Official Archives Research Articles

Averting an African Boycott: British Prime Minister Edward Heath and Rhodesian Participation in the Munich Olympics

In 1968, the British government of Prime Minister Harold Wilson lobbied behind the scenes for Rhodesia's exclusion from the Mexico City Olympics. Three years earlier, the former British colony of Southern Rhodesia had seceded from the British Empire under white minority rule and faced isolation from international sporting events. With the election of Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath in 1970, British foreign policy shifted more heavily to Europe rather than the former British colonies of the Commonwealth, and Heath sought to allow Rhodesia to compete in the 1972 Munich Games lest it isolate West Germany and create a controversy similar to South Africa's expulsion from the Olympics. With the help of Foreign Minister Alec Douglas-Home, Heath manoeuvred Conservative Party factionalism on the issue of Rhodesian sanctions and the Party's traditionally ambiguous relationship with Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith. The merger between the Foreign Office and the Commonwealth Relations Office coincided with this increased emphasis on European foreign policy matters, the Foreign Office's traditional expertise. Ultimately, Rhodesia was excluded from the Olympics despite Heath's hesitation, and the threatened African boycott movement proved to be a critical episode toward the development of the Gleneagles Agreement, which ultimately led to the sporting isolation of South Africa in 1978. Relying on documents in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Archives, the International Olympic Committee Archives, the Avery Brundage papers at the University of Illinois, and microfilm of African newspapers, this paper reconstructs the pressures on Heath and the International Olympic Committee to expel Rhodesia.

“Cesaret et hatırla!”: Dersim 1938 Tertelesi

Bu calisma Dersim Tertelesi ile toplumsal olarak gercekten yuzlesilip yuzlesilmedigi meselesini tartismaktadir. Bu niyetle oncelikle toplumsal bellek konusunda yapilan kuramsal calismalar baglaminda bir cerceve cizilmektedir. Ardindan Dersim Tertelesine iliskin resmi tarihin kiskacindan kurtulup sizan belgeler uzerinden hakikate ulasma amaciyla sorumlunun/sorumlularin kim/kimler oldugu sorusuna yanit aranmaktadir. Son olarak iki milletvekili, Onur Oymen’in, 10 Kasim 2009’de ve Huseyin Aygun’un 10 Kasim 2011’de, yaptiklari aciklamalar sonrasi gundemin oncelikli konusu haline gelen Dersim Tertelesi, basindaki temsili uzerinden tartisilmaktadir.

In/Visible: The Political and Sexual Regimes of Databases

This text focuses on the politics and sexual regimes of databases and archives (and art histories) and their relation to human rights, equality and democracy. The main goal is to question, problematize and analyze the cultural and political regimes and strategies deployed in the processes involved in the storage of databases of cultural, artistic, and historical works and events, and, in particular, the regimes of visibility by means of which non-normative sexual experiences and cultural practices are in/excluded from official archives and institutionalized databases, and their consequent influence on the politics of cultural memory and heritage. Setting sexuality and gender as points of investigation, as they are being lived and experienced on the social margins, this text aims to open up for discussion the very foundations of how databases are being conceived and what counts as an archive.

Surveillance of peace movements in Denmark during the Cold War

This paper portrays surveillance of peace movements in Denmark during the Cold War. It is demonstrated that the Danish police viewed the Danish peace movement as divided into two categories. One group originated from the liberal peace tradition with ties to the Liberal Party and the Social Liberal Party. The other category had a pro-Soviet outlook and was affiliated with the World Peace Council. The paper is based on research carried out by a Danish Commission of Inquiry that investigated surveillance of political activities conducted by the Danish police 1945–89. The Commission had unimpeded access to all official Danish archives including the files of the Danish Security and Intelligence Service.

