Archives at the heart of empire
Fenna Imara Hoefsloot, PhD
The Heart of the Empire, Niels Møller Lund (1863–1916), Guildhall Art Gallery. Photo credit: City of London Corporation
I started writing this blog post from the map reading room of the British Library, home of one of the largest collections of maps, plans, and topographical views in the world. This collection spans centuries of cartographic representations, offering a comprehensive view of the changing world. As we delve into our research on the digitalisation of urbanisation in Guadalajara, Nairobi, and Mumbai, it comes to my own surprise that our exploration of the information flows of the digitalising state has led me to a public library in London, warping my understanding of the 'field' we are researching and revealing the geographies of information infrastructures.
The inspiration for my visit here came from a casual comment made during an interview with the leaders of the Indigenous Community of Mezquitán in Guadalajara. The community president explained that despite having a land title granted by the Spanish crown, there is no precise knowledge of their land's exact boundaries. In their recent attempt to map the changes in their land over time, they encountered a significant obstacle: the maps from the time of colonisation were not located in Mexico but archived in Madrid, making them inaccessible to the community.
In a similar vein, the British Library houses the archives of the India Office Registry, an extensive collection of cartographic data created during the colonial rule of India. Shaped by the idiosyncrasies of the colonial rulers and their interests, the India Office Registry encompasses thousands of maps depicting everything from natural landscapes and urban sprawl to military points of interest and economic development plans. The library also holds a significant collection of maps of Kenya, another former colony of the UK. Such maps were transported to the UK after Kenya gained independence. While London may no longer be the heart of the empire, the British Library's collection seems to have missed the memo. However, as I browsed through the catalogue of these maps produced by the colonial state, I was struck by the absence of the colonial state in the documents themselves and their descriptions. An introductory note in the catalogue for the maps of Kenya stated:
“The Survey of Kenya (SK) was founded in 1906 and is responsible for geodetic, topographic, photogrammetric and cadastral surveying and the publication of official topographic and cadastral maps of Kenya. Like other African countries, Kenya has used overseas aid donors to establish and maintain its mapping, notably with British support until the 1980s” (Parry & Perkins, 2011, p. 120)
This passage conveniently omits the role of the British Empire in mapping Kenya as a colony and the subsequent removal of all cartographic knowledge after independence, leaving the newly formed state reliant on its former coloniser for general information. The former colonies may have been left behind with the physical infrastructures of the colonial state but not the cartographic information necessary to manage them. The maps archived in this library demonstrate the power of cartography and maps as technologies of the state, capturing historical narratives and national myths visually and textually.
As argued by Mbembe (2002), understanding the archives of any given country is crucial for researching state-building. The power of the archive lies in its function as an "instituting imaginary," institutionalising the narratives of the past and closing the door on potential controversies or discussions. It is through the archive that abstract concepts like state and territory become concrete subjects, documented, coded, and depicted to such an extent that we begin to "feel" them as part of our identity as residents of a place. Therefore, the archive serves as a material expression of state-building and nationhood. The creation, maintenance, or disruption of the archive becomes a critical power for those who wish to establish, alter, or subvert the state and national identity.
On the other hand, the public library serves a different function. According to Mattern (2019), the public library is an essential ecosystem of infrastructures, connecting information, material, social, and technological infrastructures that shape and influence one another. Unlike the national archive, the primary purpose of the public library is not to institutionalise the state narrative but to support and foster the accessibility and exchange of information for the public as a knowledge institution. However, the way the library's collection is curated, stored, and made accessible still shapes the public it serves, the stories that endure, and the values it embodies.
Given these differences, my visit to the British Library raised several questions about the significance of housing documents that were once part of the archive of the colonial state within the library of the former coloniser. How did the displacement of the archive create space for reconstructing the narrative of the past? What does it mean when the archives of the state are detached from its territory? And how does the transition from state archives to public libraries change the status of the documents? While we cannot answer these questions at present, they have inspired contemplation about the importance of the location of documents, offices, and archives in the analysis of information infrastructures.
Moreover, within the project, it made me acutely aware of the inequalities in access to resources among the team members. While my colleagues in Nairobi and Mumbai are struggling to collect historic cartographic information of the cities they research - the cities they live in - I am at UCL, a 10-minute walk away from this wealth of information, openly accessible.
Both Mbembe (2002) and Mattern (2019) emphasise the importance of considering the architecture of the archive or library, as well as the documents they house, to understand how they function as information infrastructures. Based on our experiences thus far, we should add to that list the importance of considering the geographies of information infrastructures. Today, the British Library not only serves as a house for the colonial archives but also serves as a powerful reminder of the displacement of knowledge and information through colonisation.
References:
Mattern, S. (2014). Library as infrastructure. Places Journal.
Mbembe, A. (2002). The Power of the Archive and its Limits. Refiguring the archive, 19.
Parry, B., & Perkins, C. (2011). World mapping today. Walter de Gruyter.