Colonial British India Glass Lantern Slide Archive of Cast System Labor, Bazaar Trade, Village Labor, Sikhs, and Colonial Cavalry, 1900-20

Colonial British India

Photograph

India glass lantern slide archive documenting class hierarchy dichotomy in British India, with scenes of village labor, bazaar exchange, railway movement, industrialization, Sikhs, and colonial cavalry, circa 1900-20. Images clearly depict the class divid and Cast system; villagers and laborers are shown seated on bare ground in carpentry work, men and goats occupy an unpaved settlement space, Sikh men stand beside a railway carriage tied to imperial transport networks, a factory scene introduces mechanized industry, and a formal portrait of turbaned cavalry soldiers.
Photo archive of 8 glass lantern slides, 3.25" x 3.25", India, circa 1900 to 1920. Several slides retain manuscript captions on the mounts, including “Central India,” “Village School,” “Bazaar Calcutta,” and “MV. parannis an Indian carpentry clas." [“Parannis” is probably a misspelling or misreading of “Pariahs,” a historical caste/community term used in colonial-era descriptions of South Indi, The British largely preserved, formalized, and exploited the Indian caste system rather than dismantling it. Their relationship with caste was pragmatic: caste became a tool for administration, taxation, labor control, military recruitment, and social organization across British India.] The “Village School” slide shows a line of children and adults posed before a low building under dense tree cover, with one figure standing forward in the open yard. The carpentry slide shows a large group of Indian boys outdoors beneath a tree, seated or crouched on the ground around planks and hand tools, with timber laid across the foreground and simple structures behind. The Calcutta bazaar scene places vendors, baskets, and goods in an open market setting under palms, while the village scene presents men in loose garments in what seems to be a cattle farm setting. One slide shows Sikh men beside a railway carriage, one barefoot in the foreground and others gathered near the rail car doors, linking Indian bodies to the movement of goods, troops, and passengers through the colonial rail system. Another slide presents four uniformed soldiers in turbans, possibly the Madras cavalry, posed formally with boots, sashes, and weapons before a masonry wall. The factory view shows smoking industrial works with long roofs, tracks, and an extended production yard, further cementing colonial industrialization within the archive.

British rule in India relied on linked systems of extraction, transport, discipline, and military force, and these slides place those systems beside the people who bore their unequal social effects. Railways expanded under colonial finance and administration to move troops, raw materials, and commercial goods; industrial sites grew beside older economies of hand labor and bazaar trade; Indian soldiers and cavalry units served within an army organized to secure imperial control; and rural schools, workshops, and village scenes expose the local social world that existed under those pressures rather than outside them. Light edge wear, some mount loss to several slides; no cracks or chips. Overall very good condition. British colonialism widened India’s class divide by concentrating wealth, transport, and military power in imperial systems while leaving many Indians in village labor and low paid market work.

Item #23287

Price: $785.00