Introduction

Abstract

Archives -- collections of paper, books, and other substrates of information (some might say “memory”) and the institutions that house and manage these objects -- are subjects of a renewed and vital current critical historical interest. Archives, broadly conceived, have been used for the writing of history since historical writing began, and archival materials and institutions are an integral part of the making not just of history but of the modern historical profession as well. The historian’s relationship with the archive has been long and varied and described in a broad range of terms, as being as unproblematic as “bread and butter” (Giles 1996) or as driven by erotic, fetishistic desire (Smith 1998). It is fitting that historians should turn their scholarly attentions to these depositories that have been the object, if not the subject, of so much historical work