Fuentes archivísticas para la reconstrucción de la actividad cinematográfica en los circuitos Cineclubistas andaluces durante la Transición política

The reality of the archival sources relating to the cine club industry in Andalusia during the political transition is that the majority of this documentation is not kept in official archives and is discontinued or hasn't been described. With the aim of alleviating this situation as much as possible, we are establishing a classification in which we localise and describe the documents held in the main Andalusian archives and those belonging to the General State Administration. However, this taxonomy is the main purpose of this work and precedes other sections. Firstly, we establish a description of the documentation and the consultation conditions in the centre in which it is held. And then we present the characteristics of said documentation and the possibilities linking this source to the scientific study of the cine club movement

Reports from the Theatre of War. Major Viktor von Lignitz and the Russo-Turkish War, 1877–78

Abstract There continues to be a dearth of detailed studies of the reports filed by military attachés. This gap is especially evident in the recent historiography of the Prussian army because the majority of these documents were destroyed along with the Heeresarchiv in 1945. However, through a series of fortunate circumstances virtually all of the original reports filed by Major Viktor von Lignitz (military attaché in St. Petersburg 1876–1885) while acting as an observer with the Russian army during the war against Turkey were retained in the archives of the Auswärtiges Amt and were thereby spared the flames. The preservation of over eighty official despatches filed during Lignitz′s military mission not only provides researchers with the critical perspective of an experienced combat officer on the Balkan campaign of 1877/78, but also sheds important new light on a critical period in international affairs. In particular, the picture of Lignitz′s mission that emerges from the files of the Foreign Office archives adds another chapter to the history of the problematic relationship between the civilian and military leadership during the imperial era.

From the Courts to the Court: History, Literature, and Litigation in the Spanish Atlantic World

This article illuminates essential and often-neglected legal and political contexts for the production of “classical” accounts of the conquest of America written by Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo (1478–1557), Bartolomé de las Casas (c. 1474–1566) and Antonio de Herrera y Tordesillas (1549–1626). Biographical details regarding these authors extracted from legal cases reveal pecuniary and professional interests that influenced writings about the conquest of the Americans even beyond their own works. Unbeknown to generations of scholars, these men's litigious and political careers have left their mark on official archives and even Don Quixote.

Effective Causes of Work-Related Accidents Among Mashhad Workers in a 3-Year Period (2004-2007)

Background: Accident is an event that occurs suddenly, unexpectedly and inadvertently under unforeseen circumstances. Accidents can have individual, social and economical effects 2080 injury cases including labor-law workers were studied in Mashhad city, Islamic Republic of Iran. Their data were collected from the labor office archive. Objectives: This study was conducted to determine the effective causes of inducing of accidents among labor-law of Mashhad in Iran. Materials and Methods: In this cross-sectional analytic study, data on accidents related to labor-law workers for a period of three years (20042007) were collected from the laboroffice archive, in Mashhad. All recorded accidents were investigated and analyzed bySPSS 13 software. Results: This study was conducted in Mashhad and results showed that Accidents were more common in married rather than single workers (71.8% vs. 28.2%) and men rather than omen (%97.3 vs. %2.7). Bone fractures (68.2%), followed by injuries of maimed (18.5%) and death (9.9%) and burn injuries (3.5%) were the most common results. \r\nAccidents were more prevalent in 20-30 year-old range. There were statistically significant relationships among result of accident and age, marital status, insurance status, minimum wage, educational level and work history (P < 0.05). The greatest level of accident was among workers with the minimum wage. Conclusions: Conclusions: Proper accident investigation and cause identification found to be helpful for accident prevention or reduction. Therefore, appropriate decision should be made regarding holding training courses for all workers as part of pre-employment training and before starting the work.

Overcoming the apartheid legacy: the special case of the Freedom Charter

This paper outlines the construction of the “official” archives of the South African apartheid state and the distorted view they contain concerning social and political realities. Therefore, the colonial and apartheid legacies are examined in a broader context as an oppressive social and political system, as well as in the more specific context of how their legacy is reflected in the official archives. The development and popular endorsement of the Freedom Charter of 1955 was a seminal moment of challenge to the increasing oppression of the apartheid state. In later decades, the Freedom Charter became an iconic reference point in the antiapartheid struggle and the inspiration for the construction of a constitutional democracy in the 1990s. The process of its creation stands in stark contrast to the processes of creation of official records and archives. The paper also examines the survival of the Freedom Charter and the struggle to save it from auction in London and secure its safe passage to the National Archives of South Africa. Finally, questions of meaning and ideological significance are asked in relation to the role of a National Archives in the current dominant historical narrative.

