collections – extending the life of the resources SOAS Library has collected, which are used by teachers, students, and researchers at SOAS and around the world.  

It will also enable the library to promote the collections, to establish the library’s brand, to forge partnerships to make the most of that capacity. Strategic partnerships have already been built around digitised resources in Malaysia, the Netherlands, and the Philippines, which have helped us to increase productivity through shared effort. We have also been able to begin the digitisation of archival materials through funding from key depositors, including the Council for World Mission, and thus increase access to these resources by audiences outside the institution and the UK. 

Digitisation transfigures our collections for 21^st Century use. We currently hold 1.1 million digitised units including books, archives, journals, newspapers, photographs, works of art, maps, audio and video. To date this represents 73,333 units per year on average generated through our digitisation team working with library collection managers – 2021 produced around 100,000 units with 1 digitiser; 2022 produced 300,000 units with grant funding & 3 digitisers.

In addition to building dedicated facilities, funding has enabled us to fully equip these spaces for work. For conservation work, this has included workbenches; cameras to document conditions before, during and after treatments; refrigerators to store specialist rice pastes and formulations; a book press and book binding equipment; a fume hood used to perform treatments using chemicals; a sink and filtration unit used to wash and clean archival papers; an encapsulator to make enclosures used to protect maps and fragile archival papers; specialist tools including a board chopper and guillotine; supplies including boxes, boards, conservation papers, bookcloths, book leathers and pairing tools, book papers including marbled papers, Japanese papers and tissues, adhesives, brushes, gloves, small tools, cotton ties, binding threads, dyes, etc. 

It is envisaged that in addition to practical conservation work, the conservation workspace will be used for displays and teaching/training events, including for our MA Curating Cultures students and visiting students who are training to be conservators. 

The new digitisation space includes a dark-room with black-out partitions, which professionalises image capture and reduces glare. Partitioning of this space allows the room to be used for multiple purposes, equipped with different types of book scanners, DSLRs (cameras) and equipment for capturing flat archives and larger, more complex images such as maps, newspapers and woodblock prints. The facility will also enable the imaging of glass plate and film slides, very large works of art and the Brunei Gallery’s teaching collection of 3D objects. Specialist software will enable OCR to generate accurate searchable text from digitised texts. Some elements of digitisation work will continue to be sourced out of house where this is more cost-effective. 

With supplemental funding from HEIF, CCD hopes to launch digital skills training for students in conjunction with their education programmes.  

As part of a wider building and refurbishment project on Level F of the Library, additional funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) has also enabled a refurbishment of the archive storage areas managed by Special Collections, including the fitting of new HVAC systems, which control the temperature and humidity of the stores, enhanced lighting, fire protection and security systems to meet international standards for the management of archives. 

For queries about the CCD project, please contact the Advancement Team.

Contact the Collection Care & Digitisation Team to find out more about their work.

For on-campus access to SOAS Digital Collections visit digital.soas.ac.uk

Personal papers & archives

Amongst the archives at SOAS are the papers of individuals who travelled to Africa and Asia as anthropologists, missionaries or on official or private business, who documented the natural history and plant-life of the regions they visited as part of a deliberate botanical study, to practice their artistic skills or simply out of a personal interest in the new environments in which they found themselves. Some published their findings; others collected samples and sent them back to institutions such as The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in Britain where they formed part of growing collections. 

