Calcutta’s overlooked urban archives: How did directories and almanacks turn new year into history?
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Beneath the anticipation of a new year’s beginning lies a quieter, more revealing form of reflection. An introspective gaze. An annual appraisal.
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Amid conflict, chaos, and migration, there is also a growing urge to preserve and protect our heritage by studying the the history of Calcutta, not through grand monuments or official proclamations, but through the overlooked pages of 19th-century year-end directories and vernacular almanacks, produced just as Christmas and New Year celebrations were taking root in the city.
When we look back, we find that most chronicles of 18th- and 19th-century Calcutta rose from colonial government reports, dispatches, and gazettes, the iron voice of the state. They rendered the city in stark outline. Yet Calcutta was not born of decrees.
To know how the city actually breathed a couple of centuries ago, we must examine the dust of its streets, the pulse of its commerce, the rhythm by which ritual and routine coexisted. This requires turning away from the stately corridors of official archives towards humbler companions: the annual directories of Thacker, Spink and Company and, even earlier, those of Samuel Smith and Company, publishers of the Bengal Directory and Annual Register. Samuel Smith was also editor and part-owner of the influential Bengal Hurkaru.
Equally important are...