MIDA Archival Reflexicon

Ger­man archives offer a rich spec­trum of sources relat­ed to mod­ern Indi­an his­to­ry and a pos­si­bil­i­ty for devel­op­ing new research direc­tions in the domain of transna­tion­al his­to­ries and his­tor­i­cal com­par­i­son through an explo­ration of the his­to­ry of Indo-Ger­man entan­gle­ments. These sources can also offer schol­ars the pos­si­bil­i­ty of acquir­ing new research per­spec­tives, indeed a new lens, for engag­ing with mod­ern Indi­an his­to­ry by not sole­ly pri­or­i­tiz­ing British colo­nial archives.

The MIDA Archival Reflex­i­con, which accom­pa­nies the project’s online data­base, is an open-access jour­nal for reflex­ive dis­cus­sions on the rich India-relat­ed hold­ings of Ger­man archives. One of the main objec­tives of the Reflex­i­con is to reflect on how the turn towards entan­gled transna­tion­al and glob­al his­to­ries not only rais­es new the­o­ret­i­cal ques­tions, but also con­fronts us with method­olog­i­cal issues on the rela­tion­ship between entan­gled his­to­ries and archives. At the same time, it is a site for acquir­ing com­pre­hen­sive overviews of India-relat­ed archival hold­ings of Ger­man archives for spe­cif­ic themes.

The MIDA Archival Reflex­i­con  is  thus a reflex­ive lex­i­con– of how to nav­i­gate through India-relat­ed hold­ings in Ger­man archives, acquire an overview of the same for spe­cif­ic top­ics, and of how to crit­i­cal­ly engage with larg­er the­o­ret­i­cal and method­olog­i­cal debates that emerge from the exer­cise of trac­ing, extract­ing, list­ing, order­ing and index­ing information.