The past does not pass: it survives in the archives. You still need to have access to it.
A few weeks ago, France relaxed its terms of consultation of archives on the Algerian war. A decree published at the end of August authorizes the reading and study of documents involving minors, normally subject to a century of classification. The age of majority was set at 21 in France until 1974. Conscripts were mobilized at 20 in mainland France.
The war of independence (1954-1962) left half a million dead, among civilians and soldiers, especially on the Algerian side. The memory of this tragedy is found in a repository of the Overseas National Archives in Aix-en-Provence, along with miles of other documents on the former colonies of the Imperial Republic. The past does not pass: it survives in the archives.
Paris had already opened, around fifteen years ahead of the legal deadline, its legal files relating to the years 1954-1966. The recent declassifications stem in part from historian Benjamin Stora’s 2021 report, Memorial questions relating to colonization and the Algerian war. Its final recommendations concern archival documents, but also tombs, monuments, days of commemoration and even literary works.
This partial opening is not enough for the old colony. Algeria is demanding the full restitution of the originals of the archives that it considers looted by the colonizers. The bone of contention over memory, politics and diplomacy has persisted for decades.
This developing story is a reminder of the extent to which certain war archives from the Arab world, and so to speak “exiled” in Europe, pose challenges of possession, conservation and dissemination. Two French researchers who participated last week in the Studying War conference, organized at UQAM, presented another illuminating case, that of the files of Ahmad Muhammad Nu’mân (1909-1996), prime minister of the Arab Republic of Yemen in 1965, leader of the modernization movement in Yemen, very critical of the interference of the Egyptian army in his country.
Since 2009, his personal and professional archives have been kept at the Institute for Research and Studies on the Arab and Muslim Worlds, which brings together the University of Aix-Marseille and the National Center for Scientific Research. The collection covers the active life of the committed intellectual from the 1930s to the end of the 20th century.e century. It brings together speeches, memoirs, diaries, approximately 90,000 pages in total. The documents accompanied Ahmad M. Nu’mân after his release from prison in 1967 and his exile in Lebanon and then in Switzerland, where he died. IREMAM agreed to receive them, protect them, classify them and digitize them to facilitate access.
Researcher Juliette Honvault, a specialist in Yemen, is at the origin of this conservation. “I found these archives in Geneva and, ultimately, they were deposited in our laboratory in Aix-en-Provence by their beneficiaries,” she explained at the conference. Their presence in France reflects the difficulty of descendants in preserving them, a job which is expensive. This presence also establishes a process of autonomy of these papers which does not date from a deposit in Aix-en-Provence, but whose history and sources I specifically sought to understand. »
This is not a case similar to that of the Algerian archives which were pillaged, from the point of view of the former colony. The personal and professional files of the Yemeni leader were thus saved from destruction or confiscation. They could have disappeared in the Lebanese war which began after the death of Ahmad M. Nu’mân. The war in Yemen, which has lasted for almost a decade, could also have been fatal for them.
Vanessa Guéno, head of the IREMAM laboratory, plays the role of a sort of link of trust for the holders and beneficiaries of Yemeni documents in exile, themselves expatriates. “But how do we ultimately proceed to process and preserve these foreign funds, make them accessible according to French or European legal frameworks, while respecting ethical principles with regard to document holders? » she asked, explaining that, since the Arab Spring, languages have been loosened, funds have reappeared, the holders of memory documents have come out of the shadows.
She even explained that the term “archif” had recently been used in Arabic. “A large number of archives that were previously underground or hidden are re-emerging in the light of revolts and forced displacement of populations,” she added. Documentary funds can be used to rewrite history or to write the history of tomorrow or the history of the present. They represent a renewed interest both by the holders wanting to make these traces of memory accessible and by the actors of the revolts who take care to archive and connect videos, images, music. »
Director Vanessa Guéno is campaigning for asylum status for other foreign funds which could find refuge in France. She did not mention the current case of the war between Hamas and Israel, but the shadow of this conflict as well as that of the war in Ukraine weighed on the conference, which brought together around forty national and international specialists.
“We are always afraid of seeing funds go away,” said the head of the Institute. The idea, for me, would be to ethically safeguard these documents, to change policies, to imagine an asylum status for these archival funds and to be able to hand them over one day or another to these countries which will have found archiving institutions that can accommodate them. […] If today the funds and archivists of Algeria ask for the return of funds from France, it will be exactly the same for the Syrian funds which come to ask us for asylum and our help in France. »