{"id":275,"date":"2010-10-21T09:28:35","date_gmt":"2010-10-20T22:28:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stumblingpast.wordpress.com\/?p=275"},"modified":"2022-08-04T00:24:04","modified_gmt":"2022-08-04T00:24:04","slug":"blog-header-the-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stumblingpast.com\/2010\/10\/21\/blog-header-the-people\/","title":{"rendered":"Blog Header \u2013\u00a0The People"},"content":{"rendered":"

The header for this blog reflects my view of history.\u00a0 It reflects a world where people communicated and travelled beyond their national borders. I am attracted to the perspectives offered by ‘transnational history’ which challenges the traditional nationalist histories of the past.\u00a0 Historians who take a transnational view understand that people, ideas and goods travelled extensively beyond national borders.\u00a0 These transnational connections were already extensive by the time we noticed them in the late twentieth century and started talking about globalisation.\u00a0 People have always been curious about what lay beyond their home and sought to understand the ideas and exchange the goods of others.<\/p>\n

The Silk Road is a good example of interaction between peoples.\u00a0 The European empires that emerged after the travels of Columbus are another obvious example albeit in the case of many indigenous peoples, an exchange forced upon them with devastating consequences.\u00a0 The lives of the people in the header of my blog were significantly affected by people who lived beyond Britain’s shores.<\/p>\n

\"John<\/a>
John Cornelius Woolward d. 1836<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The first person that I would like you to meet is John Cornelius Woolward.\u00a0 You can only see the bottom part of this silhouette in the header (at the top above the ‘s’ and ‘t’ at the end of the blog title).\u00a0 In 1798 he fought in the Battle of the Nile at Aboukir Bay<\/a>, a significant battle where Nelson routed the French fleet.\u00a0 John Cornelius suffered a significant hearing loss from this battle.\u00a0 He then became the harbourmaster at Ramsgate, England.\u00a0 He served in this position for 26 years.\u00a0 His interaction with the world outside Britain was through conflict.\u00a0 As far as I am aware, opportunities for him to interact with people from other parts of the world outside battle were very limited.<\/p>\n

\"Studio<\/a>
Matilda Woolward d. 1907<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The next person was the wife of the son of John Cornelius, Matilda (nee Barrett).\u00a0 She married in 1845 on the island of Guernsey.\u00a0 Her husband worked for the coastguard and I assume had been transferred from Kent to Guernsey as part of the service’s policy of transferring their employees in a bid to prevent collusion with smugglers.\u00a0 Family history tends to concentrate on the male members of the family so I don’t have much information about Matilda, but I wonder what life was like for her on Guernsey.\u00a0 Did she live there prior to marriage or did she move there and have to start from scratch not knowing anyone?\u00a0 Was there a small community of naval\/coastguard families on Guernsey who formed a supportive group for newcomers? \u00a0 She was living in Southampton when her husband died in 1886 and she died there 21 years later.\u00a0 She lived during a time when Britain was benefiting greatly from the wealth and power they gained from their colonies.\u00a0 Matilda Barrett would have been aware of the power of the British navy but may not have been so aware of the wealth that Britain was reaping from the empire.\u00a0 We do not know the contents of the book she is holding but during her lifetime there were many books and newspapers published in Britain that contained ideas that not only originated from other places in the empire but also beyond the empire.<\/p>\n

\"John<\/a>
John Horatio Woolward b. 1847 d. 1918.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To the right is a photo of the son of Matilda and grandson of John Cornelius – John Horatio.\u00a0 He was born on Guernsey in 1847.\u00a0 John Horatio’s birth certificate records his name as ‘Jean’, though to my knowledge he always used the English version of the name.\u00a0 I wonder what were the circumstances surrounding his name being registered in this way?\u00a0 Like his grandfather, he also joined the Navy, serving on a variety of ships between 1862 and 1896.\u00a0 His view of the world would have been one of British domination, probably with little personal interaction with people who were not British.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Gladys Woolward d. 1922<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The last person is possibly the one with the most interesting story to tell, however we will probably never be able to learn more about her.\u00a0 Gladys married the son of John Horatio in 1908.\u00a0 I do not know her maiden name or anything about her background.\u00a0 She was living in Calcutta from the time of her marriage (was she living there before she married?) until she died.\u00a0 A feature of the colonial era that interests historians greatly is the interaction of people of different cultural backgrounds.\u00a0 By the time that Gladys was living in Calcutta the British had been in the city for a long time.\u00a0 I don’t know anything about where she lived in Calcutta, however we do know that the British tended to cluster in a particular area of Calcutta.\u00a0 Geographer, Sanjoy Chakravorty, has written an interesting paper in which he touches on the spatial practices in colonial Calcutta.\u00a0 The British availed themselves of cheap Indian labour for help in their homes.\u00a0 These Indian workers needed to live close to their employers due to their long working hours so the slums where they lived were threaded throughout the British sector of Calcutta (Chakravoty<\/a> pp. 65-66).\u00a0 Gladys and her family would have interacted with Indians on a daily basis but it was an interaction mediated by the barriers imposed by the power and wealth of the British in comparison with most Indians.<\/p>\n

As you have probably realised these people are part of my family.\u00a0 Their stories are typical of many British families at the time.\u00a0 Why did I use their photos in my header?\u00a0 It was sparked by a pragmatic consideration – I needed a unique image for my header and one that I did not need to seek copyright permission to use.\u00a0 This made me think of the old books and photos that I owned.\u00a0 But my choice of photos was not governed by practical issues alone.\u00a0 I wanted to convey an interconnected world and these people, like countless other people of their time, demonstrated through their lives the interconnectedness of the world in which they lived.\u00a0 David Lambert and Alan Lester have written an essay about this that is well worth reading.\u00a0 They explain how examining the lives of individuals can open our awareness of the myriad networks between people living far apart.\u00a0 These networks animated the British Empire during the nineteenth century (Lambert and Lester<\/a>, ‘Introduction’, pp. 1-31).\u00a0 Traditionally history has confined its concerns to the occurrences within the nation.\u00a0 Transnational history demonstrates that such histories convey only part of the story.\u00a0 By ignoring influences from beyond national borders, these histories gave a distorted view of the life of the nation.<\/p>\n

Sources<\/h3>\n