A notable example of the latter can be found in the collection of William Kerr, which comprises two volumes of handwritten lists and notes entitled ‘Memorandum of Plants, Seeds & c. sent from China to the Royal Gardens, Kew’, dating from between 1803 and 1808 (pictured below). William Kerr (d. 1814), was a Scottish gardener and plant hunter, the first Western professional full-time plant collector active in China. He also collected in Java and Luzon in the Philippines. Kerr sent back to Britain examples of 238 plants new to European gardeners, without, it appears, stirring far from the European trading sites of Canton and Macao, or Manila. Kerr was a gardener at Kew, where he was known to Sir Joseph Banks, and, following instruction by Banks, was sent to China in 1804, where he remained for eight years. Kerr’s samples, found in local Chinese gardens and plant nurseries, included Euonymus japonicus, Lilium lancifolium, Pieris japonica, Nandina domestica, Begonia grandis and the white-flowered Rosa banksiae, named for his patron’s wife. In 1812, he went to Colombo, Ceylon [Sri Lanka], where he worked as superintendent of gardens on ‘Slave Island’ [Kampong Kertel / Kompanna Veediya] and at King’s House. 

Memorandum of Plants, Seeds & c. sent from China to the Royal Gardens, Kew, Volume 1, William Kerr, 1803-1808. Reference: CWML MSS/238 https://digital.soas.ac.uk/LOAA006486/00001/allvolumes

There are many other examples of individuals in whose personal papers we can find observations and commentaries on the landscapes, plants and flowers around them, including:

• Richard Baron (1847-1907), who served with the London Missionary Society in Madagascar for thirty-five years, from 1872 until his death in 1907. Baron became a serious student of Madagascar’s flora and during his missionary journeys in Madagascar collected and sent around 7,000 plants the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew . He was a prolific author including a number of works on Malagasy culture, geology and botany. Baron’s archive includes paintings of flowers from the region as well as photographs. 

• Lilias Trotter (1853-1928) founder of the Algiers Mission Band, painter and writer of devotional books. Trained as an artist, Lilias’s love of art remained and during her 40 years in Algiers and she produced a stream of beautifully illustrated literature, her diaries and scrapbooks full of miniature watercolours of local plant life as well as the landscapes and people she had seen. 

• Thomas Birch Freeman (1809-1890), a British missionary of dual heritage and an important figure in the history of Methodism in Ghana and Nigeria. He is also perhaps the first recorded British botanist of colour. Like his father he first worked as a gardener, and was a keen student of botany. He became head gardener to Sir Robert Harland at Orwell Park, near Ipswich in Suffolk. Years later when he was in West Africa, he corresponded with Sir William Hooker (1785-1865), the first director of Kew Gardens near London, on West African flowers and trees.

• William Arthur Crabtree (1868-1945), a missionary in Uganda with the Church Missionary Society, whose papers include lists of trees and plants in the Bible in Luganda.

• Margaret Crabtree (1897-1978), a missionary and educationalist in China, whose papers include watercolour paintings depicting animals and plants.

• Professor Christoph von Fürer-Haimendorf (1909-1995), SOAS academic and anthropologist who travelled to India, Ceylon, Nepal, Tibet and the Philippines. Material includes field notes and observations on the use of medicinal use of plants in Nepal and hand-written cards, as well as photographs of plants and landscapes.

• James Trenchard Hardyman (1918-1995), missionary in Madagascar, whose papers include correspondence, images and texts on botany in Madagascar, including material on botanical expeditions to the region.

• Frances Hey (fl. 1912-1926), teacher and missionary in Ceylon [Sri Lanka], comprising a notebook recording the history, culture and botany of Ceylon and South India.

• Roy Clive Abraham (1890-1963), linguist, comprising a typed notebook of botanical items in Yoruba, with their Latin names and descriptions in English.

• Frederick William Migeod (1877-1952), colonial administrator and botanist, whose papers document the natural history, botany and languages of West Africa, including detailed descriptive notes concerning Mende flora, arranged under Mende names.

Manuscripts & rare books

The collections in SOAS Library are also rich in published and printed works on the subject of botany, as well as striking visual depictions of plants and flowers over the centuries. Below are just a few examples, but there are many more to be discovered:

• ‘Medicine traditionelle de l’Inde’, based on lectures by Dr Paramananda Mariadassou at the School of Medicine, Pondicherry, India (1934-1936), comprising a collection of three illustrated volumes, in French, on traditional Hindu or Ayurvedic medicine, including a discussion of herbal remedies and their usage, on diseases, diet, hygiene, childhood illnesses, useful animals and plants, etc.

