HISTORY CONCEALED, HISTORY WITHHELD: THE STORY OF THE FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE ‘MIGRATED ARCHIVES’ AND THE DECADES-LONG INTERNATIONAL SEARCH FOR REDRESS

2020 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
Mandy Banton
Keyword(s):  
Migrated Archives

scholarly journals Migrated archives

2021 ◽  
Vol 54 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Francis Garaba
Keyword(s):  
Safe Storage ◽  
Security Issues ◽  
Migrated Archives

In a paper on migrated archives, Nathan Mnjama puts forward several reasons as to why these archives are in the custody of our former colonisers. Infrastructural challenges, the lack of the development of archival services and security issues are some of the reasons highlighted. Consequently, these archives were not collected and preserved within colonies and were thus repatriated to the metropolitan countries for safe storage. The removal of these archives have created gaps in archival holdings and these archives need to be located, retrieved and brought home, so he argues. The author of this response proposes that we need to start afresh and forget about this genre of archives in view of the protracted issues involved and considering the archival service challenges that most archival institutions are facing. We are now talking about de-colonisation/refiguring or Africanisation of our archives because there is over-documentation of the colonial record in our repositories and these records are often biased or incorrect.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document