Archive Stories by Antoinette Burton focuses on archives and in particular researchers’ experiences at archives as well as how archives change over time. The book is broken up into three parts: stories of researchers at archives, examples of how archives are built and why archives matter. The book has an overarching theme of collecting stories of historians’ experiences in different archives across the world which is especially the case in the first chapter by Durba Ghosh in her encounters in the British and Indian archives. The author speaks to how she found two different interpretations about Indian women and British men relations in the two archives. She states that Britain recognizes that these relations occur, but there is little to no document evidence and names are left out of the equation. Britain’s purpose of their archives with India exists to show the superiority of British imperialism at the time. Also it excludes a majority of lower classes and local Indian women perspectives. On the hand, the research aids at the archives in India question the author’s topic and deny that women slept with British men and the only kind of women to participate in these acts were Muslims. The Indian archive tries to preserve a national identity free of British involvement. Her experiences show an interesting look at how colonialism in perceived in different countries.
I found Peter Fritzsche chapter on the history of the German archive particularly interesting in how in changes from World War I to World War II. At first the archive worked towards a democratic and inclusive outlook in order to gather the history of World War I from the perspective of all German citizens, but in World War II the archives are mended to support the views of the Third Reich causing various populations to be left out of the archive and records is destroyed. This chapter shows how an archives original purpose of representing the whole population can change the archives mission and outcome.
A third goal of the book shows why archives are important and one author speaks of her research in South Africa during the fall of Apartheid about the Soweto Uprising. The South African archive saw trouble when people tried to erase the Apartheid years from the archive and some records were destroyed. The archive plays an important role in collecting oral histories about the Soweto Uprising of what different people remember about the Uprising in the 1970s, which added new perspectives to the archive, rather than just government reports. The archive has the purpose of being a place, after the end of Apartheid that allowed people a place to tell their stories of the event.
I absolutely agree oral histories are very important, though debate as actual research. I like to research African American history (Civil War, Reconstruction, and Civil Rights) and I would have never accessed some of the cruicial parts of my research if it was not for oral histories.
ReplyDeleteI, too, felt the discussion of oral histories was both interesting and enlightening. One of the things I've been most delighted with from this class has been my discovery of oral histories. Not only do they add color and flavor to history, they add truth to history. I think that the addition of oral histories to archives should be encouraged. There are many oral history projects in progress today and I hope they will continue to enrich our understanding of history far into the future.
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