• ‘Muraqqa’ : A concertina album of calligraphic specimens with illuminated borders, Iran, 1751. Each page has bold floral margins, some inhabited by birds and insects, some executed in a characteristically Qajar style, which postdates the examples of calligraphy the pages contain. 

• An illustration of a Peony in an album of 10 paintings of flowers presented by Puyi (1906-67), the last Emperor of China, to his tutor Sir Reginald Johnston (1874-1938), who was also the first Professor of Chinese at SOAS. The album bears an inscription by the Emperor in his own hand to Johnston on the verso of the front cover and his own seal on the peony painting. The artist, Chen Shu (1612-82), was a literati painter from Jiangsu province near Shanghai who settled in Nanjing in his later years. He produced paintings depicting mainly birds, flowers and insects, but occasionally produced landscape paintings in ink.

• Arba’un Hadithan [Forty Tradition] exemplars – the pages of this beautiful book were produced in sixteenth-century Safavid Iran and contain a collection of 40 Arabic ḥadīth – sayings of the Prophet Muḥammad – compiled and paraphrased into Persian verse by the celebrated Iranian poet and mystic Jāmī (1414-92). This particular copy is calligraphed in an elegant nasta’līq script and delicately illuminated throughout. Each page comprises a central panel of light-blue paper on which the text is written and a broad margin of scrolling blossoms rendered in gold paint. The book was provided in the first half of the nineteenth century with a fine lacquered cover painted with naturalistic flowers.

• Plants of the Coast of Coromandel selected from drawings and descriptions presented to the hon. court of directors to the East India Company’, by William Roxburgh, published by Joseph Banks, Vol.I (London: 1795)

• Japanese woodblock print of a woman gazing at buds of plum blossoms . 早く 開かせたい. Sankai medetai zue. Excellences of mountain and sea illustrated. 歌川, 国芳 Utagawa Kuniyoshi (1797-1861), 1852.

Materials held by SOAS Library comprise a large collection of original manuscripts that were published under the influential Heinemann African Writers Series (1962-2003), led by Chinua Achebe and James Currey. Thanks to this series many African writers became household names and gained international acclaim, including Buchi Emecheta, Ngugi Wa Th’iongo, Wole Soyinka, Flora Nwapa, Mariama Ba, Nadine Gordimer, among many others.

2022 also marks the 60^th anniversary of the beginning of the Heinemann African Writers Series. The display celebrates the achievements of this Series, whilst also highlighting the difficulties writers from Africa faced when trying to publish their books with international publishers. According to James Currey, the Heinemann African Writers Series was pioneering in its time, as the texts of the writers sought to overcome the racist narratives of Africa that were common in the 1960s. 

To se a full list of the titles in the collection, search for ‘Heinemann African Writers Series’ on our online Archive Catalogue. The display can be seen on the ground floor (Level E) of SOAS Library until December 2022.

More about the collection:

The Heinemann African Writers Series published some of the key texts of modern African written literature. Publications included original English-language prose-fiction and poetry from new novelists, playwrights and poets across diverse national written literatures of Africa; translations of Francophone, Lusophone, and later Afrophone literatures; as well as political memoirs and tracts from leading African national liberation figures and politicians. The books in the series were designed by the publisher for classroom use in Africa and printed in low-cost paperback editions to make them affordable for African institutions and students. It met a growing demand in Africa for a specifically African written literature which would move beyond the Eurocentric biases in the teaching of Literature in the post-Independence period. The success of the Heinemann African Writers Series outside of Africa also provided a world-wide Anglophone audience for the African written literary tradition. The series provided an early international voice to leading African writers, including Chinua Achebe (also the series’ first editor), Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, and Nadine Gordimer.

