Images of Empire head for the classroom

Plans to develop a new teaching resource using a unique collection of films made in India during the final decades of British rule have been announced by the University of Cambridge. The University's Centre of South Asian Studies houses a remarkable archive of almost 500 colonial amateur films, out of which 300 have already been digitised. It is now planning to create a series of short documentaries and a supporting web resource to make this material available to students, the media, other historians and anyone with an interest in the British Raj. Dr Kevin Greenbank, the Centre's archivist, will launch a fundraising bid for the project at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, on 14 February. In it, he will explain how the project aims to give people a deeper and more informed perspective on the history of the Empire, its legacy in the subcontinent, and current debates about multiculturalism in Britain itself. The archive comprises colonial amateur films - effectively home movies - spanning the period from the 1910s to the 1960s. It includes harrowing scenes shot during the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan, images of armies of labourers working railways and dams, and a vast array of other snapshots of everyday life during the last years of the British Raj.