the colony40, where control was in the hands of an 'enlightened' administration
consisting of 'civil servants who only focused on the interests of the state and
the general interest'.41 This can be considered as an initial step towards the
creation of a modern bureaucracy that, in the analysis of Max Weber, is based
on and characterised by laws and regulations, clear structures of authority,
skilled civil servants and written documents.42 We should not underestimate the
consequences of this regime change on the relationship between the two parts
of the world. The Dutch colonial state on a large scale tried to penetrate much
deeper in the indigenous society than the former VOC ever aimed to do. It is
interesting to see that for many Dutch colonial civil servants who were in charge
of the colonial administration the British interregnum served as an example of
how to connect European administration to the lives of the local inhabitants in
the villages. In the short period of British rule, the British residents were obliged
to traverse their districts on a regular and systematic basis, to report about the
situation in their districts and give people in the villages the opportunity to
bring requests and complaints to them. In this way the British tried to connect
European government to the indigenous society.43 In 1817 the Dutch resident
Servatius of Cheribon, complained about the incapability of the former VOC
administration to get a picture of 'the real situation of the area' because the
administrators always were dependent on the figures given by the local rulers.
Servatius was impressed by the approach of the former British resident Crawfurd
who 'took the right path to find out the truth' because 'this civil servant started
to negotiate with the tenants to find out the state of their fields'.44 This direct
form of communication of course has it effects on the information gathering
and information management activities.
In this process of growing professionalisation of government intervention,
information and having information available at the right moment played
an increasingly important role. The ideas from the Enlightenment not only
ensured a growing interest in society from scientists, but also had an influence
on the state machinery. The idea that the main objective of the state was to
improve the welfare and well-being of all citizens originated from Enlightenment
thinking and was fundamentally different from the preceding period when the
state was mainly focused on benefiting the ruling class.45 This fundamentally
different approach can also be seen from the significance that the state placed
on information. In the ancien regime, the function of information was primarily
to serve the personal interests of the rulers. Marshal Vauban, the leading
military engineer during the reign of Louis XIV, aptly expressed this when he
underlined the importance of measuring population because 'the greatness of
kings is measured by the number of their subjects'.46 In the 19th century the
census changed to an instrument of knowledge.47 Knowledge of the society
CHARLES JEURGENS INFORMATION ON THE MOVE. COLONIAL ARCHIVES: PILLARS OF PAST
GLOBAL INFORMATION EXCHANGE
41 Fasseur, 'Nederland en Nederlands-Indië 1795-1914', 348.
42 See Gerth and Wright Mills, From Max Weber, 196-198.
43 Clive Day, Nederlandsch beheer over Java, 206-207.
44 Arsip Nasional Republik Indonesia (ANRI), Archive of the residency of Cheribon, Report by the resident,
March 17, 1817.
45 Scott, Seeing like a state, 91.
46 Rusnock, 'Quantification, precision and accuracy: determinations of population in the ancien regime', 17.
47 Woolf, 'Statistics and the Modern State', 3.
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