A Science of Facts? Classifying and Using Records in the French Imperial Archives under Napoleon

Abstract

The article explores the practice of historical research in connection with archival management at the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, focusing on revolutionary and imperial France, when the French archives underwent unprecedented alteration. More precisely, it deals with the period 1808–14, when the archives directed by former revolutionary P. C. F. Daunou were merged into a new Palais des Archives and the historical archives of Europe were transported to Paris to form a central imperial repository. The article argues that the management, classification and use of archival documents followed the notion of history as a social science and an analytical empirical discipline put forward by the influential group of the Idéologues in post-Thermidorian France. This resulted in a peculiar way of dealing with the mass of new sources now available in the Archives de l’Empire. Indeed, the practice of historical research in the French archives was linked to a small, yet significant innovation in data management and material culture, namely, the use of filing cards in order to extract facts from documents. The article discusses the distinctive features of archival management and historical research in this transition period in comparison with the supposed “archival revolution” of Romantic historiography.

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