“Of Sovereignty”: Disputed Archives, “Wholly Modern” Archives, and the Post-decolonization French and Algerian Republics, 1962–2012

According to its actors, the French-Algerian “dispute” (“le contentieux”) over the archives of French-ruled Algeria (1830-1962) is about what happened at the time of decolonization to official collections then-archived in Algeria and what this means for the production of “history.” Yet the history of the Dispute itself, which continues until today, can offer insight into another question that even broader discussions of archives usually avoid: “the institution of the Archives is just as potent a political tool as its contents—and therefore politically dangerous.” Archives as key institutions of modern states are more than buildings, staff, and documentary contents, although those elements help make them so “potent.” Through their existence and the way they function they help constitute a state insofar as their workings offer proof that it is an emanation of its people, a nation-state, and thus modern. This is why, I would suggest, the Dispute has had political effects on both sides of the Mediterranean and has shaped historical production in ways far larger than missing documents--even in large numbers--can account. As this history of the Dispute makes clear, decolonization participated in the concomitant (and quite dramatic) redefinition, led by professional archivists, of what materials state archives should collect that crystallized in the late 1950s. Decolonization gave form to summons for historians to look beyond the state and reshaped actual archives and, together with both, participated in redefining sovereignty.