Week 8- Zoho Writer

Records in history

Human societies from ancient times had an instinct for the preservation of records and memories. Record keeping evolved out of the necessity to prove and support property ownership and commercial activity, but later they started to serve legal, administrative and military purposes. Powerful rulers created archives as monuments of their greatness and also to exercise control over their subjects. After an occupation, the captured archives were incorporated or in some cases destroyed to establish control over the defeated.

Archives perform different functions according to the society in which they exist. In less democratic societies the archives may be made to serve the narrow political, legal and economic objectives of the ruling elite. But in a democratic society, the archives are meant to provide citizens accountability and empower them against corruption by officials. To perform this role the archives must ideally remain independent of political interference and the power to decide what records constitute the archives should be left to the institution and the chief archivist. But most often that is not the case.

Many democratic governments are known for their attempts to suppress crucial information from reaching the public. The US government officials in the 1980’s continually denied accusations about their secret meddling in Iran and Nicaragua. But the details were brought out in the open with the help of the volumes of top-secret government documents.

The records remain as monuments for a government’s actions, and in a democratic society

they are usually used by successive governments for their advantage. In South Africa, secrecy became a justification to prevent the activities of the intelligence services during the apartheid years. They also routinely destroyed public records, and in some cases even the documentation of records, in order to keep their processes secret .The massive destruction of financial records at the US Internal Revenue Service in the 1990’s and the Heiner case in Australia, which involved the destruction of documents gathered by a retired magistrate to cover up the inappropriate and embarrassing details are other examples where governments have meddled with the archival records to hinder justice.

There are some instances in history when records were destroyed to save lives. During the German occupation of Netherlands, civil registration records became records of repression. To prevent the Nazis from using them for identifying people to be sent to concentration camps or into forced labour, supporters of Dutch resistance raided the Amsterdam Central Register of Population, and set fire to all records. During the Nazi regime, it was declared that anyone with four Jewish grandparents was a Jew. So in certain cases, records were faked to prove that one of the grandparent of a person was non Jewish!The records are powerful tools, which can become saviours or tormentors according to the objective of the person who handles them. The records kept by the Nazis to control people and make them accountable are now used for their restitution and reparation. The records kept by the government institutions and church missions in Australia are used to reunite many Aboriginal people with their families.

Instances of records being made illegally to serve the ulterior motives of the powerful are also not uncommon. Pope gives examples of records for phantom roads, schools, and even whole regiments in different countries. Corruption is prevalent in almost all countries, irrespective of they being rich or poor. The archives, which can help inhibit corruption, can also be made to incite it through the creation of wrong records. According to the Auditor General of Commonwealth Australia, ‘poor record keeping attracts corruption like flies to a carcass’.

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