Liberty, equality, posterity?: Some archival lessons from the case of the french revolution

American Archivist

Volumn 59, Issue 1, 1996, Pages 30-47

  Panitch, Judith M ^a  

^a Howard Hughes Medical Institute   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 42649084446     PISSN: 03609081     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.17723/aarc.59.1.an67076131u104kj     Document Type: Article

References (57)

1. 'Ernst Posner, "Some Aspects of Archival Development Since the French Revolution," American Archivist 3 (July 1940): 161-62.
2. Robert Bahmer, "Archives," in Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, vol. 1 (New York: Marcel Dekker, 1968), 516;
3. James M. O'Toole, Understanding Archives and Manuscripts (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 1990), 29;
4. Charles Kecskemeti, "The Professional Culture of the Archivist," American Archivist 50 (Summer 1987): 412.
5. Leon Delessard, "La Revolution Francaise et les Archives Departementales," Memoires de I'Academie des sciences, arts et belles lettres de Dijon (1944), 167. This and all other unascribed translations in the text are the author's original versions, prepared for this paper.
6. Michel Delon, "La bibliotheque est en feu: Reveries autour du livre," Bulletin des Bibliotheques de France 34, no. 2-3 (1989): 120.
7. 'Robert-Henri Bautier, "La phase cruciale de l'histore des archives: la constitution des depots d'archives et la naissance de l'archivistique, XVIe-debut du XIXe siecle," Archivum 18 (1968): 139-49;
8. Amedee Outrey has written several legally and historically oriented articles, including: "La notion traditionnelle des titres et les origines de la legislation revolutionnaire sur les archives: La loi du 7 September 1790," Revue historique de droit frangais et etranger (1955): 438-63
9. and "Sur la notion d'archives en France, a la fin du XVIIIe siecle," Revue historique de droit frangais et etranger (1953): 277-86;
10. Vida Azimi, "La Revolution francaise: deni de memoire ou deni de droit?" Revue historique de droit frangais et etranger 68, n.2 (April-June 1990): 157-78;
11. Carl Lokke, "Archives and the French Revolution," American Archivist 31 (March 1968): 23-31;
12. Adolf Brenneke, Archivkunde (Leipzig: Koehler & Amelang, 1953).
13. Encyclopedie, ou Dictionnaire raisonne des sciences, des arts et des metiers (Paris: Briasson, 1751- 1765): Vol. 1, 619; vol. 16, 359; vol. 3, 220.
14. For a detailed study of contemporary use and understanding of the term "archives," see Outrey, "Sur la notion d'archives." "Bautier "La phase cruciale," 141.
15. Bautier "La phase cruciale," 144.
16. '"Azimi, "La Revolution francaise," 164.
17. "Philippe Sagnac, La Legislation civile de la Revolution frangaise (1789-1804) (1898; reprint, New York: AMS Press, 1973), 85.
18. Armand Gaston Camus, "Memoire sur les depots de chartes, titres, registres, documents et autres papiers qui existaient dans le departement de la Seine, et sur leur etat a l'epoque du ler Janvier 1789, sur les revolutions qu'ils ont eprouvees et sur leur etat au ler nivose de l'an VI," in Felix Ravaisson, Rapport adresse a S. Exc. le ministre d'Etat au nom de la commission institute le 22 avril 1861 (Paris: Panckoucke, 1862), 322.
19. Archives Parlementaires de 1787 a 1860: recueil complet des debats legislatifs et politiques des chambres francaises, First series (Paris: Paul Dupont, 1879-1913): vol. 45, 378. Hereafter refered to as AP.
20. '"Article 6 of the law proclaims that any holders of feudal titles are "required to deposit them within three months at the local clerk's office. Those deposited before August 10 will be burned that very day in the presence of the general Communal Council and citizens; the rest will be burned three months later." Cited in Henri Bordier, Les Archives de la France (1855; reprint Geneva: Megoriotis, 1978), 327.
21. Serge Bianchi, La revolution culturelle de Van II: Elites et peuple, 1789-1799 (Paris: Aubier, 1982), 166.
22. "Bordier, Les Archives, 336. Emphasis in original.
23. and the Marquis Leon de Laborde, Les Archives de la France: Leurs vicissitudes pendant la Revolution, leur regeneration sous I'Empire (Paris: Renouard, 1867), 233-44
24. Sagnac, La Legislation civile de la Revolution frangaise, 149.
25. "Cited in Edgard Boutaric, "Le vandalisme revolutionnaire: les archives pendant la Revolution francaise," Revue des questions historiques 12 (October 1872): 350.
26. De Laborde, Les Archives de la France, 241.
27. Annie Regond, " 'Vandalisme revolutionnaire' et protection du patrimoine pendant la Revolution francaise: pour une enquete rationale," in Revolution francaise et "vandalisme revolutionnaire" edited by Simone Bernard-Griffiths, Marie-Claude Chemin, and Jean Ehrard (Paris: Universitas, 1992), 131.
28. Marc Bouloiseau, The Jacobin Republic, translated by Jonathan Mandelbaum (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 153.
