creation on the one hand and the aim to facilitate control of the overseas servants on the other hand. The result of this was the creation of a paper empire that acted as a surrogate for the territorial empire and gave the illusion of control.53 Thomas Richards proposes that, seen from the perspective of our own information society, Victorian England was one of the first information societies in history, but in his analysis he puts emphasis on the collected information itself that could be used to exercise control and gives less attention to the processes of creation. In his approach, the archive forms as it were an imagined kind of Utopian state. [T]he apparatus of the Victorian archive appears as a prototype for a global system of domination through circulation, an apparatus for controlling territory by producing, distributing, and consuming information about it'.54 I want to stress the words 'global system of domination' here, because of its disjunctive character, which is essential for a proper understanding. Scientific institutions, institutes managing collections and even scientific expeditions were essentially focused on 'gathering local knowledge, codifying it, and translating it into the language of the state'.55 The language of the state had to an increasing degree a utilitarian nature, focused on creating order by defining categories and creating registrations. The European information systems were based on a written and systematic manner of recording information. Dutch historian El. Brugmans typifies the period following 1798 as a time in which 'bureaucracy taken to nonsensical extremes' led to an unprecedented number of documents being produced.56The spirit of the French administration would not disappear from the country after the departure of Napoleon. In 1824, Daniel Francois van Alphen, a member of the Dutch parliament, expressed in a memorandum to King Willem I his dissatisfaction and concern regarding 'the spirit of distrust brought upon us by the French administration that hampers the work due to all of the formalities and checks' and he was furious about the 'many documents that must be written and the numerous signatures that must be obtained and registers kept'.57 In 1819, the lawyer and later Member of Dutch Parliament Donker Curtius van Tienhoven was already arguing for a simplification of the records in all areas. 'The Government, or rather the Bureaucracy' should no longer want to control everything. The desire for detail had gone far too far.58These observations completely fit in the pattern that James Scott sketches in his influential book Seeing like a State when he typifies the 'paper records' created in this way as the relevant facts based on which the officials worked. '[Tjhere are virtually no other facts for the state than those that are contained in documents standardised for that purpose. An error in such a document can have far more power - and for far longer - than can an unreported truth.'59 CHARLES JEURGENS INFORMATION ON THE MOVE. COLONIAL ARCHIVES: PILLARS OF PAST GLOBAL INFORMATION EXCHANGE 52 Bayly, Empire <Sc Information, 102. 53 Bowen, The business of empire, 178-180. 54 Thomas Richards, 'Archive and Utopia', 108-109 55 Ibidem, 108. 56 Brugmans, Van Republiek tot Koninkrijk, 76-77. 57 Jeroen van Zanten, Schielijk, winzucht, zwaarhoofd en bedaard, 177. 58 Ibidem. 59 Scott, Seeing like a State, 83 55

Periodiekviewer Koninklijke Vereniging van Archivarissen

Jaarboeken Stichting Archiefpublicaties | 2012 | | pagina 57