Abstract

This article explores the issue of loss and destruction of French colonial archives in the early 20th century and the attempts to prevent them by colonial authorities. By differentiating archival management policies from archival control policies in Afrique occidentale française (AOF) and colonial Indochina, it shows that the most spectacular causes of destruction (fire, war, etc.) may not have been the most damaging to archival records. The need to have control over both the destruction of archives and access to them can be identified as a common motivation for the creation of archives and records offices in the colonies by the authorities and emphasises that this desire for control was directed at external elements (external readers and users, leaks, spoils of war) and the administration itself (unmonitored destruction by colonial administrators and internal theft). Yet the motive underlying the sustainability of the archives and records offices was based on a bureaucratic rationale, which favoured the development of an organised and efficient archival policy in the case of Indochina while rendering it irrelevant in AOF. This points to the fact that archival records, in the French colonial setting, were a governing tool that reinforced bureaucratic authority rather than a mere by-product of colonial power.