Transcripts of records relating to trade in the West Indies

Reference: MSS.W.Ind.s.6 = Transcripts of merchants' letter-books and documents in American record societies, court records, British Library manuscripts etc. relating to trade in the West Indies. 14 boxes. These transcripts were made by Richard Pares in the ca.1940's-1950s.

Reference: MSS.W.Ind.s.72 = Extracts copied from Richard Pares' transcripts (MSS.W.Ind.s.6) relating to the 18th century letterbooks of the West Indian merchant house owned by the Lascelles family, March 1739-August 1769. 1 box. These typescript extracts were made in 2004.

Richard Pares was born on the 25 August 1902 in Colchester, England, and educated at Winchester, and Balliol College, Oxford. After working for a year as an assistant lecturer at University College London, Pares undertook a year of research in the United States and the West Indies financed by a Laura Spelman Rockefeller memorial studentship (1928). In 1929 he was appointed as a lecturer at New College, Oxford (1929-1940) and from 1938-1939 was Junior Proctor. During World War II, Pares served with distinction as an administrative-class civil servant in the Board of Trade (1940-1945); he was appointed CBE in 1945. He was joint editor of the English Historical Review (1939-1958), Professor of History at the University of Edinburgh (1945-1954), and Ford's Lecturer in English History at the University of Oxford (1951-1952). He was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 1948. Pares died in Oxford on the 3 May 1958.

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Collection level description created by Marion Lowman, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House.

Administrative/Biographical History compiled with reference to the Dictionary of National Biography .

The library holds a card index of all manuscript collections in its reading room and a handlist is also available for this collection.

Listed as no. 610 in Manuscript Collections (excluding Africana) in Rhodes House Library, Oxford, compiled by Louis B. Frewer (Oxford, Bodleian Library, 1970).

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