The collection comprises manuscripts, typescripts with authorial corrections, and proof copies of 71 of the works published in the Heinemann African Writers Series between 1964 and 1986. The collection comprises largely original manuscripts and typescripts but does include some photocopies. The manuscripts, hand annotated typescripts and proofs provide fascinating evidence about the development of some of the key works in the series.

The collection includes works of poetry, drama, and non-fiction by over 60 authors, including Chinua Achebe (Beware Soul Brother); Elechi Amadi (The Concubine; Sunset in Biafra; Estrangement);  Syl Cheyney-Coker (The Graveyard Also Has Teeth); Thomas Obinkaram Echewa (The Crippled Dancer; The Land’s Lord); Nadine Gordimer (Some Monday for Sure); Nelson Mandela (No Easy Walk to Freedom), Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (Weep Not, Child; A Grain of Wheat; Secret Lives; Petals of Blood; The Trial of Dedan Kimath; Devil on the Cross; and Detained: A Writer’s Prison Diary); Martin Owusu (The Sudden Return); Mwangi Ruheni (The Future Leaders; The Minister’s Daughter); and Stanlake Samkange (The Mourned One).

The largest part of the collection was presented to SOAS Library by the publisher in the 1970s and 1980s, after which the Library sought approval from authors for their manuscripts to be made available to the public; some works were donated or deposited directly by the authors themselves, and a small number of works were purchased. The institutional company records of Heinemann Educational Books Ltd, 1946-80, including correspondence between the publisher and the writers and reports by manuscript reviewers are held separately at The Archive of British Publishing and Printing, Special Collections, University of Reading.

The manuscripts in the collection will likely be of interest to students and researchers across the world in a broad range of subjects, including African literature, postcolonial studies, and translation studies.

Rev. William E. Taylor was considered one of the greatest Swahili scholars, according to the late Sheikh Yahya Ali Omar and Peter Frankl who wrote about Taylor’s legacy for the promotion of Swahili literature, poetry and culture in the U.K.^[1]

William Ernest Taylor was born in Worcester, England, in 1856.  He was first educated at King’s School, Worcester.   In 1873, he won a scholarship to Hertford College, Oxford, where he was awarded a 3rd class honour degree in classical honour moderations.  Between 1879 and 1880, he attended the Medical Faculty of the University of Edinburgh, but he did not complete his degree and instead became a deacon, in 1880.

Taylor served the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in East Africa, first between 1880-1884, and returning as a missionary in 1885 until 1889.  Since his first appointment in East Africa, he had begun to learn Swahili and became acquainted with eminent Swahili scholars, poets, and writers, and began collecting Swahili manuscripts, both poetry and prose.

Taylor also travelled extensively among the Giryama (Giriama) people from whom he studied the language and collected oral material.

In 1892 he returned to England and married Catherine Tesseyman, in Hull.  He served again in East Africa between 1892 and 1896, but was then posted to Cairo and Karthoum between 1898 and 1903.  In 1904 he resigned from the CMS and subsequently held a succession of clerical appointments, the last at Holgate, Lincolnshire.

Taylor retained his interest in Swahili, examining Swahili language exams for the War Office and translating for the Salvation Army. William Ernest Taylor died at Bath in 1927.

His collection of Swahili manuscripts and publications such as the ‘African Aphorisms’ was donated to SOAS by Taylor’s wife after his passing. The collection contains Swahili literary material that he collected during his time in Mombasa thanks to the connections that he made with the local intellectuals and poets. His interest in Swahili poetry, in particular, made him well known among the Mombasa Swahili community and a Radio programme was launched called ‘Sauti ya Tela’ (Voice of Taylor) where he discussed Swahili poetry and literature.

Taylor is remembered for the publication ‘African Aphorisms’ or Saws from Swahili-land’ (MS 47752) that was published by the Society for promoting Christian knowledge, London, in 1891. The publication contains many poems, songs and riddles in Swahili as well as in the Gyriama language of the Kenyan interlands, and translated into English for the first time.

