Introduction

Etymologically the English word ‘archive’ derives from the classical Greek word arkheion, which meant the place, or residence, of the superior magistrates, the archons, those who held and signified political power. The root of this word was arkhé, a word rich in meanings – beginning, origin, command, power. In classical Greece the concept of ‘archive’ was indissociable from the location and the exercise of power. Although the citizenry – a social category excluding women, slaves, foreigners and other ‘aliens’ – could gain access to certain records in the archive, the state generated the archive, kept custody of it, and controlled the use of it. This approach built on a tradition developed over two millennia in societies of the near East (Mesopotamia, Egypt, Persia), where archives were created by rulers and kept by them to support the exercise of rule. The West had to wait until the French Revolution and its aftermath for the emergence of the interlinked notions that archives had uses beyond those associated with the exercise of rule and that they were for ‘the people’ rather than for a small elite. (Arguably, by then the latter notions had long histories in uncolonized societies outside of the West – societies not restricting their concepts of archive to places of custody and to accumulations of written records [Harris and Hatang, 2000]. Nonetheless, these histories demonstrated in different ways the unavoidable and indelible imprint of power on any archive.) The 19th century saw the establishment in Europe of public archives services and the growth of public rights of access to them. A deepening of Western democracy in the 20th century brought with it public services shaped increasingly by accountability, participation and ‘freedom of information’. Archives influenced by this deepening have spread – through colonialism and neocolonialism – to many parts of the world. In the analysis of Jacques Derrida, such archives can be seen – should be seen – as an expression of democratization:

As this chapter will seek to demonstrate, application of this ‘essential criterion’ to archives of different countries, different traditions and different conceptual underpinnings – in both Western and non-Western contexts – finds them wanting in greater or lesser measure.