An Overview of the Global Historical Climatology Network-Daily Database

Abstract A database is described that has been designed to fulfill the need for daily climate data over global land areas. The dataset, known as Global Historical Climatology Network (GHCN)-Daily, was developed for a wide variety of potential applications, including climate analysis and monitoring studies that require data at a daily time resolution (e.g., assessments of the frequency of heavy rainfall, heat wave duration, etc.). The dataset contains records from over 80 000 stations in 180 countries and territories, and its processing system produces the official archive for U.S. daily data. Variables commonly include maximum and minimum temperature, total daily precipitation, snowfall, and snow depth; however, about two-thirds of the stations report precipitation only. Quality assurance checks are routinely applied to the full dataset, but the data are not homogenized to account for artifacts associated with the various eras in reporting practice at any particular station (i.e., for changes in systematic bias). Daily updates are provided for many of the station records in GHCN-Daily. The dataset is also regularly reconstructed, usually once per week, from its 20+ data source components, ensuring that the dataset is broadly synchronized with its growing list of constituent sources. The daily updates and weekly reprocessed versions of GHCN-Daily are assigned a unique version number, and the most recent dataset version is provided on the GHCN-Daily website for free public access. Each version of the dataset is also archived at the NOAA/National Climatic Data Center in perpetuity for future retrieval.

‘Don't mention the war!’ Debating Notion of a ‘Stalemate’ in Northern Ireland (and a Response to Dr Paul Dixon)

The Northern Ireland peace process is often celebrated as a model for conflict resolution, yet our understanding of exactly what occurred is still only at a formative stage. Many details, particularly concerning the counter-terrorist operations of the British government, remain buried within official archives, available only up until 1981. Some aspects of that campaign—variously called an ‘intelligence’, ‘secret’ or ‘dirty’ war—may never be uncovered because of a lack of official documentation. Nonetheless, attempts can be made to analyse the use of ‘harder’ forms of state power. Scholars should not be shy to offer reasoned historical judgements on the basis of available evidence. In seeking to understand why the conflict followed the path it did and ultimately came to an end, ‘hard power’ cannot be written out of the story. However, some seem more inclined to a position best characterised by Basil Fawlty's famous mantra: ‘Don't mention the war!’ An exaggerated example of this was provided by Dr Paul Dixon of Kingston University in an article in a previous issue of this journal, which made a number of criticisms of our book, Talking to Terrorists; Making Peace in Northern Ireland and the Basque Country. In this article, we respond to Dixon's criticisms and offer broader reflections on what transpired in Northern Ireland. In some instances, the deployment of ‘hard power’ by the British state exacerbated the conflict and proved counter-productive. Ultimately, however, we conclude that intelligence-led counter-terrorism operations did make a significant contribution to ending the situation. This is not to advocate the use of such methods or to play down the ‘soft power’ successes which are undoubtedly part of the Northern Ireland story; it is simply to acknowledge that such tactics were deployed in the past and form part of a complex historical picture.

Between knowledge of landscape production and representation

Between knowledge of landscape production and representation

The Archive Effect: Archival Footage as an Experience of Reception

In recent years, “the archive“ as both a concept and an object has been undergoing a transformation. The increased availability of still and video cameras, analog and then digital, has led to a proliferation of indexical documents outside of official archives and prompted questions about what constitutes an “archive,“ and, hence, what constitute “archival documents.“ At the same time, filmmakers are appropriating sounds and images from various sources, thereby breaking down the distinction between “found“ and “archival“ documents. This situation calls for a reformulation of the very notion of the archival document. This article reframes the archival document not as an object but as a spectatorial experience or a relationship between viewer and text. I contend that certain appropriated audiovisual documents produce for the viewer what I call the “archive effect“ and that this encounter endows these documents with a particular kind of authority as “evidence.“

La importancia de las políticas de desclasificación en el desarrollo de los estudios de inteligencia

The declassification of official archives is one of the most urgent necessities in the advancement of intelligence studies world-wide as it represents a unique form of accessing primary sources that serve not only as an indicator of the state’s commitment to this discipline, but also as a key element in developing clear and shared theoretic foundations. In fact, increased declassification results in a greater development of intelligence studies, resulting in greater knowledge of the intelligence culture in the country that declassifies the information.This article will develop the above idea by comparing the declassification policies in Great Britain, the United States and Russia and its former republics with those of Spain.

