A wise man once said, “He who refuses the lessons of the past will be condemned to live the same disasters.” Pinpoint areas of strife on a world map, compare them with the history books and you will see that most places have been hotspots for millennia, the Middle East and the Balkans being the most obvious examples. In order to learn from the past though, one needs to have access to primary sources of information and, given the ephemeral nature of oral communication, written documents contain the most reliable accounts of any given epoch. Hence the importance of our National Archives, which is home to most of the country’s official correspondence since the time it was still a French colony…

Although it was officially institutionalized by the British in 1815, the origins of the National Archives date from as early as 1721. For a country as young as Mauritius, the Archives have been around for ever. Since 1995, the institution has been part of the ministry of Arts and Culture and has been functioning according to a specific piece of legislation, the National Archives Act February 2000.

Official memory

In addition to being the official memory of the nation, the Archives are expected to fulfill myriad tasks. It holds the records of French colonization of the island (1721–1810), which were passed on to the British as part of the Treaty of Paris of 1814. These records were inscribed in the Memory of the World Register of UNESCO in August 2000. It contains the archives of various departments of the British administration since 1810 and notary deeds that span as far back as 1724. A copy of every map, plan and chart of Mauritius from 1502 onwards can be found in its bowels, as can a specimen of every issue of Mauritian postage stamps, currency notes and coins. The Archives’ special collection boasts old lithographs, portraits, photographs, seals and private papers and one copy of every newspaper. The list goes on and on and on and on…

Such a vast collection of information would soon become unmanageable without a team of competent archivists to control it. The National Archives employs, hold your breath, a chief archivist, a deputy chief archivist, a chief archives officer, a principal archives officer, three senior archives officers, five archives officers, two reprographic operators and four binders. It’s good to know that these precious documents are well surrounded.

Reconstruct people’s life

As the acting assistant director of the National Archives, Roland Chung Sam Wan, explains, it’s not just the archives themselves that are valuable, but also the role they play in enabling historians to reconstruct the ways in which people once lived. For example, the notary deeds contain the records of sales and purchases of land. From these, a historian would be able to ascertain which community was buying the most land, whether a given community preferred rural or urban areas and the price of land at the time. “This information allows historians to write the sociological history of the country.” According to him, the pillage of the Baghdad archives after the American invasion of Iraq, also known as the cradle of civilization, is an “assassination”.

Located in what was once a textile factory in Coromandel, the National Archives is a place one should go in search of not only of history, but of tranquility too. The contrast between the peaceful reading rooms and ugliness of the industrial area where the Archives is situated accentuates the visitor’s impression that he’s in a time capsule. Just spend an hour leafing through the pages of the Treaty of Paris with its wonderful old script and you’ll see just how very evocative and informative the Archives experience is…