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