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How do archives perpetuate colonial violence?



Module: HST6356 'An Excess of Colonialism': Empire, Race, and Violence

By Emma Davies


Colonial violence can take many forms; physical, mental, and spiritual. This essay will focus on epistemological and psychological violence centred in and around the colonial archive in Anglophone Africa. The ‘archives’, operating in both the colonial and the neo-colonial world, has been the focus of academic discussion and questioning for decades.[1] In this essay, I will explore how English language archives in Africa have perpetuated colonial violence in two different case studies. Before that, however, what is meant by ‘archives’ must be defined, and a division in historical thought must be addressed; that is, the unhelpful division between theory and practice. Once this has been established, I will first look at the Mau Mau war in Kenya (1952-1960), and how ‘migrated archives’ and public memory overlap and feed into a perpetuation of colonial violence. Then I will compare this with the apartheid state of South Africa, focusing on the end of apartheid and the destruction of archives. I will offer a short discussion of archival activism in the late 20th and early 21st century, showing how theory and practice must go hand-in-hand to address the legacies and continuation of colonial violence in the archives. This essay will argue that epistemological violence was perpetuated through the destruction and removal of archives in the colonial period, and continues into the present neo-colonial period with the memory of (physical) violence and the (psychological) violence of memory.

In order to establish coherence some terms must be defined. Firstly, the phrase ‘colonial violence’. In the Anglophone colonial period many forms of violence were used to oppress and supress colonial subjects and ‘rebels’.[2] However, historians have tended to focus on physical violence. Kim Wagner has written several works on how British colonial violence in India was physically manifested in racialised warfare; for example, in the use of expanding Dum Dum bullets on the ‘savage’, non-white enemies of Empire.[3] In addition to physical violence during colonial warfare, British officials also made use of racialised violence in retribution and suppression, such as cannonading in the wake of the 1857 Indian Rebellion.[4] This essay will focus instead on forms of colonial violence that historians have considered less; those of psychological and epistemological violence. These have more commonly been written about by philosophers and theorists; for example, in Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth. This work examines the psychological violence exacted upon the Algerian people during French colonial rule, and its after-effects.[5] I suggest that the Anglophone historiography of colonial violence is lacking in its understanding of epistemological and psychological violence, and would benefit from overlapping and integrating historical surveys with theoretical works. This insertion of the theoretical leads me to my second definition, that of ‘archives’. Michel Foucault refers to ‘archives’ as written “mechanisms of discipline” used by the nation state as a “play of coercion over bodies, gestures and behaviour”.[6] The idea of state control and power through the ‘archive’ is added to by Achille Mbembe, who defines the ‘archives’ as both a “building, a symbol of a public institution” and “a collection of documents…kept in this building” [my emphasis].[7] This definition of ‘archives’ as institutions controlled by the (colonial) state is essential to understanding how information was, and continues to be, manipulated in the colonial and neo-colonial contexts. This essay, then, is focused on violence in the colonial archives, or as Jacques Derrida calls it, ‘archival violence’.[8] Sandhya Shetty and Elizabeth Bellamy elaborate on Derrida’s work by returning to Gayatri Spivak’s Can the Subaltern Speak?, tracing back how epistemic violence is rooted in ‘archival violence’.[9] Having surveyed the theoretical, these theories must now be physically realised in empirical examples.

