ABSTRACT
Something that is rarely made public is that after the independence of the colonies, archives formed during the colonial period were also the subject of negotiations. Former colonies wanted them, former colonisers would not let them go. In old documents and on old maps, colonial administrators had recorded what they could get their hands on in conquered regions, which is to say, everything that grew there and not in Europe, and therefore yielded money in Europe: spices, coffee, tea, rubber, and so on. Later, this was also extended to what was in the soil there and was lacking in Europe: minerals, oil, and the like. Former colonies shielded the exact location of deposits and fertile land from outsiders, and treated the rulers of the new countries as ‘outsiders’ as well. Nor did they want outsiders to see military and administrative reports on how they had imposed their will on the colonies and the people who lived there. And yet, apart from oral histories, archives were often the only witnesses to events.
