Context(s) of the Archive

Both historical and archival theorists use the concept of “context,” but with significantly different referents. Historical context generally refers to circumstances surrounding events or actors of interest, and can range from the local details of events to global trends. Archival context, in contrast, was rigorously defined during the emergence of canonical Western archival theory in the 19th century, and refers to assemblages of records created by an actor – individual or institutional – while conducting its business, which must be preserved according to the canons of provenance and respect des fonds. This paper argues that archival context itself has a history, however, and that the canonical version associated with modernity and a capitalist political economy was preceded in Europe by a particularist, pertinence-based understanding of archival context that emerged from the political economy of privilege in late medieval and early modern Europe. Moreover, a post-modern understanding of archival context embodied in the model of the records continuum is emerging today, in connection with a political economy of commodified information. The essay offers both historical cases and comparative considerations to illuminate this trajectory. Close attention to context in historical and archival theories, which look at how archival thinking and historical thinking were entwined over this entire trajectory, provides a fresh perspective for understanding both past deep structures and current tendencies. The goal of scholarship is both to make meaning out of the evidence around us in disciplinary ways, but also to reflect on the conditions of that meaning-making: the limitations, the questions unasked, the patterns not perceived. Looking at archival regimes as a historian – given that historians today are profoundly dependent on archives – can add a recursive and dynamic perspective on long-standing models of transformative change.