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Gift: 2005
Charles Ralph Boxer, 1904-2000, was born on the Isle of Wight, England. Boxer studied at the Royal Military Academy of Sandhurst and then served in the British Army for twenty-four years (1923-1947). At the beginning of his military career, peacetime allowed him to study maritime history and collect rare books. He went on to serve for an extended amount of time in Japan as a language officer, then transitioned to intelligence work in Hong Kong. During World War II, he was captured and sent to a Japanese internment camp. He left the army after the war, at which time he resumed the reading and historical research that he had begun as a young man. Though he never earned a history degree, he was offered a professorship at King's College in London in 1947. He served as the Camões Chair of Portuguese and as a professor of the history of the Far East. After retiring from King's College, Boxer served as a visiting professor at Indiana University and as a consultant to the Lilly Library from 1969-1972. He also held a position at Yale University. Over the course of his career as a historian, Boxer produced over 350 publications and received numerous honorary doctorates. He died in 2000 at the age of 96.
The Alden mss., 1951-2001, consists of correspondence and research files generated by historian Dauril Alden in preparation of his biography of Dutch and Portuguese colonial historian Charles Ralph Boxer, 1904-2000. The correspondence includes letters of Charles Boxer to Dauril Alden and to James Cummins; correspondence between Alden and James Cummins, and Alden and Michael Cooper; as well as Alden correspondence with several Boxer colleagues, family members, and research institutions the author visited and/or from whom he acquired copies of reference and research materials. The bulk of the collection consists of the notes and reference copies, arranged by chapter and then a late draft of the final manuscript, also arranged by chapter.
The collection is organized into the following series: I. Notes and research material; II. Correspondence.
[Item], Alden mss., Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.
See Dauril Alden's biography of Charles Ralph Boxer at the Lilly Library (DA3 .B598 A43 2001).
Arranged alphabetically.