Introduction

Abstract

We all have our archive stories. Eavesdrop at the annual meetings of the Society for French Historical Studies or any other French history conference, and you'll hear scholars and students alike recount anecdotes about working in the archives: the gustatory (where to eat lunch), the revealing (a homemade G-string, trial evidence of exhibitionism), the pecuniary (twenty-dollar bills from the 1930s, never-pilfered evidence in a bribery trial), the parsimonious (being charged for electricity in a private archive), the ironic (excrement from a literal archival rat), and so on. The stories can be so much fun that one of us has long fantasized about collecting them all into a book of short archival anecdotes. Traveling to France (for overseas scholars) and working at the Archives Nationales or in “Aix,” not to mention the alphabet soup of departmental archives, is a rite of passage for PhD students (of any nationality) and remains an important scholarly credential even for established professors. It is little wonder archive stories result.Indeed, the two of us first met in William Cohen's modern French history research seminar at Indiana University where Bill, an enthusiastic “archival rat,” regaled us with archive stories and advice, noting that smart historians learn how to be friendly as well as professional with the archivists on whom we depend. “If you get a chance to buy them a drink or even lunch, do so.” As he plugged away at research on nineteenth-century French cities, Bill himself had spent innumerable lunches with a municipal archivist in Lyon who was a diehard royalist, politely listening to royalist analyses of French politics under François Mitterrand. (Bill kept his impeccable leftist credentials to himself.)Sometimes it can help to be an outsider. Bill said that he didn't need to say he wasn't a royalist, as there hadn't been a homegrown American monarchy. Sarah was repeatedly told by French scholars that her unusual access to the archives of French nuns was due to her American nationality, far removed from French church-state politics. Steve was once told by a Michelin archivist that he got more access to Michelin archives than French scholars because François Michelin assumed that he couldn't possibly be a communist as an American (“Par contre, tous les historiens français sont des communistes”—this in 1997!). For this special issue, we expected multiple submissions from France as well as North America, but virtually all submissions came from scholars in North America. Perhaps this was merely a reflection of the main audience of French Historical Studies, but we also wonder if outsider status and the need to adapt to French cultural norms with each research trip encouraged reflections about access, organization, and use.1In recounting our own stories, we are obviously not alone. Few of us have been able to resist what Arlette Farge has called “le goût de l'archive” or, even more persuasively in English translation, “the allure of the archive.” We might even have succumbed to Jacques Derrida's “archive fever” (mal d'archive).2 Historians have depended on archives and their archivists at least since the professionalization of the historian's craft in the nineteenth century, so it is no surprise that we have our little victories and petty frustrations in locating and getting access to the material we need to do our work. Personal experience in the archives undergirds all the articles presented in this issue. However, moving beyond entertaining stories, particularly after the cultural turn the past few decades, historians have become much more conscious of our use of archives. Our reflections have become deeper, more often tying the very existence, let alone the organization, of various archives to the historical contexts in which the archives themselves have evolved. As these articles make clear, archives are a subject as well as an object of study, not simple depots for boxes containing unambiguous evidence of the past waiting to be discovered by historians.This is not a new insight, but it has gained increased attention in the last two decades, as evidenced by an expanding body of work that attempts to theorize archival practice.3 Long gone are the assumptions, inherited from nineteenth-century positivist history, that the archives are mere repositories for documents that will reveal historical truth to scholars. As Francis X. Blouin Jr. and William G. Rosenberg put it in Processing the Past, scholars “must also incorporate an understanding about the processes by which sources were assembled, appraised, and described if they hope to reach conclusions other than those the documents may have been retained to provide.”4 In other words, they question the notion that archives are either neutral or comprehensive in ways that past historians may have assumed. Blouin and Rosenberg's previous collection of essays, Archives, Documentation, and Institutions of Social Memory, as well as Antoinette Burton's Archive Stories, provide vibrant case studies of historians' encounters with archives around the world. The subtitle of the Burton volume, Facts, Fictions, and the Writing of History, emphasizes the constructed nature not only of historical narrative but also of the archives themselves. “Archive Stories,” Burton writes,is motivated, in other words, by our conviction that history is not merely a project of fact-retrieval . . . but also a set of complex processes of selection, interpretation, and even creative invention—processes set in motion by, among other things, one's personal encounter with the archive, the history of the archive itself, and the pressure of the contemporary moment on one's reading of what is to be found there.5We now accept that history is not merely what actually happened, to paraphrase Leopold von Ranke, but what is shaped by our own narrative and research choices; increasingly, historians understand that that process begins long before they access the sources.Historians of France should be well placed to explore this new understanding of archives and archival practice. The desire to create a new conception of the nation at the time of the Revolution resulted in the founding of the Archives Nationales in 1789, earlier than national archives in other major European states.6 Departmental archives followed in 1796. The famed Ecole des Chartes, established in 1820, has trained a highly professional cadre of French archivists who organize them.7 For a long time, historians of France were able to plumb the substantial holdings of state-sponsored archives to create detailed political, social, and economic histories of France. The