culture. Simply put, [t]he more the colonizers knew, the more effectively were
they able to control and manipulate the colonized.'10
By merely speaking colonists inadvertently had a profound effect on peoples
around the world for centuries after their first landfall. Today in India, as in
many former British colonies, English, the language of the colonial master, is
spoken as a unifying language for people of different ethnicity.11 Similarly, French
is spoken throughout Africa, and Spanish throughout Latin America. While this
has positive aspects from an independence country standpoint - communication
with former ruler and a connection which could lead to aid and strong
diplomatic ties - the negative aspects are just as visible. Numerous languages have
died as a result of imperialism when they were replaced with European languages,
a process started when the first colonialists landed. Eventually the multicultural
empire had to communicate, and English dominated. When one enters a foreign
land, they speak about it. And then they begin to write about it.
The merger of British bureaucracy and the English language laid the foundation
for records and archives as a colonial force with a lasting impact. Information
was transcribed as soon as colonists arrived. Authors wrote novels and
adventurers wrote memoirs of their travels. Local governments were created
and clerks took records of daily business.12 With knowledge recorded in writing,
power was firmly in the hands of the colonizers. Once you record information,
you make it your own. The British recorded their colonial business, taking
psychological control with the archive. Such practices may go back to the earlier
days of 17th century British expansion, when the 1660 Restoration brought
about 'a new attitude to statistical knowledge.'13 As the empire spread around
the globe it became important to study and arrange the records in order to prove
Britain's place as the distributor of civilization. It is no coincidence that the
creation of what is today the National Archives of the United Kingdom and the
height of British imperialism overlap. As Britain determined that records must
be kept centralized and that knowledge management leads to the control of more
than just information, their empire was able to expand in ways never known
before.
Records, once created, need a repository; they need to be cataloged and put in a
specific order so they can be found later. The 19th century and early 20th century
was a time of great information gathering, especially among the British, who
were the 'most data-intensive' imperialists.14 Colonial information was not
always recorded by civil servants in government offices. As the empire expanded,
disciplines such as geography and anthropology grew. The Royal Geographical
Society, founded in 1830, hosted parties where dining club members occupied
themselves discussing 'exploration in Africa, the Indian subcontinent, the polar
regions, and central Asia.'15 Anthropologists and archaeologists scoured the
empire and 'uncovered' previously Tost' histories.
Amateur and government-sponsored ethnographers took to the far reaches of
the empire, where they 'maintained diaries and logs, or wrote extensive reports
COLONIAL LEGACY IN SOUTH EAST ASIA -
THE DUTCH ARCHIVES
10 Knight, Narratives of Colonialism, 72.
11 Ashcroft, Post-colonial Transformation, 56.
12 George Orwell's Burmese Days is a wonderful example of a jungle outpost of the Empire governed by
Britons longing to create British society elsewhere, gekomen tot hier
13 Williamson, A Short History, 4.
14 Richards, Imperial Archive, 4.
15 'History,' Royal Geographical Society, http://www.rgs.org/AboutUs/History.htm, accessed September 2,
2008.
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