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.
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