methods pioneered by the Annales school encouraged in-depth analysis of local records, resulting in specialized monographs produced by generations of French thesis writers, as well as their overseas counterparts. Only in the 1980s did the cultural turn in history seem to threaten to make archives less relevant by focusing on the production and representation of texts. At the same time, more profoundly, postmodernism upended fundamental notions of historical truth and our notions of archival authority.Postmodern theory has provided tools for a rediscovery of the archives and new ways to think about the relationship between archives and history. It is probably no coincidence that the publication of Derrida's Archive Fever in 1996 jump-started a new interest in archival practice.8 In it, he reminded us that archives from their very origins in ancient Greece have been sites of power that have shaped history rather than reflected it. More than twenty-five years earlier, Michel Foucault's concept of the “archaeology of knowledge” already argued that the archive is a discursive system rather than a mere repository of documents. These insights have allowed historians to see that archives are constructed like any other “text” and that understanding how they are put together, what is included, and what is not included can complicate, but also enhance, the very history we are trying to write.Unsurprisingly, historians of colonialism and postcolonialism have been in the forefront of interrogating the archive itself as a subject of historical analysis to uncover the power dynamics that lie beneath its surface. The categories of analysis fashioned by colonial administrators and the materials they archived and did not archive all contributed to the larger project of empire; only by deconstructing them can we understand the deeper assumptions that lay behind colonial exploitation. As Ann Laura Stoler puts it in Along the Archival Grain (a work cited by other contributors to this issue), “Colonial archival documents serve less as stories for a colonial history than as active, generative substances with histories, as documents with itineraries of their own.”9 Yet she warns against assuming that the archives are stable or monolithic, that they can be read so easily “against the grain” rather than paying attention to the “scripts” themselves, for their “discrepant accounts, dissenting voices, and extraneous detail.”10Whether “along” or “against” the grain, many of these techniques have now spread well beyond colonial history; indeed, only one of the six articles in this issue specifically concerns the relationship between metropole and colonies. But they all interrogate the context in which archives were formed and how that context shapes the material that is now available to historians. They remind us that archives are not usually designed with historians in mind but serve other purposes that are often in tension with historical work. On the surface, this may appear to be an obvious point. The work of historians has always been to tease meaning out of documents written for other purposes or, in some cases, to discount claims made for posterity. Farge's marvelously evocative book about working in the archives, Le goût de l'archive, first published in French in 1989, treats the Paris judicial archives in which she has spent a career in just this way, taking readers through the process of reading Old Regime police records for the “fragmented world” of eighteenth-century Parisians, while resisting “traps and temptations.”11 Yet Farge is primarily concerned with how to interpret the documents, which she conflates with archives, choosing not to question the very constitution of the archive itself.The articles in this issue go farther by questioning the nature, origin, or history of the archive itself to examine its dynamic relationship to the history we write, rather than treating the archive as static and inert. Rather than a problem to be solved (“How can I find what I need in the archives?”), the authors in this issue approach the archives as the historical subject itself, asking what the structure or context of the archive tells us about the history it represents. Probably no essay in this issue demonstrates the potential of this approach more persuasively than that of Andrew Israel Ross. He rejects the idea that the conflation of male homosexuality and female prostitution in the nineteenth-century police archives necessitates searching through the more numerous prostitution records to uncover traces of male homosexual identity. Instead, he argues that taking seriously the categories the police used in tracking sexual behavior provides a completely new way of thinking about sexuality in the past that is obscured if we merely look for confirmation of twenty-first-century sexual categories.In addition to Ross's problematizing of sexual categories in the police archives, these articles take on unopened French Huguenot letters now lying in a trunk in a Dutch museum, the formation of War Ministry archives under the absolute monarchy, the wariness toward outsiders by nun-archivists, the destruction (and salvaging) of potentially compromising documents during the Second World War, and the promise and perils of interviewing 1960s activists in France and its former colonies. This issue reveals not only the breadth of archives now used to write French history but also the depth of thinking about the relationship between archives and history and between archives and historians. We will not summarize the many riches found in individual articles here, leaving readers to discover them for themselves. But we do wish to highlight a few important questions they collectively pose that might inform the reading of this issue and resonate with the archive stories we carry in our heads.First, what constitutes an archive? Rebekah Ahrendt and David Van der Linden call the postal trunk full of opened and unopened letters by eighteenth-century Huguenots that is the subject of their article an “accidental archive” whose peripatetic history shows that only recently has the trunk or its contents been considered a historical resource at all. Instead, they interpret it as an “assemblage,” using the techniques of museum history to make sense of its value. If theirs is an accidental archive, Robert Fulton finds in the Dépôt de la Guerre of the same period what we might call an “improvised” archive as early modern officials suggested a divide between the public and the private in asserting that documents belonged to the state, rather than to its ministers. Burleigh Hendrickson, in his article on the global 1960s, argues