Reflections – In Praise of Unexpected Finds
Dear readers of this blog, let me start with a preliminary statement: I’m honoured to contribute the first of what will hopefully be many texts to the blog of the “Empires” Research Training Group. Since I recently submitted the manuscript of my doctoral dissertation in early December 2025 (leaving out any formulaic mishaps that required a last-minute remote operation with a glue stick before the Christmas break), I think it’s fitting to use this occasion and reflect on the past four years of my PhD journey.
While looking for fitting images from my PhD to tell an engaging story, I stumbled over one photograph that will be the visual landmark to illustrate one episode of my adventure. I took this specific photograph of a microfilm package in the British Library in London in May 2023 while on a two-month research trip. The main objective of this stay was to find more primary material to shore up my corpus of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century poetry written by East India Company officials. To that end, I also looked at microfilmed copies of various newspapers that were printed in British India in the early 1800s, including the Calcutta Journal mentioned on the packaging.
While working on the microfilm machine (I’m still glad that I had the opportunity to work with this type of resource), I experienced a strangely meditative feeling as I browsed through the old newspapers which was accompanied by the sound of the microfilm spinning on its reel. This was, however, offset by recurring moments of despair that I didn’t experience an idealised vision of a breakthrough over some archival tomes that I had expected would happen during this period of research (surely my more seasoned colleagues at the Research Training Group had made these experiences already, right?). During these sessions, I came to one seemingly mundane, yet significant realisation that would define the whole perspective on my project for the following two and a half years: The imagined ‘breakthrough’ often doesn’t come in one fell swoop, one sudden burst of inspiration that keeps one going until the end. More than often, it’s also the small increments of progress or stagnation that make up the bulk of your work, the moments in which you realise that your corpus is already filled to the brim with material and only needs minor amendments. In this sense, I found that my archival trip was a sweeping success due to that realisation.
More importantly, the most memorable stories of archival research are the unexpected and lucky finds that cause you to pause in your research routine and think twice about the possible absurdity that you have just read. Even though these breaks in routine might not make it into the final manuscript, they remain in your memory and always provide a good story. For me, this was the case for the following short poem that was printed in another Anglo-Indian newspaper, the Bengal Hurkaru, in late May 1823 under the unassuming title “An Indian Song”. Published by someone who wrote under the telling pen name “Tom Guzzler”, the text uses the occasion of recent price reductions of Hodgson’s Pale Ale in Calcutta to celebrate the brewer, his product and the effects on its consumers. The poem stuck with me, and I would repeatedly tell friends and colleagues about it, precisely because of its seemingly unassuming nature and offbeat, almost banal, subject. The many poems that I have discussed in my dissertation often deal with more serious topics, such as warfare, human sacrifices and the feeling of homesickness, which makes this poem even more remarkable, as it provides an unexpected glimpse into the mundane concerns of the English-speaking population in early British India, one of which was having an affordable and accessible option to get drunk:
“What is our greatest treat?
Hodgson’s Pale Ale!
What can allay the heat?
Hodgson’s Pale Ale!
‘Tis needless to groan and sigh,
Fill up your bumpers high,
Drown all your misery
In the Pale Ale.
Long thou wert very dear,
Hodgson’s Pale Ale!
And I shed many a tear,
And I look’d Pale!
But now farewell my woes,
Again my glass o’erflows,
Red blooms again my nose!
Hodgson all Hail!!”
Returning to the present, I find myself mulling over the same question: what remains after those four years? Certainly, the finished manuscript itself is a physical testament to my own mental endurance, and a printed hardcover copy now safely rests over the TV in my living room to remind me of the fact that I ‘did it’. Beyond the manuscript, wonderful friendships were formed during that same period, both within and without the “Empires” group, which I hope will endure for a long time. To finish off with one last piece of advice, it is precisely these unexpected comic moments, as shown by the poem above, that remind you to stay the course with your project because they make for the best stories.