29. Lokke, "Archives and the French Revolution," 31;
30. Paul Gerbod, "Vandalisme et anti-vandalisme du pouvoir politique de 1789 a 1795," in Bernard et al., Revolution francaise et "vandalisme revolutionnaire," 295.
31. A. Giry, "Archives," in La Grande Encyclopedic: Inventaire raisonne des sciences, des lettres et des arts (Paris: H. Lamirault, 1886), 749.
32. We might additionally note that the Marquis' family history certainly must have contributed to his hostility regarding the Revolution: His father, Alexandre-Louis-Joseph, had been forced to flee to England during this period and eventually served in the Austrian Army, while his grandfather, Jean- Joseph, was arrested and guillotined during the Terror. (See La Grande Encyclopedie at Laborde," v. 21, 688.)
33. Boutaric, "Le vandalisme revolutionnaire," 334. The extent of de Laborde's partisanship may be clearly seen in passages such as the following: All were swept up in the spirit of the rights of man and the conquests of civil liberty; the old regime was shouted down, all our history vilified; France, throwing off her garment which she deemed too worn, claimed to be starting a new sort of humanity, superior to the preceding sort, and which had need of neither experience nor tradition. Archives suffered in this explosion of spirits; they had no importance and offered no interest simply because they conserved the laws and traditions of another time. So the old regime was abhorred, none wished to learn from it; and, the better to destroy it, it was resolved to destroy anything which might call it to mind."
34. (Bordier, Les inventaires des Archives de I'Empire: Reponse a M. le Marquis de Laborde, Directeur General contenant un Errata pour ses prefaces et ses inventaires (Paris: Libraire Bachelin-Deflorenne, 1867), 2.
35. Bianchi, La revolution culturelle de I'an II, 172-73.
36. Giry, "Archives," 740. Giry objects that many private and religious archives had been overlooked in this census and that we can, "without exaggeration, place at over 10,000 the number of archives in France at the end of the Ancien Regime.'' This is a figure repeated by Langlois
37. (Charles Langlois and H. Stein, Les Archives de I'histoire de France (1891; reprint, Nendeln, Lichtenstein: Kraus Reprint, 1966), p. iv).
38. AP, v. 8, 302-3.
39. Outrey, "La notion traditionnelle," 444. De Laborde takes a characteristically less charitable view of the new archivist: "The functions [of the office] were few, and well within his abilities"
40. (Les Archives de la France, 5- 6); "his exile [in an Austrian prison] had suggested to him no new or reasonable ideas regarding the organization of archives, he understood them no better than before his departure"
41. Cited in John Hall Stewart, A Documentary Summary of the French Revolution (New York: Macmillan, 1951), 143.
42. "Gregoire, "Rapport sur les destructions operees par le Vandalisme, et sur les moyens de le reprimer;" "Second Rapport sur le Vandalisme;" and "Troisieme Rapport sur le Vandalisme" (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1794).
43. AP, v. 18, 652.
44. nAP, v. 78, 1270-77.
45. Camus, "Memoire sur les depots de chartes," 336.
46. [Nancy Bartlett, "Respect des Fonds: The Origins of the Modern Archival Principle of Provenance," in Bibliographical Foundations of French Historical Studies (Binghamton, N.Y.: Haworth Press, 1992), 108].
47. "AP, v. 92, 177-82.
48. Bordier, Les Inventaires des Archives de I 'Empire, 4. Nancy Bartlett's article on the origins of' 'Respect des Fonds" again provides a more thorough discussion of the history of the principle of provenance and of de Laborde and Bordier's roles in its development.
49. Jacques Sole, La Revolution en questions (Paris: Seuil, 1988), 308.
50. "Robert-Henri Bautier, "Les Archives," in L'Histoire et ses methodes, ed. Charles Samaroun (Paris: Pleiade, 1961), 1133.
51. Bianchi, La revolution culturelle de Van II, 157.
52. Bronislaw Baczko, " Vandalism," in A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution, edited by Francois Furet and Mona Ozouf, translated by Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1989), 866.
53. "James M. O'Toole, "The Symbolic Significance of Archives," American Archivist 56 (Spring 1993): 238.
54. Pierre Nora, "Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Memoire" translated by Marc Roudebush, Representations 26 (Spring 1989): 7-25.
55. Aspects of this issue have also been explored by Kenneth Foote (see, for example, "To Remember and Forget: Archives, Memory, and Culture," American Archivist 53 (Summer 1990): 378-92), but Nora's discussion remains more general and, I believe, provides a broader basis for reflection.
56. Nora, "Between Memory and History," 8. I shall leave aside, as does Nora, the question of when, exactly, the "modern" era can be said to start.
57. "Bautier, "Les Archives," 1133.