that the archive should be defined in a broad enough fashion to include personal narratives and oral histories that are not controlled by postcolonial, single-party states eager to promote an official version of events. In these articles the authors argue for an expansion of the notion of archive, as well as the techniques to access it.Second, what is the role of the state in archival collection? In this era of WikiLeaks and increased concern about cybersecurity, few questions are as timely as how states manage information, what they keep, what they discard, and what, eventually, they allow researchers to access, as any historian of France who has applied for a dérogation to consult sensitive material knows. Fulton traces the development of the War Ministry archives, the Dépôt de la Guerre, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as early modern administrators began to define a state interest in the preservation of military documents separate from the private ownership of ministers, who often kept important papers in the or even them The of the archive was to and to but time they a historical repository in ways that we now understand as at a of two analysis with conception of the the among archivists after the Second World War that their role was not merely to documents from the historical in the of the Ecole des Chartes, but to which contemporary documents be for posterity. As they did those archivists the new that World War was the important historical since the French in the experience of and this process was with and articles the and the of the state archive that its to and often what is no in the archive? It is to take of what is available in the archive than what is We are not that eighteenth-century military documents or Huguenot letters are no available to in ways that Fulton or Ahrendt and Van der Linden But article this problem the process by which documents were and as the France in and the charged process of at was the in to all traces of state against in the of a that well short of its Archives, even in are histories of of or documents, as much as they are histories of Historians use the to not in the past or and it obvious that from what is no in the who access to the archive? Ahrendt and Van der unopened letters the of an archive, but to archives are described in other articles as as have been to their history but to allow outsiders to consult their begins her analysis with the question of they access but that the archives, to serve a than they do for professional historians. of state used their archives to their own sense of that might be by understand in 1960s and to the to the nature of state documents. Yet his article of put in by in the that research on in this case oral history as to where take and be his categories of colonial that his research to what do we our article also questions about our to our particularly those who oral that might put them in But are by Ahrendt and Van der Linden in working with a postal trunk that six unopened letters from the eighteenth many of us have the not to those letters if the Yet Ahrendt and Van der Linden argue for the to for that might be able to the letters in their state reveal their The research they have and they has the of their historical to include the of the letters as well as their The of archivists as and historians as can historians' own concern about historical one that may become even more as we the organization, and cultural categories of the archives question might be the one we expected but did not the call for articles specifically reflections on the of on archival we were not to have a on that we might all take for the of the the of and and the use of to records, these research obvious questions about how we as historians use archives. is the of which have the in public to use a now we use us to use For those of us who came of in the the can be as turn documents in if researchers can manage to just how many ways records might have been Steve recently to the of North as in the departmental archives of he and of the as well as main social, not to mention the of relevant and major of North were the to the have been to in the In public archives in the and usually our can reveal the of in which we should the assumptions of and archivists out how to the while also past their But it work as well if we are one no thinking in and using the as a mere de will the of the one historians to the all of the documents containing the are might be our research The has recently on merely about rather than of each or set of with a few the Archives Nationales now of documents by In archives and private now often a to with a moving and getting out of the many archives and have documents themselves, them available to any with an has recently about the of researchers short research in which documents are for The concern as potentially chance meetings with French and the development of of cultural and the we all make between past and contemporary in a as as France. At the same time, as we are and make it to go and the and any is analysis of a of in the For new work on nineteenth-century of of make it to evidence from multiple sources is that the of some can to their to those not as scholars the Le because it had a but on the of an individual historian can also the by for a of personal archive of more access to archives for and other scholars is than of holdings and often the reading of documents can be from the of one's or The of research no a with archivists to out annual and it is to the to and archives. to the and the is not the it once a and a are research tools for those on short in the so they can to the archives. the of in one in them and our deeper understanding of la France If archival research is our how much of the are we the of our archive stories often include the of and archival and of individual or as scholars of documents a as if they were in the before a the as French and of of documents the in the context of French historical use more of the reflection about archives found in the between reading colonial documents the grain” as to “against the grain” that documents are like the from which they were made in the nineteenth and in state But now our working of documents, and the documents themselves of that can be and very As we write, we now and we need a new that how historians and write in the these new our is that historians of like historians in many other use a of archives, and we use them more more and more than special issue that depth or that but the a of the that work on France while also of the structure and context of archives

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