Project Details
Projekt
Modern India in German Archives,1706-1989 (MIDA)
Subject Area
Modern and Contemporary History
Term
since 2014
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 259639080
The richness and the potential of the holdings of German archives on modern Indian history has been appreciated insufficiently so far. To the international community of historians of India, these resources can open up new research perspectives that have remained obstructed by an excessive fixation on British colonial archives. At the same time, innovative research questions can be generated for purposes of transnational historical comparison and for the historical analysis of "globalization" processes through an exploration of the modern history of German-Indian entanglements. Moreover, the resulting twofold widening of research perspectives creates new chances for a more intensive communication and cooperation between Indian and German traditions of historical inquiry – traditions that have taken cognizance of each other, so far, only to a very limited extent. Through the following initiatives the long-term project "Modern India in German Archives" ("Das Moderne Indien in deutschen Archiven", MIDA) aims to produce the necessary conditions for this substantial endeavour. MIDA will – systematically collect in a single database catalogue and keyword information on holdings of German archives on modern India and the history of German-Indian entanglements, from the establishment of the Danish-Halle Mission in South India (1706) up to the end of the political division of Germany (1989/90); – make available this database as well as further research data to the international academic community on a long-term basis as a "growing" and open digital resource for the purpose of locating specific archival material; – provide a digital Archival Reflexicon based on this systematic evaluation of relevant archival holdings, which will be expanded successively in order to present an overview of the full thematic range of relevant collections and discuss the methodological challenges implicit in their utilization; – demonstrate the potential of German archival resources for India-related studies in exemplary pilot research projects and a corresponding publication series in order to encourage (a) a more intense utilization of these archival holdings particularly by German and Indian historians and (b) the shaping of the necessary multilinguistic and inter-regional qualification profiles; – contribute to a sustained realization of the goal that was formulated by the DFG and the Indian Council for Historical Research (ICHR) in November 2012, namely the intensification of German-Indian research co-operation in the Human Sciences; – contribute to the debates on forms of coloniality in the history of global entanglements by way of systematizing the long-term project’s research outcomes.
DFG Programme
Research Grants