The Mau Mau Emergency (1952-1960) and its after-events in Kenya is an example of how archives were violently manipulated and destroyed by the British colonial state, and shows how this archival violence functions on a psychological level in the neo-colonial state. Historians Caroline Elkins and David Anderson have both written extensively about the physical violence that took place in the holding camps.[10] For example, Anderson writes about the torture methods used by European officers to force Kenyan prisoners, those suspected of being involved in Mau Mau, to confess; these include severe beatings, being forced to strip naked, and sexual violence.[11] However, the British government had been trying to cover over this physical violence through the use of ‘archival violence’ since Kenyan independence in 1963. In May 2003, historian Colin Murray wrote to Anderson, informing him that many colonial documents were being held in semi-secret status in Hanslope Park, Buckinghamshire.[12] This material was later named the ‘migrated archives’, and formed the basis of the 2010-2011 British High Court Case demanding acknowledgement and compensation for the British actions in Kenya during the Mau Mau Emergency. The ‘migrated archives’ (approximately 8,800 files) were removed from Kenyan colonial offices shortly before independence by British colonial officers; many other documents were burnt or otherwise destroyed.[13] The future of documents was decided by the following criterion: “successor Governments should not be given papers which:

- Might embarrass HMG or other Governments;

- Might embarrass members of the police, military forces, public servants or others eg. Police informers;

- Might compromise sources of intelligence information; or

- Might be used unethically by Ministers in the successor Government.”[14]


This focus on embarrassment and ‘ethical’ treatment of colonial documents reflects a wider British colonial preoccupation with sustaining epistemological hegemony; not only over the archive, but also over the fundamental framework of knowledge itself. As I considered in the previous paragraph, if the British neo-colonial state can control the archives, then they have great power in controlling what is written from the archives, thus protecting the ‘reputation’ of the British Empire as a Western civilising power. This ‘iron hand’ goes some way towards explaining the disappointing outcome of the 2010-2011 case, in which 5,228 victims receiving payments totalling £19.9 million; this equates to £3,000 per person.[15] A Commons statement by Foreign Secretary William Hague in 2013 acknowledged “that Kenyans were subject to torture and other forms of ill-treatment at the hands of the colonial administration.”[16] However, there was no mention of the ‘migrated archives’, despite the Kenyan government’s repeated attempts to reclaim their archives between the years 1967 and 1982.[17] Furthermore, debates continue concerning the power imbalance of previously colonised states receiving monetary compensation as paltry ‘apologies’ from their ‘colonial patrons’.[18] How can years of physical, mental and spiritual violence be converted into an amount of money? Some might object and say this ‘lightweight’/metaphorical content does not belong in a history essay, but I argue that strict disciplinary divisions are useless in this context; the theoretical and the historical must overlap. This applies not only to neo-colonial governments; historians must also be aware of how they present history, who they are centring. It is disappointing, for example, that Elkins and Anderson never give the names of the five original Kenyan claimants from the 2011 court case in the actual body of their essays. Their names are Ndiku Mutua, Paulo Mzili, Wambugu wa Nyingi, Jane Muthoni Mara, and Susan Ngondi. Anderson never names them at all; in Elkin’s work they are relegated to a footnote, referred to only as Ndiku Mutua and 4 Others.[19] The case study of the Mau Mau Emergency shows how the British colonial state in Kenya used ‘archival violence’ in an attempt to silence history. This non-physical form of colonial violence is perpetuated into the neo-colonial present. Not only are the methods of epistemological control violent within themselves (in extraction and manipulation); the effects of these methods are also violent, affecting colonial and neo-colonial persons psychologically and culturally. The ‘migrated archives’ represent memories of great physical and psychological suffering, and this traumatic experience reflects the violence of colonial memory. In the case of Mau Mau, colonial violence exists both in the archive, and in the neo-colonial uses of the archive.