Archiwa hetmanów koronnych. Pojęcie, charakter i typologia dokumentacji

Adam Sędziwój Archives of great marshals (hetmani wielcy) and field marshals (hetmani polni) of the Polish Crown and of the Great Duchy of Lithuania functioned within an organisational framework very different to archives of other ministerial offices within the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Marshals' archives should be regarded as belonging to private archives and, to be more specific, as fragments of archives belonging to clans and families from which marshals descended. The documents written by marshals while they were in office were considered their private property and they were entered into archives as their personal, private files. This is how a paradox occured because documents written by a person holding one of the most important offices in the country, and who was often seen as dangerous for the nobility's and the ruler's own interests and for the country's security, could not be made known to the public and existed beyond any control. Various documents survived amongst the archives of the marshals of the Polish Crown, different in terms of form, sender and subject matter. The first criterion that we can adopt while characterising the documentation found in marshals' archives is its form. Here, the first place definitely takes correspondence, followed by documents set out in tabular form, case files, books, and finally documents. Other criterion which can be applied is the sender and the addressee. According to this criterion, the documents can be divided into these incoming, addressed to marshal or people close to him (e.g. people working in his office), and these outgoing, written by marshal or people working with him. Another criterion used for typology of documentation found in marshals' archives is the subject matter, usually dependent of the function of marshal of the Polish Crown. And so the documents can be divided into the following categories: military, financial, judicial, diplomatic and private (these include documents related to the office held but referring directly to marshal, e.g. papers appointing to the office of marshal, documentation regarding remuneration, correspondence). Taking into consideration the fisical form in which the documents can be found at the moment, we can describe them as loose, glued or bound together. Certainly, all those forms could well be found in the past but it is important to remeber that the condition that the documents are in at present does not always correspond to their original form. They were usually produced as loose documents and were later bound into fascicles.

The Best‐Laid Schemes: Postcolonialism, Military Social Science, and the Making of US Counterinsurgency Doctrine, 1947–2009

The Best‐Laid Schemes: Postcolonialism, Military Social Science, and the Making of US Counterinsurgency Doctrine, 1947–2009

Why Was a Wealth Tax for the UK Abandoned? Lessons for the Policy Process and Tackling Wealth Inequality

AbstractThe distribution of wealth is widening in many countries and with it the growing importance of inherited wealth. In 1974, a Labour Government came to power in the United Kingdom committed to introducing an annual wealth tax. It left office without doing so. Using the official archives of the time and those of a key advisor this paper traces both the origins of the policy and its fate at the hands of the civil service. It explores two related questions. What does this experience tell us about the role of the civil service in the policy process in the UK and what lessons might be learned by those wishing to tackle the issue of widening wealth disparities today?

Mortality by neoplasia and cellular telephone base stations in the Belo Horizonte municipality, Minas Gerais state, Brazil

Pollution caused by the electromagnetic fields (EMFs) of radio frequencies (RF) generated by the telecommunication system is one of the greatest environmental problems of the twentieth century. The purpose of this research was to verify the existence of a spatial correlation between base station (BS) clusters and cases of deaths by neoplasia in the Belo Horizonte municipality, Minas Gerais state, Brazil, from 1996 to 2006 and to measure the human exposure levels to EMF where there is a major concentration of cellular telephone transmitter antennas. A descriptive spatial analysis of the BSs and the cases of death by neoplasia identified in the municipality was performed through an ecological–epidemiological approach, using georeferencing. The database employed in the survey was composed of three data banks: 1. death by neoplasia documented by the Health Municipal Department; 2. BSs documented in ANATEL (“Agência Nacional de Telecomunicações”: ‘Telecommunications National Agency’); and 3. census and demographic city population data obtained from official archives provided by IBGE (“Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística”: ‘Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics’). The results show that approximately 856 BSs were installed through December 2006. Most (39.60%) of the BSs were located in the “Centro-Sul” (‘Central-Southern’) region of the municipality. Between 1996 and 2006, 7191 deaths by neoplasia occurred and within an area of 500 m from the BS, the mortality rate was 34.76 per 10,000 inhabitants. Outside of this area, a decrease in the number of deaths by neoplasia occurred . The greatest accumulated incidence was 5.83 per 1000 in the Central-Southern region and the lowest incidence was 2.05 per 1000 in the Barreiro region. During the environmental monitoring, the largest accumulated electric field measured was 12.4 V/m and the smallest was 0.4 V/m. The largest density power was 40.78 μW/cm 2, and the smallest was 0.04 μW/cm 2.

