ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with some of the different professional groups which have emerged in nineteenth century, with the development of a national network the International Council on Archives (ICA). It then deal with international archival congresses, professional journals and similar international publications (and especially UNESCO's RAMP programme), and with different facets of regional cooperation throughout the world. It discusses some of the most enduring or significant of the twentieth century, and particularly of its two final decades. For only the second time in its post-Second World War history, the ICA Congress moved beyond Europe in 1992, to Montreal. Of greater significance in terms of an international network was the hosting of the Thirteenth Congress in 1996 by China. From the early days of the ICA, and increasingly during the 1990s and early 2000s, different types of international networking activity developed to provide more flexible responses to global concerns.