My second case study will consider the destruction of archives in South Africa by the apartheid state, and then look at how activists and theorists have worked to reform the archives in the neo-colonial present. As with the British colonial state during the Mau Mau Emergency, the neo-colonial apartheid state attempted to cover up their physical violence and racism by engaging in ‘archival violence’. Verne Harris is an archivist who formerly worked with South Africa’s State Archives Service (post-1997 the National Archives of South Africa) from 1985 to 2001. Harris estimates that the “systematic routine destruction of NIS [National Intelligence Service] records began at least as early as 1982.”[20] This ‘archival violence’ peaked in 1993, when in 6-8 months, the NIS “destroyed approximately 44 tons of paper-based and microfilm records” in a furnace.[21] As with the destroyed and ‘migrated’ Kenyan archives, this non-physical violence is a manifestation of the need for the colonial and neo-colonial state to exercise epistemological control, and reflects the psychological violence exacted upon the colonial subject in forced amnesia. South Africa, as in Kenya, are dealing with the legacies of this colonial ‘archival violence’ directly, but in different ways. As this ‘archival violence’ is manifested in the neo-colonial present, it is essential that a theoretical framework is undertaken in archival activism. Verne Harris’s The Archival Sliver is an excellent article for summarising the problems in the South African archive, and employs a useful theoretical focus. Harris describes “the archival record…as a sliver of a sliver of a sliver of a window into process. It is a fragile thing, an enchanted thing.”[22] However, the theoretical cannot act alone; nice-sounding metaphors are all well and good, but what has been enacted in the physical? What has been done empirically?

The Archival Platform is an organisation created in 2007, dedicated to reimagining the concept of ‘archive’ in South Africa. They describe their activism as highlighting the importance of “access to information and the ‘right to know’; social justice and the ‘right to truth’…; and the discourse around remaking the past in the present and the work of building social cohesion in a historical fracture society.”[23] The practitioners and archivists work to provide epistemological agency as a counteraction against colonial silencing. This work potentially provides an exemplar framework for Kenyan archival activism; whilst the Mau Mau case study functions on a slightly different level of dealing with ‘migrated archives’, perhaps the South African example can be applied or examined in the future within the Kenyan borders. The Archival Platform also questions the very idea of the ‘archive’, recognising the ‘archive’ (as described at the start of this essay as a state institution) as a Western imposition onto African history. I argue that this is another form of neo-colonial epistemological and historiographical violence, which must be addressed in both the theoretical and the empirical. The work in South Africa to combat neo-colonial ‘archival violence’ is commendable and exciting. Even as they acknowledge that the “national archival system [is] in trouble”, the activists recommend that “it needs to be reviewed fundamentally”, as the “models which informed it – North American and European models in the main – need to be reconsidered.”[24] For example, the Archival Platform has consistently prioritised the importance of “documenting oral materials, rituals, and cultural practices that reflect elements of the past”, which were previously side-lined or even considered not worthy of record by “colonial and apartheid bias and exclusions in the archive.”[25] This South African case study shows how ‘archival violence’ was congruous across colonial and neo-colonial states, and provides some faith that in approaching the archive with a combination of critical theory and physical realisation, neo-colonial archives can begin to combat legacies of colonial violence.

This essay has surveyed two colonial case studies, reflecting on how the physical violence of colonialism has been recorded in the archives. It is fundamental to understand and reflect upon how ‘archival violence’ was standard practice for colonial states, necessary to perpetuate epistemological violence and control over colonial subjects. Furthermore, I have demonstrated how ‘archival violence’ continues into the neo-colonial present, as persons are affected psychologically and historiographically. In either forced amnesia, in the South African case, or forced remembering, in the Kenyan case, there is a psychological trauma and violence perpetuated by the colonial archive. Finally, the archive itself must be questioned in our neo-colonial present; how best can historians and archivists critically approach African archives and the forms of violence therein? The Archival Platform in South Africa attempts to answer some of these questions, and provides a potential framework for Kenyan archivists to reflect upon. Along with Verne Harris, and others, I suggest we need people who are unafraid to ask very difficult questions, in negotiating the future of archives and the histories of non-physical colonial violence.


