The archives and neutrality

metamorphosis

So what do you all think of neutrality in relation to archives?
Are archives neutral?

Why?

I think that they are not neutral and do not lead to objective work. If one is researching materials in the archive: how he illustrates his work will be based on how interprets what is held in the arhive and the take on that piece of work.


The US government has been accused in the past of not releasing materials into state archives thus taking away any neutrality.

hivizman

You are raising two distinct questions here. First, are archives "neutral"? By the way, you don't define "neutral", but I expect that you would accept a dictionary definition such as "taking no part on either side; not involved in a war or dispute". Given that archives are not merely accidental collections of documents and other artefacts, but are assembled by people for various purposes, it is quite likely that the material available in archives is the result of decisions taken to select some items and omit others, to permit access to some of the selected items while preventing access to others, and to arrange items in particular ways. There are numerous examples of individuals (or members of their families) going through their personal papers before they are deposited in an archive accessible to the public, and it's reasonable to assume that some of these individuals will suppress papers that show themselves in an unfavourable light.

As you point out, what is available in national, regional and organisational archives is also the outcome of a process of selection. In some cases, historians know that certain material exists but can't be accessed (for example, some countries deposit material in archives and include it in catalogues but there is a long waiting period before it is released to researchers). In other cases, historians can infer that material has been suppressed (for example, a document or file may be referred to elsewhere, but it is missing from the archive).

Assessing the quality and reliability of sources is part of the historian's "craft skills", and I would be surprised if any trained historian would take an archive entirely at face value. But knowing that archives are not neutral does not prevent historians from using material from archives in a rigorous and critical manner.

The second point you raise is that historians will have to select material from archives (in some cases, a historian may simply aim to transcribe a particular record, but even here there may be some editorial judgement in interpreting what the record is saying). Again, this is something that historians are well aware of, and most historians aim to be scrupulous in ensuring that the selection of material they use is fair. For example, if there is material in the archive that seems to be inconsistent with the argument that the historian is putting forward, then most historians, I believe, would consider it improper to suppress that evidence and pretend it doesn't exist. They may try to devalue the significance of the contradictory evidence in some way (for example, by challenging the authority of the person who created the initial document), but they would not deliberately ignore it.

A good book to read on these issues is by Richard J. Evans In Defence of History (London: Granta, 1997 - there are later editions). Evans is Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University. One of the examples given by Evans is the case of a book by a historian David Abrahams The Collapse of the Weimar Republic, which was strongly criticised for misusing the archival sources. Evans comments: "while Abraham did not deliberately falsify evidence, he was extremely careless with it, far more so than is permissible in a work of serious historical scholarship, or indeed in any work of history."

So historians are aware of both of the issues that you raise, and take steps to overcome the problems involved. One final comment: the American historian Thomas L. Haskell wrote a book some years ago with the title Objectivity is Not Neutrality (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), in which he argued that it is perfectly appropriate for historians to take sides in their work, but that this must not be at the expense of abusing the primary evidence. So remember that "objectivity" and "neutrality" are not necessarily the same.