Additional evidence of the relationship between Taylor and local intellectuals and poets can be found in the correspondence files held in MS 47769  and MS 47782, which include letters between Taylor and well known poets and scholars such as Mwalimu Sikujua; Muyaka bin Haji Ghassanyi; Mohamed Kijumwa; Bwana Malenga al-Kilifi; Ahmad bin Sheikh al-Mambassy; Sayyid Mansab bin Abdirrahman; and  Abdullah bin Rashid, among others. 

Without the support of this local community of intellectuals, Taylor would have not been able to collect the many and varied manuscripts that he brought to the SOAS Archives.  Looking at Taylor’s story in East Africa, we can learn about the colonial Victorian encounter in a diverse way, not only an encounter based on violence and looting but also one of mutual respect and genuine interest in the rich and varied literature of the Swahili people of East Africa by an unusual missionary.

The full list of manuscripts in the Taylor collection can be found in the SOAS Digital Library here: http://digital.soas.ac.uk/taylor/all/

^[1] Frankl, p. & Omar, Ali Y (1993), ‘W.E. Taylor (1856-1927) Swahili Scholar Extraordinary’, S. Afric. J. Afric. lang, 1993, 13 (2).

Jean Boyd who was a Research Associate at the Centre of African Studies, SOAS, University of London, 1990, as well as having served as an Education Officer in the Colonial Service in Nigeria (1955-1960) and following Independence worked for the Nigerian Public Service (1960-1984). Jean Boyd spent 25 years in Sokoto, where she became a student of Waziri of Sokoto, Alhaji Dr Junaidu. She was Principal Research Fellow and Head of the Research Department (1980-1984) at the Sokoto State History Bureau, where she was editor of ‘Tarihi’, the bulletin of the Bureau. Boyd spent 15 years conducting fieldwork on manuscripts in Hausaland. 

Her contribution to scholarship is outstanding and, in particular, she brought to the attention of western audiences the work and educational impact of the famous Hausa poet, Nana Asma’u Fodio, the daughter of Usman (Shehu) dan Fodio (1754-1817), a Fulani and Muslim, who began a holy war to reform the practice of Islam in northern Nigeria, conquering the Hausa city-states. SOAS Special collections house copies of her manuscript poems within the Jean Boyd Papers PP MS 36, as the original literary manuscripts are in the custody of the Waziri of Sokoto, Alhaji Dr Junaidu.

Nana Asma’u (1793-1864) was an incredible force for charge in her society during the early 19^th century in northern Nigeria’s Sokoto caliphate. She was a devout and learned Muslim with a love for poetry, with a specific outlook on the role of poetry as an educational tool for rural women’s education and personal development.

Nana Asma’u Fodio’s poems constitute an important literary legacy of this period. She wrote in Arabic for formal pieces, Hausa for didactic verse, and Fulfulde when addressing her contemporaries within the ruling circle. She was also an historian and a scholar whose legacy lives on today in contemporary northern Nigeria society, many people call their daughters after her name. Nana was one of the first feminists in her society, probably following the legacy of her late father, Usman da Fodio, the leader of the Sokoto caliphate (established in 1808) who wrote poems about the relationships between men and women.

Nana Asma’u’s poetic translations and her own poems were extensively studied by Jean Boyd during her 25 years in northern Nigeria, resulting in numerous publications (references below). The image below is a copy of one of Nana’s poetic translations, collected by Jean Boyd, and now part of PP MS 36.

References:

Boyd, J & Mack, B. Collected Works of Nana Asma’u, Daughter of Usman da Fodiyo. Michigan State University Press, 1984.

Boyd J & Mack, B. Educating Muslim Women. Interface publications Ltd, 2013.

Boyd, J. The Caliph’s sister. Frank Cass, 1989

Boyd, J &Mack, B. One Woman’s Jihad.  Indiana University Press, 2000.