and gets down to the root of what postcolonial scholars - who include both authors of colonized and non-colonized nationality - are presenting when they write the history and contemporary effects of colonization. With Orientalism, Said set out to turn the study of the Orient - what we would refer to today as the 'Middle East' - on its head. This geographical region even today is still seen as someplace 'different' from us, yet 'classical orientalists' refer to Middle Eastern antiquity as the birth of Western civilization. Classical Orientalism was at its strongest during the European domination of the area from the end of the 18th century to the mid 20th century. This, as we have already found, was a time when European colonists were feverishly gaining knowledge on the territory they controlled, which Said attributes to the fact that 'knowledge gives power, more power requires more knowledge, and so on in an increasingly profitable dialectic of information and control.'23 In Said's theory, as the colonists were dehumanizing the colonized, this knowledge became not only their complete understanding of the place, but the place itself. To former Prime Minister and later Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour, 'British knowledge of Egypt is Egypt.'24 Before Said wrote on the history of Middle Eastern colonial oppression, Sartre had predicted in the 1950s that the world was at the point where colonialism would reach its limits and would be overthrown, in part due to colonialism's 'attempts to bar the colonized people from the road of history.'25 Of course, Sartre was right, and within a decade of his writing, tumultuous events throughout half the world created independent states on nearly every continent. But this did not create nations free of the system he was describing. Any system must record its actions for fear of losing the information which keeps the system operational. Thus, the fundamental parts of the colonial system still exist in the archive. A system is, after all, a single entity constructed of many parts. Without these parts - mainly the creation and maintaining of colonial records - colonialism would cease to function as a system. While the system has been broken down, the archive has stayed in place, allowing for colonialism's continued existence and domination over post-colonial societies. Other aspects of the system, like English law, political structure, and the English language, also still exist and continue to play roles in the former British Empire. The archive, however, as each is unique to its home nation, acts as a permanent reminder of colonialism with none of the unifying aspects of any other part of the colonial system. Archives are often left out of stories of colonialism by authors reviewing the height of the British Empire either with cynicism or longing. What little that is written on (post-)colonial archives is too often written by postcolonial theorists who either mention the archive only in passing and fail to capitalize on its importance or who concentrate on new definitions of archives outside of the information science profession. Archivists, not without blame, rarely discuss such cultural significances relating to their profession. The archive - far from just a static location where records go to live out the rest of their existence - was a central player in what can be seen as the most important global phenomenon of COLONIAL LEGACY IN SOUTH EAST ASIA - THE DUTCH ARCHIVES 23 Said, Orientalism, 36. 24 Said, Orientalism, 32. 25 Sartre, 'Colonialism is a System, 136. 26 Said, Orientalism, 32. 27 Said, Orientalism, 41-42. 32

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Jaarboeken Stichting Archiefpublicaties | 2012 | | pagina 34