 

Footnotes

[1] I will use the term ‘neo-colonial’ to refer to the current world-state in which the British Empire no longer exists in terms of its territorial possessions. The Empire continues to exist in institutions, in culture, in memory and in nostalgia. The descriptor ‘post-colonial’ is neither sufficient nor accurate, as ex-colonies and their institutions, including their archives, have not fully been fully removed from the colonial influence. Neither South Africa, Kenya, or Britain exist in a ‘post-colonial’ world. See Kwame Nkrumah, Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism (1965, London: Thomas Nelson & Sons, Ltd). [2] The Anglophone ‘colonial’ period in this essay is defined as lasting from 1858 (the beginning of the British Raj in India), to 1994 (the official end of apartheid in South Africa). See previous footnote. [3] Kim A. Wagner, ‘Savage Warfare: Violence and the Rule of Colonial Difference in Early British Counterinsurgency’. In History Workshop Journal (Jan. 2018, Issue 85), p. 221. [4] Wagner, The Great Fear of 1857: Rumours, Conspiracies and the Making of the Indian Uprising (2010, Oxford: Peter Lang Ltd), p. 223. [5] Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (2004, New York: Grove Press). [6] Michel Foucault, trans. Alan Sheridan, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Random House Inc.), p. 189, 191. [7] Achille Mbembe, ‘The Power of the Archive and its Limits’. In Refiguring the Archive, Hamilton C., Harris V., Taylor J., Pickover M., Reid G., Saleh R. (eds.) (2002, Dordrecht: Springer), p. 19. [8] Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression (1998, Chicago: University of Chicago Press), p. 12. [9] Sandhya Shetty and Elizabeth Jane Bellamy, ‘Postcolonialism’s Archive Fever’. In diacritics (Spring 2000, vol. 30, no. 1), pp. 31-32. See also Gayatri Spivak, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak? Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture’ (1988, Basingstoke, Macmillan). [10] See Caroline Elkins, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya (2005, New York: Owl Books) and David Anderson, Histories of the Hanged: Britain’s Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire (2005, London: Orion Books Ltd). [11] Anderson, ‘British abuse and torture in Kenya’s counter-insurgency, 1952-1960.’ In Small Wars and Insurgencies (2012, vol. 23, no. 4-5), pp. 704-705. For sexual violence, see also Elkins, Imperial Reckoning, pp. 208-209. [12] Anderson, ‘Guilty Secrets: Deceit, Denial, and the Discovery of Kenya’s ‘Migrated Archive’.’ In History Workshop Journal (Autumn 2015, Issue 80), pp. 153-154. [13] I take this number from Anthony Cary, ‘Cary Report on release of the colonial administration files’, Foreign and Commonwealth Office Report (2011, London), p. 1. Available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/cary-report-on-release-of-the-colonial-administration-files [Accessed 18 April 2020]. [14] Ibid., from Colonial Office guidance telegram of 3 May 1961. [15] BBC News, Mau Mau torture victims to receive compensation – Hague (6 June 2013). Available at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22790037 [Accessed 18 April 2020]. [16] Ibid. [17] Anthony Badger, ‘Historians, a legacy of suspicion and the ‘migrated archives’.’ In Small Wars and Insurgencies (2012, vol. 23, no. 4-5), p. 800. [18] See Michel-Rolph Trouillot, ‘Abortive Rituals: Historical Apologies in the Global Era’. In interventions (2000, vol 2, no 2), pp. 171-186. [19] Caroline Elkins, ‘Looking beyond Mau Mau: Archiving Violence in the Era of Decolonization’. In American Historical Review (June 2015, vol. 120, iss. 3), pp. 852-868, n. 13. [20] Verne Harris, “They Should Have Destroyed More”: The Destruction of Public Records by the South African State in the Final Years of Apartheid, 1990-1994’. In Transformation (2000, vol. 42), p. 5. [21] Ibid., p. 7. [22] Harris, ‘The Archival Sliver: Power, Memory, and Archives in South Africa’. In Archival Science (2002, vol. 2), p. 84. [23] The Archival Platform, State of the Archives: An analysis of South Africa’s national archival system, 2014 (2015, University of Cape Town: The Archival Platform), pp. 14-15. [24] Harris, ‘Passion for Archive’, Opening Keynote, Australian Society of Archivists National Conference, Melbourne, 26 September 2017. In Archives and Manuscripts (2018, vol. 46, no. 2), p. 193.

