Historical Gaps and Non-existent Sources: The Case of the Chaudrie Court in French India

This article develops a typology of historical and archival gaps—physical, historiographical, and epistemological—to consider how non-existent sources are central to understanding colonial law and governance. It does so by examining the institutional and archival history of a court known as the Chaudrie in the French colony of Pondichéry in India in the eighteenth century, and integrating problems that are specific to the study of legal history—questions pertaining to jurisdiction, codification, evidence, and sovereignty—with issues all historians face regarding power and the making of archives. Under French rule, Pondichéry was home to multiple judicial institutions, administered by officials of the French East Indies Company. These included the Chaudrie court, which existed at least from 1700 to 1827 as a forum where French judges were meant to dispense justice according to local Tamil modes of dispute resolution. However, records of this court prior to 1766 have not survived. By drawing on both contemporaneous mentions of the Chaudrie and later accounts of its workings, this study centers missing or phantom sources, severed from the body of the archive by political, judicial, and bureaucratic decisions. It argues that the Chaudrie was a court where jurisdiction was decoupled from sovereignty, and this was the reason it did not generate a state-managed and preserved archive of court records for itself until the 1760s. The Chaudrie’s early history makes visible a relationship between law and its archive that is paralleled by approaches to colonial governance in early modern French Empire.

Advertising and Modernity: A Critical Reassessment

This chapter aims to deconstruct the category of modernity by confronting a prevailing abstracted view on screen advertising with the contingencies of its archival history. Taking as a case study the 1960s ‘cola wars’ and the marketing of cola soft drinks, the chapter shows how this competition between Pepsi and Coke related to stylistic innovations such as montage sequences, and what relevant mid-level finds can be made regarding one specific Pepsi campaign of that era without indulging in overly general arguments about modernism or modernity.

Waiting for the Barbarians

This chapter offers some methodological insights to those who wish to embark on a study of the archival history of the European Court of Justice (ECJ). Through her voyage into this newly opened archive, the author unpacks the comparative legal history emerging from the jurisprudence of the ECJ, a supranational court embedded in different European legal traditions. The author relies on the findings of the new legal historians who have brought to the surface legal and political resistance to the constitutionalization narrative of the ECJ. She also relies on the work of sociologists who have focused on professional networks of Eurolawyers as a powerful engine for the integration and liberalization of the single market. By deploying these insights, the chapter offers a novel reading of the grands arrêts through the dossiers de procédure now open to the public in electronic format at the Historical Archives of the EU.

Documentary Constellations in Late-Mamlūk Cairo: Property- and Waqf-Related Archiving on the Eve of the Ottoman Conquest of Egypt

The scholarly discussion of archives in the premodern Islamicate world is beset by problematic generalisations. Such a view to some degree stems from a top-down view of archiving that focuses on state archives at the expense of practices of archiving occurring outside a chancery context. This article challenges the assumptions that support an enduring narrative of paucity, by examining non-chancery archival practices in Mamlūk Cairo on the eve of the Ottoman conquest in 922/1517. In doing this, it looks to some of the surviving original documentary material: legal property deeds with connections to waqf endowments whose potential to shed light on archival history has largely remained untapped. Surviving in large numbers in modern collections in Cairo, these documents contain abundant traces of their own archival histories. By presenting a micro-scale case study drawn from this material, this article shows the energetic and meticulous documentary and archival practices that surrounded property transactions in late-Mamlūk Cairo.

Plaatsen van geschiedenis : De ‘Belgische’ archieven tijdens de jaren 1810

Places of history. The ‘Belgian’ archives during the 1810sRecent studies have shown that the states that formed in post-revolutionary Europe were eager to found national archives. Historical research in those archives fostered national unity and stability. Limited research on Belgian archival history has suggested a different picture: under the ‘occupation’ by both the French Empire and the United Kingdom of the Netherlands, ‘Belgian’ archives were plundered. This article offers another interpretation. While the head of the Archives de l’Empire wanted to move valuable documents to Paris, the Dutch government’s lack of archival policy meant decentralization continued. A reorganization of the State Archives in Brussels was not carried through. Local historians were encouraged in their archival interest by being appointed as city archivists. As a result a locally-rooted historiographical archival organization emerged in the ‘Belgian’ provinces of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.

The Dynamic Role of the Bibliothèque wallonne in the History of the Walloon Churches

The Bibliothèque wallonne accommodates a church collection that is the result of distinct archival policies. Tracing the archival history of this collection reveals important shifts in its formation, accessibility, and usage. A travelling archive from 1578, it became a fixed church archive in 1777, and in 1852 was augmented by a separate Walloon Library, with both archives under the management of a Commission des Archives. In 1877, the Commission de l’ histoire des Églises wallonnes was established, whose goal was to write the history of the Walloon churches in the Netherlands, and collecting the necessary sources for doing so. In 1893, after the activities of both commissions were merged, the collections were combined to form what is now the Bibliothèque wallonne. Established primarily as a church archive, the collection is now mostly used for researching the history of the Walloon churches in the Netherlands.

Megkésett tisztelgés vagy szakmai aktualitás? A levéltártan alapművének első magyar kiadásáról

The Dutch Manual of Muller, Feith and Fruin is the basic work of modern archival theory and practice and widely considered to be the “Bible of a modern archivist”. It was published the first time in Hungarian in 2019. Is it a late honour for the past of this profession with some significance just for archival history? How can the permanent influence of the book be explained? The principle of provenance has to be reconsidered at190any time when the archival profession faces new challenges. This study summarizes the most topical challenges of our times generally and for Hungarian archivists particularly to identify fields where the Manual seems to be highly inspiring in. We have to find new ways of arranging and representing archival information, and Dutch Manual seems to offer useful reference in the digital age too.