archivist Hilary Jenkinson, worked out a document suggesting CICI to establish
a consultative committee of expert archivists to work under the auspices of CICI.
The objective of the committee should be the gathering and exchange of infor
mation among archives and archivists.15 The need of such an institution had
been felt already for a long time, but "numerous difficulties, which could not be
surmounted" had frustrated the idea again and again.16
That summer (July 1931) the CICI adopted the proposal of the preparatory
committee and founded the Committee of Expert Archivists. This group,
consisting of nine members, was chaired by the State Archivist of Naples (Italy),
E. Casanova.17 Its members were directors or representatives of State Archives.
Joseph Cuvelier, the only surviving member of the Permanent Committee
established by the Brussels Congress, was honoured with a seat in the com
mittee. As already has been mentioned above, two members of the CISH
Commission of Archives also took part in the meetings in the Palais Royal.
To avoid any collision an arrangement was made between the archivists of
CISH and CICI. The CISH archivists should deal exclusively with questions
relating to historical research, e.g. access to and the preservation of archives of
particular concern to historians, whereas the CICI archivists should concentrate
on the technical aspects of archives administration, like protection and
conservation.
As soon as the Experts started working they ran up against the absence of an
international directory of archives. Consequently, the first task to be accom
plished was the compiling and publishing of an international guide on archival
institutions. On the basis of information, assembled by means of an inquiry into
the archives in Europe which was carried out in 1932-1933, in 1934 the first
volume of the Guide International des Archives was published. Unfortunately, the
projected directory on archives outside Europe never reached the printshop.
A second priority of the Committee of Expert Archivists was the unification
of archival terminology. The librarians had already a manual listing English,
French and German equivalents of technical terms. Following this example, the
committee succeeded in publishing an international lexicon of archival terms in
1934.
Of course, the cherished idea of organising an international congress of
professional archivists had not dropped from the agenda. At their meeting in
1933, the members of the expert committee discussed the project of an inter
national congress which would, according to a proposal of Casanova, be held in
Rome in 1935, at the occasion of the completion of a new State Archives in the
Italian capital.
But, as we all know, an international congress was not to be held until 1950.
The increasing political tensions and the worldwide economic downfall of the
thirties did not fail to affect international professional activities in a negative
way. The League of Nations, fated to fall short of expectations and weakened by
shortage of money, was unable to support its archival commission sufficiently.
Archives were not considered to be of great importance and, generally, archivists
had a low status. Except for a few really urgent occasions when a limited number
of archivists were enabled to come together, travel expenditure was too great a
burden for national and supranational institutions.
Apart from these external reasons there were also hampering factors working
from within. According to a contemporary who himself was involved in inter
national professional relations, inherent to the expert committee's organisation
was the danger of getting stuck in endless discussions and majority decisions.18
Due attention was paid to practical projects intended to solve near-at-hand
problems (directory, terminology), but a conceptual framework for inter
national archival action was missing. In default of a consistent plan, supported
by the participants of contributing countries, it was unlikely that energy would
be invested in the creation of a solid structure for archival co-operation. The
weakness of the interbellum international archival organs was not in the last
place a consequence of the fact that only a handful of "authorities" dominated
the closed world of professional archivists. They were the only ones who were
interested in international co-operation and had the opportunity to take part.
For example, the sudden death of des Marez nearly caused the collapse of the
CISH Commission and seriously endangered the continuity of international
relations between archivists. Looking back, we are forced to conclude that a too
narrow basis in the professional world in combination with the well-known
disturbances of the interbellum prevented solid international archival structures
from coming into being.
After the Second World War had ended, a general feeling of energy and optimism
prevailed. The post-war atmosphere of reconstruction and making things new
created an ardent zeal for international co-operation. Dutch archivists must
have expressed a widely experienced feeling, stating that after years of isolation
inside their own borders they were longing more than ever before for inter
national contact.19
World War II raised even more than previous wars did the awareness of the
vulnerability of the archival heritage and, consequently, the need of measures to
ensure its recovery and preservation. Many new questions waited for new
answers. Archives, books and manuscripts had been deliberately destroyed,
captured by victorious troops, carried away in trains and ships to distant
countries, or simply abandoned to the mercy of people desperately in want of
fuel. How could archives be recovered and restored to their rightful owners, and
who were these owners? In the first post-war years many archivists were involved
in international contacts connected with the recuperation of archives which
had disappeared.
The elated atmosphere of the post-war years was shadowed by the nuclear
threat. The first atomic bomb had been thrown and a worried archivist warned:
"Another war would be such a profound catastrophe to civilisation that the
archivist instinctively refuses to think about it."20 It is not surprising, then,
that the problem of the protection of archives against the danger of destruction
DE PROFESSIE
15 Meisner, p. 284.
16 ARA 2.14.03, inv. nr. 820: IICI, "proces verbaux provisoires" of the reunion of expert archivists in Paris,
April 2-3, 1931.
158
JAN VAN DEN BROEK FROM BRUSSELS TO BEIJING
2.4 A fresh start
17 In his turn, Casanova attended the meetings of the CISH commission.
is Meisner, p. 289.
if NAB 52 (1947-1948), p. 10.
20 Solon J. Buck, "The Archivist's 'One World'", American Archivist 10 (1947) pp. 9-24. Here: p. 23.
159
