Switching the Lens: Constructing Personal Narratives through Colonial History Datasets

Ayers, Oliver (2023) Switching the Lens: Constructing Personal Narratives through Colonial History Datasets. AM Research Methods: Interrogating Colonial Archives and Narratives. (In Press)

Abstract

This case study gets students to use databases to create biographical profiles of figures from Britain’s domestic colonial history. By focusing on multiracial settlement in the UK from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, it counterbalances approaches that depict empire as a solely overseas phenomenon. The primary sources come from the London Metropolitan Archives’ ‘Switching the Lens’ database of parish records of baptisms, marriages and burials of people with African, Caribbean, Asian and Indigenous (e.g. Aboriginal Australian) heritage. The activities, however, can be readily adapted to other datasets. It is suitable for able sixth form level students and first year undergraduates. The exercise requires the availability of computers with internet access to use in class, but no preexisting technical knowledge is assumed or required on the part of either instructors or students. The emphasis is on student-led enquiry, with groups working together to explore the database, making notes of surprising or exciting discoveries. They will consider the technical and methodological challenges that emerge, examining what evidence is missing and how the perspectives of those creating the sources can distort what is recorded. In lesson two, students write short biographical profiles of an individual they have found. Created as a team, these 500 word personal narratives will require students to seek out additional information on the person and consider contextual questions of geography and chronology. In the process, they will reflect on the challenges historians encounter when dealing with the fragmentary but important evidence of Britain’s longstanding multiracial past.

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