British Oral History Project

Niamh Dillon, a British Library staff member, is researching a Ph.D. thesis at Goldsmiths College, University of London, on migration within the British Empire in the 20th century, and particularly on the lives of British people living in India in the period leading up to independence from Britain. She hopes to record interviews with people who experienced life in India before independence, and their subsequent experiences after moving to Britain post-independence.

If you or someone you know is willing to help her with a recorded interview, please contact Dillon by e-mail at n.dillon@gold.ac.uk or niamhdillon@hotmail.com, or by post to Niamh Dillon, National Life Stories, British Library, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB.

All recordings will be conducted in accordance with the ethical principles laid down by the Oral History Society. With the interviewee's consent, the recordings will be archived at the British Library, where Dillon has been managing oral history projects since 2003.

Films of the British Empire

Heart of an Empire (1935)

Colonial Film: Moving Images of the British Empire has information on more than 6,000 films showing images of life in the British colonies.  More than 150 of the films can be viewed online.  The online catalog can be searched or browsed for films by country, date, topic, or keyword.  More than 350 of the most important films in the catalog have extensive notes written by the site's academic research team.

As an example, I did a catalog search for India and got 685 results, ranging in time from a cricket practice in Australia in 1897 to a 1993 history of the State of Kotah.  Restricting the search to entries with videos gave 43 results, one of which was an 1899 panorama of the Ganges.

The film project is a joint effort by two universities and three archives.  The introduction on the site states that the aim is to "allow both colonizers and colonized to understand better the truths of Empire."