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Many people who grew up in care have gaps in their childhood memories and unanswered questions about their early lives. In the absence of family photos and stories they turn to records held by the local authorities and charities that looked after them. Accessing these records is a practically and emotionally challenging process. Response times are often long and the records received are redacted because they include confidential information about “third parties’” who are often family and...

Over the years, internationally-minded archivists have had to consider the possibility of taking custody of archives from another country because the archives are at risk in their country of origin. The risks may take many forms, but archives in war-zones and other disaster areas, and archives at environmental risk (including risks of climate change) provide striking examples. The removal of archives from one country to another is always likely to be controversial, however, and even...

In 1994, the European Monetary Institute (EMI) was established. Based first in Basel (Switzerland), and subsequently in Frankfurt am Main (Germany), the newly created institute was one of the most structurally significant outcomes of the 1992 Treaty of Maastricht and was intended to shepherd the creation of a new currency for the European Union - the Euro banknotes and coins - as well as to prepare for the establishment of the future European Central Bank (ECB). Unlike many other new...

Can genuine archival documents be used to manipulate our knowledge of the past? Of course, only three steps suffice: restrict historians' access to archives, select sources according to a desired premise and make sure your message reaches a wide audience, especially non-historians.

For several decades, Japan kept in place significant self-imposed constraints on its security policy even as its economy grew tremendously. While it has been argued that Japan refrained from enacting security policy change because of strong domestic pacifist or anti-militarist sentiments, recently, radical policy changes have nonetheless taken place. How can these changes be understood? The existing explanations typically see them as a response to objectively existing or constructed external...

This article analyses the journey of the so-called Izieu telegram–atelegram sent by Nazi perpetrator Klaus Barbie to report the raidof a Jewish children’s home in France to his superiors–from itscreation to its use in multiple transitional justice mechanisms,including an international military tribunal, domestic trials inFrance, and various memorialisation projects. In doing so weapply the concepts of activation and the records continuumapproach, both borrowed from archival studies...

In family settings stories, photographs and memory objects support narratives of identity and belonging. Such resources are often missing for people who were in care as children. As a result, they may be unable to fill gaps in their memories or answer simple questions about their early lives. In these circumstances, they turn to the records created about them by social workers and care providers to reconstruct personal histories. Research suggests that thousands of requests to view records...

In 2019, there were over 75,000 children and young people in out-of-home care in England and Wales. Recent estimates suggest that up to half a million British people were in state or voluntary care as children, around 1% of the adult population. While individual experiences vary enormously by time and place, care-experienced people share in common the intensive documentation of their lives by social workers, educators, health professionals and associated practitioners. A complex, fragmented...

La movilización de todos los recursos durante la Guerra Civil Española alcanzó también el ámbito de la Cultura y la Gestión del Patrimonio. Si bien son más conocidas iniciativas relacionadas con el Museo del Prado o la Biblioteca Nacional, desde el principio se tuvo en cuenta la creación de un Archivo de la Guerra, donde se reunirían todos los testimonios escritos de todas aquellas unidades militares o asociaciones políticas que lucharon en defensa de la República. Este archivo, después de...

El descubrimiento y posterior proceso de recuperación del Archivo Histórico de la Policía Nacional de Guatemala supone una de las mayores experiencias exitosas de mayor alcance en América Latina en el uso de los archivos como instrumentos de apoyo a la defensa de los derechos humanos y a la construcción de los procesos de memoria histórica. pero la situación en la que hoy se encuentran los documentos producidos por la Policía Nacional entre 1881 y 1997 puede definirse claramente como de encrucijada.

Recent reports by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) emphasised the critical importance of records throughout the lives of care-experienced people. Records not only contain information about what happened to a person in their past, but also have long-term effects on memory and identity. Research emerging in the context of analogous national inquiries into the systemic abuse and neglect of children in care—particularly the Royal Commission in Australia and the Shaw Report...

Literary archivists in recent years have often taken an interest, and occasionally taken the lead, in projects which concern the multi-faceted topic of “archives at risk”. This essay reviews recent thinking and action on archives at risk, with special reference to archives which relate to cultural heritage, and describes practical responses in the three areas of documentary heritage at risk, the papers of dissident authors, and the challenging question of providing safe havens for archives at risk.

This essay traces the changing meanings of the term “anti-Semitism” from the late nineteenth century to the present. Focusing on Britain, it demonstrates that anti-Semitism, like any other concept, has a history—but in this case, one that remains largely uncharted. The essay draws a contrast between early usages of the term that regarded anti-Semitism as a specifically modern phenomenon and later meanings that have conceived anti-Semitism as a continuous and deep-seated malaise. Changes in...

Japan’s kyōkasho mondai (history textbook controversy) is at a crossroads. This article tries to exemplify it through the analysis of three issue areas at three levels (international, domestic, and societal). Internationally, the study looks into the failure of much anticipated joint history writing projects with China (2006–2010) and South Korea (2002–2005, 2007–2010). Domestically, this study problematises the recent politicisation of the textbook adoption system through the analysis of...

UNESCO’s ‘Memory of the World’ Programme promotes the preservation, universal access and public awareness of the world’s significant documents as the common heritage of all humankind. The inscription of the ‘Documents of Nanjing Massacre’ into the ‘Memory of the World’ Register in 2015 reflects an increasingly globalised concern in the post–Cold War era over the remembrance of war and atrocity. Yet it has reignited the tension between Japan and China, resulting in strong pressure on UNESCO to...