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