The New History and Private Documents in The Mercosur Countries
Alicia CASAS de BARRAN
Universidad de la Republica, Uruguay
In 1751 Voltaire published in Berlin The century of Louis XIV. Although he intended to write a history of civilization, diplomatic and military happenings occupied an essential place; the title by itself expressed the identification between History and a great political and public man, to the extent that the chapter dedicated to the private life referred to “intimacies” of the King. The primary sources that he used to write this book were obtained from the French state and the public memories of the courtisans.
In 1976, the Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg published The cheese and the worms , a tale about the life and ideas of a Friulian miller of the 16th century called Menocchio. The primary source of Ginzburg was the process that the Inquisition inflicted on Menocchio because of his concept on the world that was considered heretical. The thesis of the Italian historian states that this common man had read belligerently the texts of learned culture and built a materialist cosmology, wiser than that produced at that time by the high culture.
In synthesis, while Voltaire converted the King in protagonist and almost the creator of his time, 225 years later Ginzburg turned the common man in protagonist of himself. In the documentary level, these had passed from public offices to the secret processes of the religious courts of justice having as subjects the common people without the outstanding qualities that historic tradition demanded of men to be considered worthy of taking into account by the historian.
The incorporation of private papers of common men to the historic sources is linked to a deep transformation of the discipline.
In the first place, at the beginning of the last century and particularly in the three last decades, history has become one of the human sciences most devouring of the new subjects, to the degree that there is no activity of man escaping its questions. To the traditional histories of political and military life, there have first been added those of economy, society and culture, and more recently, those of mentalities, private life, women and of all sectors that had previously been excluded. This widening of the field of interest of the investigator has naturally gone hand in hand with the abandonment of eurocentrism and the consideration of other cultures besides the European.
This truly bulimic history that studies subjects ranging from the different concepts of the body and the sickness to the birth of modern forms of recreation and sports, from sexuality to the personal forms of religion, has turned into source of information every and each human trace, from the traditional repositories that contained the resolutions of the states, to the menus in the restaurants that now serve as basis for a history of feeding.
In the second place, the democratization of political forms and society, particularly in the western hemisphere, has evidenced the protagonism of the popular sectors in the making of history.
The same way as the French incarnated the totalizing eagerness of the new history, the Anglo-Saxon, especially the British, incarnated from 1970 onwards, the study of these new actors of history-making, suggestively called those from “below”. The history of the social sectors never considered before, is that studying the life and problems of the common soldier in the battle of Waterloo, trying to understand the result of the war by this new focus as well as by the decisions of the vanquished general Napoleon and the winner, the Duke of Wellington. This type of history prefers to focus the real life of men of flesh and blood that make up the subordinate classes. It does not believe that their history can be abridged in the mere history of the working class, since in this instance, the sindicate´s history is that of the sindicate leaders and their ideas, more than that of those men “below”.
Again, this new side of history stresses the interest of the social scientist in non traditional sources. Thus, the memories and personal diaries of the simple soldiers are more significant than the official reports of the battles.
In the third place, the recent forms of making history are questioning the old macrosocial focuses that insisted in the protagonic role of the state, the nation or the class. Instead, the so called microhistory of the Italians, for example, pretends, by reducing the scale of observation, to study the real men who are after all the protagonists of the historical changes.
Behind these methodological options, there are different ways to interpret the social forces dominating in a culture. Whereas previously the concept that the individual was little more than a human being determined by the economic, social and mental structures dominated, now historians tend to think that real men never are passive receptacles of the macro powers. Thus, history of real men, such as the Friulian miller Menocchio mentioned at the beginning, reveals how historical subjects use strategies, and sometimes tricks to mock the powers, live their own lives and reinterpret belligerently the mandates of the structures.
Also then, by this third way, the requirements of the investigator have been increased and so the universe of his sources now has to include the archives and personal documentation of “ordinary” men.
The traditional history was based on public sources, most of them belonging to the state, that when using private archives, always assimilated them to archives of political, social or cultural notabilities. Now these new requirements have been added, that value or require the archives and documents of men that are not particularly outstanding, sin figuracion, precisely those that are the anonymous protagonists of the society.
In Spanish America, this change in the “object” of History is also seen, as well as the claim of the investigators for heuristic sources different from traditional ones.
Situated in this new scenery, we propose to analyze the different conditions in which the archives and private document collections are found in two of the countries that constitute the Common Market of the South.
In Argentina, we shall review the Archivo General de la Provincia de Santa Fe and the Archivo General de la Nación and the strategies used to obtain this material. In Uruguay we shall check the standards that adjust the “private” documents and the repositories that keep them. The information used in this paper was obtained during the months of May and June 2001.
Alicia CASAS de BARRAN
Mrs. Alicia Casas de Barrán studied at the “Universidad de la República Uruguay” and graduated as Archivist and Librarian. At present, she teaches: “Records Management” and “Management of Archives” for the Career of Archivist in the above-mentioned university.
She was a Fulbright Fellow (1993) researching at the National Archives of Washington, U.S.A. Supported by the British Embassy, she has done research at the Public Record Office (London, Great Britain).
Mrs. Casas de Barrán has published various essays in the field of archival science especially related to the professional development and the new technologies of information and communication and its relation to the management of documents and archives.
She is Director of the Project of Research “Incorporation of new technologies in the education of the Science of Information”. She is President of the “Commission for Selection of Documents” of the Universidad de la República and is responsible for the Unit of Information of the Rectorado.
Mrs. Casas de Barrán has given conferences and courses at the universities of Argentina and Brazil. She has also represented Uruguay in various seminars and congresses in countries of MERCOSUR, Peru and Spain.
For different periods, from 1995 to the present, she has been in charge of the “Despacho de la Dirección de la Escuela Universitaria de Bibliotecología y Ciencias Afines”, and presently she is a member of the “Asamblea General del Claustro de Universidad”.