By Nikhil R., John Winthrop Student Fellow
Every year, the MHS selects one or more high school students as recipients of the John Winthrop Student Fellowship. This award encourages students to make use of the nationally significant collections of the MHS in a research project of their choosing. Applications for the 2023 Student Fellowships will open in December 2022. Learn more and apply!
This year our John Winthrop Student Fellow is Nikhil R., who attends Acton-Boxborough Regional High School.
As someone of Indian heritage and interested in researching history, I found the John Winthrop Fellowship to be an opportunity to explore something that I found goes under the radar: the connection between India and America throughout the centuries. From what I had learned previously, that connection was thought of as beginning in the late twentieth century with immigrants, but there is a much more rich history dating back centuries unknown to most people from both continents.
In summary, my essay analyzes the experiences of Americans in India from the colonial period to the emergence of the United States as a nation in the 18th century and further into the nineteenth century when the nation consolidated its identity on the world stage. I trace these three periods in the joint history of America and India through the life and travel writings of a few key figures. Through the letters of Nathaniel Higginson, the Salem-born man who eventually became Governor of Madras in 1692, I discovered the social and political dealings of a New England based administrator in the colonial era. In the second period, in the aftermath of the American Revolution, there is a great interest in India from a newly formed United States that can be seen in the exploits of American travelers such as Bartholomew Burges. In the nineteenth century there was a further escalation of the ties between India and America that is seen in the story of Calvin Smith, a civil war veteran who traveled to India and worked in the then popular ice trade, sharing his perspectives and experiences of living in India for five years. Finally, in the mid to late 19th century, evangelical America and the Liberal Christian movement spread Christianity to other nations through missions, reaching India.
The accounts and candid perspectives of these American travelers were available in the MHS in the form of mostly letters, travel writings and memoirs, and I also consulted various books for context and background information. I examined the triangular relationship between India, British colonial rule, and American merchants/travelers. What I discovered was that while Americans adhered to the hierarchies created by the British, they still offered a variety of perspectives, including a few who challenge the stereotypes of Indians.
To begin my work, I looked through what the MHS library had to offer in order to get a better sense of some resources I could use in my project, to better inform my proposal. I started with the online catalog, ABIGAIL, and found many items of interest, ranging from financial records of American ships that traveled to India to correspondences of missionaries working there. Simply entering the keyword “India” brought hundreds if not thousands of results, so I started with a selection of a few that caught my eye and organized a narrative of what I could research.
Like many of the student fellows, this was my first time engaged in hands-on archival research. Nonetheless, on my first day, I was greeted by the friendly librarians who showed me the ropes: using the scantrons, submitting reading room requests, and guiding me through the many facets of using the library. While I was in awe of the vast amount of resources available, I slowly began down my list of items, and started with a box of logs from a ship on a trip to India. I opened the folder, and examined the old journal, but to my surprise, it wasn’t what I had expected it to be from reading the catalog. Instead of a gripping story of exotic experiences, I was only met with a description of weather, breezes, and latitude. Feeling somewhat defeated, I finished off the book, but at the end I found a section on how to calculate logarithms and some practice problems, which was very interesting.
From this, I started to understand the components of academic historical research, including the disappointment of not finding anything after hours of reading, but also the excitement of discovering a hidden gem where I didn’t expect it. As I got deeper into my research, I realized the wide net I had cast over centuries proved too much to refine into a cohesive project, so I seized the opportunity to focus on the people themselves, which ultimately proved more rewarding to me. I learned that it is important to allow your project to morph as you discover new things and change your perspective on the research. Finishing my research paper initially proved to be a monumental task, but sticking through it and completing it gave me pride in my work. Overall, the student fellowship taught me valuable skills like critical thinking and patience, and vastly improved my ability in reading messy handwriting. It’s an incredible experience for a student to learn what it means to be a historian, and reinforced my desire to pursue history further academically.