vision of the archives to preserve the sanctity of the evidence in the records by scrupulously keeping the records in the original order he received it, or respect des fonds in the French archival manuals, is under increasing strain. It comes, firstly, from archivists themselves and, secondly, from a new generation of more critical historians and other users of archival records examining the making of those records, the nature of archives expressed in their habits and conventions. For archivists, the sheer volume of records produced by modern bureaucracies means that archives can only preserve a small percentage - some 3% - of the records produced. As the American archivist Theodore Schellenberg has argued counter to Jenkinson, archivists have no choice but to appraise what records to retain and what to dispose. South African archivist Verne Harris captures the consequences of this failure of the Jenkinsonian vision well, 'So, archives offer researchers a sliver of a sliver of a sliver. If, as many archivists are wont to argue, the repositories of archives are the world's central memory institutions, then we are in deep, amnesic trouble.'37 This appeared to have been the case of the papers of the office of Malcolm MacDonald, the British High Commissioner of Southeast Asia and Governor General of Southeast Asia. Anthony Stockwell, in his editing and selection of the British records on the end of Empire, noted that in 1958-59 the office of the governor-general sought London's approval to accept the return of papers that the office had run out of space to store. The comments of the Colonial Office archivist who received the first consignment of fourteen boxes of files from Singapore are interesting and worth quoting: 'These files were weeded in 1956 and I find that in a great number of cases all that remains are either file covers or, as in a few instances, covers plus minute sheets. I am at a loss to understand why Singapore took the trouble to forward so much rubbish (of a total of some 567 files listed...only 124 remain after destroying the rile covers etc). In a further 19 cases I have destroyed the files as the contents contain only minor correspondence or corres. [sic] with the C.O. The 14 boxes have now been reduced - as Singapore could well have done - to a total of 8 boxes.'38 Stockwell notes that this 'weeding' of the governor-general's files creates an 'uneven' record for his selection and editing of the documents on the end of the British empire, but does not question the basis on which the staff of the governor-general's office in Singapore and the Colonial Office in London decided what documents are worth preserving and what can be 'weeded' out.39 This issue of 'appraising' what records to retain and what can be disposed of is a major preoccupation of archivists. The underlying assumption of archival practice is to preserve the files documenting the major decisions and transactions that defines and shapes the organisation. Archivists thus spend much time reconstructing COLONIAL LEGACY IN SOUTH EAST ASIA - THE DUTCH ARCHIVES 37 Verne Harris was referring to his personal experience where between 1996 and 1998 he represented his National Archives in a Truth and Reconciliation Commission investigation into the destruction of public records in his 'The archival sliver: A perspective on the construction of social memory in archives and the transition from Apartheid to Democracy', 135 ff. 'This investigation', Harris records, 'exposed a large- scale and systematic sanitisation of official memory resources authorised at the highest levels of government. Between 1990 and 1994 huge volumes of public records were destroyed in an attempt to keep the apartheid state's darkest secrets hidden'. 134

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Jaarboeken Stichting Archiefpublicaties | 2012 | | pagina 136