Linking archival data to location: a case study at the UK National Archives

Purpose – The National Archives (TNA) is the UK Government's official archive. It stores and maintains records spanning over a 1,000 years in both physical and digital form. Much of the information held by TNA includes references to place and frequently user queries to TNA's online catalogue involve searches for location. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how TNA have extracted the geographic references in their historic data to improve access to the archives.

The Lure of the Archive: New Perspectives from South Asia

The LureoftheArchive: New Perspectives from South Asia RubyLai The question of the archive has long occupied historians and non-historians alike, who have theorized the politics of archival research, unfolded the many meanings of the "archive," and questioned the politi cal and intellectual implications of its enticements. For a while now, scholars of South Asia have made key contributions to this critical explo ration. They have investigated the question of the archive and its relation to historiography; challenged the grand narratives (nation, empire, community, history, "family"1) assumed to be easily visible in the official archives; worked with the idea of the "fragment" (as something that inter rupts and opens up new questions and avenues of inquiry); raised critical questions about speech and silence ("the woman question"; "can the subaltern speak?"); and focused on understanding and troubling everyday forms of resistance and theorizing on behalf of the other.2 This array of writings has not only contested the category of what is "admissible" into the historical record but has also raised profound concerns about what constitutes the "real," problems of representation and chronology, the boundaries of history, and history's relationship to modernity. So why turn to the question once again? Perhaps because the question of the archive is not—and cannot be— obsolete. Three recently published studies that I discuss in this article are a testimony to its compelling power as concept and as material reality. The FeministStudies37, no. 1 (Spring 2011). © 2011 by Ruby Lai 93 94 RubyLai archive continues to obsess the historian and the non-historian (one of the authors under discussion here is a literary critic; the other two are historians) in productive ways. What we have in the writings of these three authors are three rather different kinds of engagement with the archive and with the question of the archive. In this essay, I underline the innovative possibilities for thinking histories, lives, figures, spaces—and the archive—that they open up. Even though only one of the three books under review deals directly with the question of the archive, all these works engage with archival uncertainties and conundrums in ways that make their projects even more fascinating. The subjects that these authors investigate are not "obvious" in any way. Anjali Arondekar's For the Record: On Sexuality and the Colonial Archive in India opens with a discussion of a report on the male brothels of Karachi Books Discussed in This Article For the Record: On Sexuality and the Colonial Archive in India. By Anjali Arondekar. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009. The Inordinately Strange Life of Dyce Sombre: Victorian Anglo-Indian MP and "Chancery Lunatic." By Michael Fisher. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010. Marriage and Modernity: Family Values in Colonial Bengal. By Rochona Majumdar. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009. that nineteenth-century scholar and explorer Richard Burton is supposed to have written but which has never been located; Michael Fisher, in The Inordinately Strange Life of Dyce Sombre: Victorian Anglo-Indian MP and "Chancery Lunatic," analyzes the "identity" of a "prince" (who is not a prince by birth) in nineteenth-century colonial India; and Rochona Majumdar, in Marriage and Modernity: Family Values in Colonial Bengal, examines the imagined tradition of arranged marriages. These are not the standard stories or familiar figures we usually meet in accounts of imperialism and of the colonial archive. When the sexual practices of colonized subjects, Begum Sombre, David Dyce, or the "traditional" Bengali family—what might be classed as the general subjects of these books—come into view in the colonial record, it is often as evidence of debasement, backwardness, insanity, or orientalness, as RubyLai 95 if they were already fully known and justifiably disparaged. What is more, even the most complex scholarly involvement does not always avoid an orientalized construction of people such as harem folk or "prostitutes." Often, in cases such as these, scholars have simply assumed that we already know all there is to know. Or perhaps the real problem is that we have failed to investigate many of these themes and figures on the assumption that there is little that they can tell us about "real" history. Arondekar's For the Record is...