Abstract

"Co-(Re)Creating Global South Connections in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: ConnectingThreads.co.uk"

Victoria de Lorenzo, London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London (v.lorenzo@fashion.arts.ac.uk)

Connecting Threads is a collaborative digital history project aimed at the wider audiences dedicated to amplifying the contributions of Indian weavers and African Caribbean consumers between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Drawing on the work of an interdisciplinary team of researchers and with the support of the AHRC and NEH, the project has re-examined the history of the Madras handkerchief, a popular dress accessory made of brightly coloured checked cotton.
The project's database The Connecting Threads database gives users access to most of the original research behind the project, including visual, material and archival sources as well as business records. It surveys the history of the Madras over three hundred years and has three main functions: 1) it tackles the use of the term ‘Madras handkerchief’ in different sources; 2) it maps the production, trade, and consumption of the Madras handkerchief and related textiles in India, the Greater Caribbean, Europe, and Africa; and 3) it considers the evolution of the ‘Madras handkerchief’ in secondary literature.
This paper will delve into the difficulties of structuring fragmented data to access the voices of less-represented groups in history. It will reflect on the methodological decisions made by the Connecting Threads team in grappling with an object whose history is entangled with histories of empire, colonialism, slavery, and industrialisation. Particular attention will be paid to the ways in which a range of sources, notably business records, have been scaffolded and complemented to offer a nuanced approach to the history of the Madras handkerchief. In sum, this paper will present the project Connecting Threads and discuss how digital methodologies have been utilised to co-(re)create long-distance connections across diverse collections in order to disseminate the research more widely.