I'm getting ready for an archival trip in a few weeks. It's not my first rodeo (and I worked two years in an archival and special collections library). But I am still getting nervous because its my biggest and most important research trip yet. Does anybody have any archival hacks/pro-tips? I'm also going to be working from a microfilm collection I started going through last summer. It's massive, has limits on the copies you can request, and of poor quality. Any tips there?

My top tip: If you have the luxury to take pictures, keep the folder/request slip in the edge of the photo. You will never have to wonder what collection/folder/box number it was from. Why don't people do this?

As for what I've been reading, it's been a mix of things to get ready: trawling through all the relevant footnotes I can find, reading/re-reading some key works on my topic, going through my notes from last summer, etc.

My research is on British governance immediately after the Seven Years' War in North America and the Caribbean. It's been suggested to me that I keep my eye on what's going on in India. In particular, I'm curious if anyone has thoughts on Hugh Bowen's Revenue and Reform: The India Problem in British Politics, 1757-1773. Firstly, Im frustrated that despite the subtitle, he essentially begins in 1765 and really only picks up steam by 1767. Furthermore, my reading of Bowen leads me to think that India is really an entirely separate question from North American/Caribbean governance in the early-mid 1760s.

He writes, "While successive ministries became embroiled in conflict with the American colonists over revenue collection and the payment of officials' salaries, there were, or seemed to be, no such problems within an Indian context. From 1767 state was supposed to receive a substantial annual sum from the Company without being drawn into areas of imperial activity such as revenue collection or territorial administration. To ministers this must have seemed to represent the ideal form of imperial relationship: wealth without responsibility, and empire without expenditure." (p 24-5)

He later argues, "most parliamentary politicians were ill-equipped to tackle the problems related to British activity in India that emerged in the 1760s. Members of both Houses had great difficulty in placing such unfamiliar issues in their proper context, and they chose instead to define the Indian problem as something that should be dealt with by the East India Company as an internal matter. Indeed, few parliamentarians especially before 1772 or 1773, would have accepted that they had any part to play in the formulation of British policy as it applied to India." (p 30)

Is Bowen overstating the degree to which politicians ignored India? Is Bowen correct that nobody (perhaps except Granville and Chatham) held a truly imperial vision? Are there any other books I might look into on governance in India? (I'm familiar with Lucy Sutherland.)

Couple of quick reviews for you guys.

Galateo: Or, The Rules of Polite Behavior, by Giovanni Della Casa, trans. M. F. Rusnak, 2013

This is a fresh translation of what has been affectionately called “The Euclid of Etiquette.” It’s a funny little etiquette book from the Italian Renaissance, written as a letter, that with little opening just blasts out a hilarious litany of everything people do that is disgusting that you shouldn’t do, such as blow their nose and then carefully examine their boogers, talk endlessly about sad or disgusting things, say “Woof! Smell this!” for something gross and shove it in your face, and touch their privates in public. It was highly influential in Europe through the 1700s, so if you are an 18th centurist you should totally take the hour or so to read it (it’s real short).

I’d read the 1700s English translation before, so I had a little something to compare to, and I think this one does a good job of getting some of the humor out of the original by using modern vocabulary. However, the author is a dick in the intro about modern American manners, which is really uncalled for. Can’t we just read the new translation without your dumb modern opinions Rusnak? Judith Martin, as always, sums it up better than I can.

Opera and Sovereignty: Transforming Myths in Eighteenth-Century Italy by Martha Feldman, 2007

This took me the better part of the month to read, and at first I was kinda bummed because it seemed like she was rehashing some stuff that’s already pretty darn well hashed, but then I realised that it probably only seemed that way because I’ve already read a lot of her papers. Hahaaa I suck.

The basic argument of the book is that 18 c. opera is best understood as a group ritual or shared experience over interpreting it strictly as a drama. She argues this through “case studies” of particular performances. I find the use of “case studies” in history rather novel but I can’t decide if it completely works for me. It seems a little “the plural of anecdote is data!” but I don’t know. Two chapters in particular I thought were good: Ch. 2: ARIAS: FORM, FEELING, EXCHANGE which is about how artists changed their aria ornamentation in response to the crowds, and Ch. 7 BOURGEOIS THEATRICS, PERUGIA, 1781 which is about how non-nobility made their own subscription opera company as a “class performance” thing, to prove they were high-class people even though they had to work for their money. Pretty neat.

Feldman’s writing is, as usual for her works which I’m decently familiar with, incredibly dense and pretty hard to read. I really wish she’d write plainer. Right now I’m reading a Daniel Heartz book that ~1000 pages long, and this book was about HALF that and yet HEARTZ’S BOOK FEELS MUCH SHORTER because he writes pretty cleanly so it reads faster. She’s got a book on castrati coming out at the end of this year and I’m like half dreading it because she’s so punishing to read. Gorsh dern it Feldman help out a time-strapped working girl and write humbly.

Was wondering if anyone had any suggestions for good books on Native Americans, specifically those of the High Plains. I checked the book list and didn't see any on the subject, outside of more generalized books like 1491. Thanks.

Hello there everyone, I was looking for materials about the British Military reforms of the late 1880s / 1890s, criminal activity in and about the city of London in that same time period, and the history of the 66th Berkshire in particular. Any ideas?

What are some good books on Central Asian history, or Tamerlane in particular?