 

[25] The Archival Platform, State of the Archives, p. 113.


 

Bibliography

Books

David Anderson, Histories of the Hanged: Britain’s Dirty War in Kenya and the End of Empire (2005, London: Orion Books Ltd).

Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression (1998, Chicago: University of Chicago Press).

Caroline Elkins, Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya (2005, New York: Owl Books).

Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (2004, New York: Grove Press).

Michel Foucault, trans. Alan Sheridan, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Random House Inc.)

Kwame Nkrumah, Neo-Colonialism: The Last Stage of Imperialism (1965, London: Thomas Nelson & Sons, Ltd).

The Archival Platform, State of the Archives: An analysis of South Africa’s national archival system, 2014 (2015, University of Cape Town: The Archival Platform).

Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (2010, New Jersey: Princeton University Press).

Kim A. Wagner, The Great Fear of 1857: Rumours, Conspiracies and the Making of the Indian Uprising (2010, Oxford: Peter Lang Ltd).

Articles

David Anderson, ‘British abuse and torture in Kenya’s counter-insurgency, 1952-1960.’ In Small Wars and Insurgencies (2012, vol. 23, no. 4-5), 700-719.

- ‘Guilty Secrets: Deceit, Denial, and the Discovery of Kenya’s ‘Migrated Archive’.’ In History Workshop Journal (Autumn 2015, Issue 80), 142-160.

Anthony Badger, ‘Historians, a legacy of suspicion and the ‘migrated archives’.’ In Small Wars and Insurgencies (2012, vol. 23, no. 4-5), 799-807.

Mark Condos, ‘Licence to Kill: The Murder Outrages Act and the rule of law in colonial India, 1867-1925. In Modern Asian Studies (2016, vol. 50, no. 2), 479-517.

Caroline Elkins, ‘Looking beyond Mau Mau: Archiving Violence in the Era of Decolonization’. In American Historical Review (June 2015, vol. 120, iss. 3), pp. 852-868.

Verne Harris, “They Should Have Destroyed More”: The Destruction of Public Records by the South African State in the Final Years of Apartheid, 1990-1994’. In Transformation (2000, vol. 42), 1-18.

- ‘The Archival Sliver: Power, Memory, and Archives in South Africa’. In Archival Science (2002, vol. 2), 63-86.

- ‘Passion for Archive’, Opening Keynote, Australian Society of Archivists National Conference, Melbourne, 26 September 2017. In Archives and Manuscripts (2018, vol. 46, no. 2), 193-199.

Achille Mbembe, ‘The Power of the Archive and its Limits’. In Refiguring the Archive, Hamilton C., Harris V., Taylor J., Pickover M., Reid G., Saleh R. (eds.) (2002, Dordrecht: Springer).

Sandhya Shetty, Elizabeth Jane Bellamy, ‘Postcolonialism’s Archive Fever’. In diacritics (Spring 2000, vol. 30, no. 1), 25-48.

Gayatri Chakrabarty Spivak, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak? Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture’ (1988, Basingstoke, Macmillan).

Michel-Rolph Trouillot, ‘Abortive Rituals: Historical Apologies in the Global Era’. In interventions (2000, vol 2, no 2), 171-186.

Kim A. Wagner, ‘Savage Warfare: Violence and the Rule of Colonial Difference in Early British Counterinsurgency’. In History Workshop Journal (Jan. 2018, Issue 85), 217-237.

Websites

BBC News, Mau Mau torture victims to receive compensation – Hague (6 June 2013). Available at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22790037 [Accessed 18 April 2020].

Anthony Cary, ‘Cary Report on release of the colonial administration files’, Foreign and Commonwealth Office Report (2011, London). Available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/cary-report-on-release-of-the-colonial-administration-files [Accessed 18 April 2020].

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