[This is great. I am so glad that someone is going to officially file away the archives of the Rhodesian army. Excellent. This is very important history indeed. Jan]

UWE wins (194)Â(163)£423K grant to catalogue Rhodesian Army archive
Issue date: 21 Sep 2006

(from web page :
http://info.uwe.ac.uk/news/UWENews/article.asp?item=917&year=2006)

The University of the West of England has just been awarded (194)Â(163)£423,000 by
the Arts and Humanities Research Council to research and catalogue the
archives of the Rhodesian army. This project will be carried out in
partnership with the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum.

At present the archive is sitting in hundreds of uncatalogued boxes in
the Bristol-based museum. Researchers who have investigated the boxes
have found gems such as poignant photographs of soldiers on both sides
of the war for independence; intelligence reports; operational
instructions, and policy debates exposing the strengths and weaknesses
of a doomed but desperate government. However there is no way of
locating specific documents and no organising principle behind the
collection, which was saved from destruction after independence in 1980
and smuggled into South Africa.

The three-year project will produce a comprehensive searchable catalogue
of this unique collection, with user-friendly web-based access, and a
guide to the contents. Up to 10,000 pages of material will also be
digitised and included in the Aluka Struggles for Freedom in Southern
Africa collection, which documents the liberation struggles in southern
Africa since the end of World War II. Aluka is a separate project
supported in part by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Project leader Dr Diana Jeater is Principal Lecturer in African History
in UWE’s Faculty of Humanities, Languages and Social Sciences, and also
Chair of the Britain Zimbabwe Society. She said:

“This is a really exciting collection with something for military and
social historians, those interested in liberation struggles and
questions of identity, and the wider community.

“For forty years, the wars of liberation in southern Africa had a
profound impact on the region. Amongst those opposing African majority
rule, the Rhodesian Army has been mythologised as a formidable fighting
machine. This archive offers for the first time an opportunity to test
the folklore surrounding this force, and to situate it in its time and
place. The history of Zimbabwe and its links with Britain continue to
have resonance in our communities today.”

The team includes Research Fellow Tim Lovering, who is a military
historian and trained archivist. He said: “The project’s link with the
Aluka collection offers a form of repatriation for the material that had
to be taken from the country in secret and hidden in people’s garages in
order to save it. Thanks to this project present-day Zimbabweans, some
of whom lost relatives in the war of independence, will have access to
this era in their history.”

A full-time archivist will be appointed and the project will welcome
volunteers who are training to be archivists or PhD students who wish to
base theses on the material.

The project begins in September 2006 and the results will be presented
at a public conference, and provide the basis for output such as papers,
books and theses.

Gareth Griffiths, Director of BECM, said, “This award confirms the
importance of the collections which the Museum Trust has saved for the
nation over the past decade. It is enormously exciting that, at last,
the work of the Museum staff in collecting this material is being
recognised and that it will soon be available to scholars around the
world”

-ENDS-

Editor’s notes

The grant has been made under the Arts and Humanities Research
Council’s Resource Enhancement scheme. For more information on the AHRC,
visit http://www.ahrc.ac.ukbr>
For more information on the Bristol Empire and Commonwealth Museum,
visit http://www.empiremuseum.co.ukbr>
The Museum presents the 500-year history of the British Empire, offering
evidence of Britain’s colonial past from a variety of cultural
perspectives. Through its permanent galleries, special exhibitions,
events and education programmes it examines the legacy of empire on
modern Britain and the present-day Commonwealth. The Museum, which is
independent of Government and a registered charity, is a recent nominee
for the title ‘European Museum of the Year.’

URL: http://info.uwe.ac.uk/news/UWENews/article.as…/p>