If we want to form a picture of the interactions from a 'global perspective', it is in particular the connectors and intersections or nodes where the different global and local networks come together that are of interest. It is at these locations that information is transferred from one network to another. Colonial administrators in Batavia determined which information from the networks linking other Asian trading posts to Batavia, or which information originating from oral indigenous sources, would then be transferred to the network that connected the East Indies to the Netherlands. Research into communication patterns using an analysis of the creation of archives can assist in exposing such networks. Global approach: what is in it for an understanding of colonial archives? Historians consider archives to be important sources for their research in and knowledge of the past. Every new approach to the past is checked for its tenability through research in the archives. Therefore, this also applies to approaching history from a 'global perspective'. I agree with historian and archivist Edward Higgs when he states that historians, generally speaking, are fascinated with individual series of nominal records because they want to use these records to study something else. They seldom step back from the records to investigate the general pattern to the collecting activities of the state or explore the meaning of changing information gathering activities for the nature of the relationship between state and society in general.28 Most historians focus excessively on extracting data from the archives without realising sufficiently how this information is interlinked with other information. Archivists on the other hand were no great stimulators of an intellectual discussion on the substance of archives. It was mainly because of a growing interest of social scientists and philosophers in the nature of archives that archivists felt challenged to participate in this intellectual debate. After having explored the features of globalisation and information it is time to say something about the archives. What are archives? Although historians sometimes still like to keep the picture that archives are 'the products of the professional activities of archivists'29 in which they attempt to delve into the past, archivists clearly have a different approach. In the 19th century archivists defined archives as 'the whole of the written documents, drawings and printed matter, officially received or produced by an administrative body or one of its officials, insofar as these documents were intended to remain in the custody of that body or of that official'.30 The late 19th and 20th century archivists emphasised the institutional basis of archives. Professional archivists mirrored this institutional approach in their archive management models and in the production of finding aids in the 20th century. Archives were treated and collected as institutional 'organic wholes' and the structuring guidelines for the description and arrangement of archives and the configuration of inventories were firmly based on the same institutional principles. Archivists produce inventories of archives COLONIAL LEGACY IN SOUTH EAST ASIA - THE DUTCH ARCHIVES 28 Higgs, The Information State in England, vii. 29 Evans, In defence of history, 75. 30 Muller et al., Manual, 13. This definition was published in the Manual of 1898. 31 I am fully aware of the fact that this approach is too simple a reflection of reality. Collecting information for building up so-called basic registrations like the Civil Register or the Land Register do not fit in this model. Nevertheless the institutional approach is dominant. 50

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