Displaced archives

摘要

Under the shadow of the recent Windrush scandal in the UK concerning the destruction of archival material, never has the political and personal value of archives been more in the public eye. This book sheds light on one of the more long-standing issues that afflicts the archival profession. It draws upon the very current struggles that are ongoing between various countries over custody of and access to disputed historical resources. Few of the essays refer back to the earlier twentieth-century literature when this issue was framed, in 1942, as 'changes of sovereignty' by Ernst Posner, who in turn drew on sources from the 1920s and 1930s. This does not appear to be through a lack of an appreciation of the long-standing nature of the issues but because of the more recent occurrences of these issues in the latter half of the twentieth century. One of the most telling aspects is the exploration of the political influences that impacted on the 1983 Vienna Convention on Succession of States in Respect of State Property, Archives and Debts. It was hamstrung by the political considerations of the Cold War and any attempts to resolve these issues amicably failed. The Convention has never been revisited and the lack of political will has never been consistently challenged by those within the profession.