The Allure of the Archives (The Lewis Walpole Series in Eighteenth-Century Culture and History) Hardcover – September 24, 2013

For historians, the archives are definitely alluring. And poetic.The ritualistic process of signing in,filling out the call slip,patiently and reverently waiting,the burgeoning excitement as the archive box nears,the sheer thrill of opening itand viewing the aged and browned leaves of papercovered in ancient scrawls of ink,reading the personal communications of people long dead,holding a letter signed by a president or other personfrom the history books and the Hollywood movies,the reading of thoughts,the lines of reasoning,the pleas of time or feeling or rationality,the adrenaline-brain rush of a discoveryor connectionof significance to your research,your theory,your writing.[The bad attempt at poetry is mine, not Farge's.]It is alluring. At points Arlette Farge's language, ably translated by Thomas Scott-Railton, aspires to the heights of poetry.This 1989 French work is considered a classic. Today it is a bit dated, but not much. This is no guidebook or how-to for archival research, but a poetic and philosophic paean to archives and their usage. There are definitely some things to think about. Farge intersperses her vignettes on visiting and working in the archives with vignettes of her researches and findings into pre-1789 police files in Paris. She shows how to read the sources to divine and define the lives of ordinary Frenchmen of the ancien regime. All of this is neat enough and interesting enough, as well as short enough, to keep the reader's opinion.Of course, there is the strange habit of French historians (plus most historians of Europe, European or American, especially those of a Marxist or progressive bent, i.e., most of them) to absolutely love the French Revolution and think it was the greatest think since sliced bread. (The American Revolution and the Glorious Revolution are the best, in my humble Whiggish-Tory opinion.) Thus, a strange interlude (pp. 98-101) about a historical dispute from the 1980s on whether the War in the Vendée was, in the words of Reynald Secher, a genocide. Well, good Marxist and progressive French historians could never besmirch the good names of France or THE Revolution with the epithet of the ever so German-sounding "genocide." Basically (look up " War in the Vendée" on Wikipedia), the French Revolutionary government warred on, killed, and massacred hundreds of thousands of rebels and civilians in the Vendée region of France. Why? Because the people of the Vendée happened to think the king was better than the Revolution's tyranny and that Catholicism was better than the gussied up atheism of the Revolution's Cult of Reason. Farge might be right to conclude that the War in the Vendée wasn't a genocide, per se, but she proceeds to try and justify the rampant, injudicious, and downright evil killings because, well, the events in the Vendée region "traumatized the members of the revolutionary government." Ooh, the poor, sad, petty dictators of the revolutionary government, so down and traumatized by people who don't agree with them. Boo hoo little revolutionary babies. Downright tripe.But what is so sad about this short digression, aside from the French Revolution worship of the academic left, is that it comes during a discussion on how the archives can't really provide a definitive truth. Farge warns historians (pp. 97-98) not "to press events from the past into the service of ideology" and praises the relativistic idea of "'plural' truths (and not 'the' truth)." Farge then tries to provide the French Revolution as a whole, and this War in the Vendée in particular, with a definitive truth. Farge contrasts Auschwitz, which she calls a "negative foundational event," with the French Revolution, calling the latter "also a foundational event, although a positive one, and its presence is felt up to the present day." Maybe so (though with Burke, I'd call the French Revolution a net negative), but this comes right after she warns against truth finding.Pot, meet kettle.Oh, and the worship of Foucault. Eh.But, all-in-all, a book good for an upper-level historiography class and one aching with love for archival research and the art of history.

In 1989 the French historian Arlette Farge published an elegantly-written small book on judicial archives and the ways in which historians can engage the documents those archives contain. The book was titled _Le Goût de l'archive_ , a play on words implying both the taste of & a taste for the archive. Insightful, witty, and erudite, the work became a classic among readers in France, and was translated into Spanish and into Portuguese. Farge vividly evokes the vision of life in ancien régime Paris that emerges from police records and the archives of the Bastille, while warning of the traps that archives have laid for us, the illusions of immediacy that can lead us astray. In short, astringent chapters she reflects on the difficulty of confronting "Traces by the Thousands," and the lure of finding "Captured Speech."For years no publisher took on the task of translating Farge's (nearly poetic) prose into English. So aficionados of the book who wanted to teach it had to try to coax students into reading it in the original French, or attempt to convey Farge's brilliance in paraphrase. But this September the book appeared from Yale University Press, under the title THE ALLURE OF THE ARCHIVES, translated by Thomas Scott-Railton, with a forward by the distinguished historian Natalie Zemon Davis. [Full disclosure: the translator and I are kin.] The early reviews (including one in the Chronicle of Higher Education) have been admiring.The book can be read for pure pleasure, but is also appropriate for use in courses on methodology, on legal history, on historical writing. . . or any course exploring what it is that historians do and how they do it. (I am assigning selections, for example, in a seminar on law and slavery, by way of preparing law students to use raw testimony from U.S. court records in developing their own analyses.)

I'm an insider. For the past year I have been doing archival research and Farge's experience, although not exactly like mine (the library staff I work with is kinder, gentler, way more fun), was a bit like reading my days told with insight and grace. If you wonder what archival research is like and why it is so alluring to some and intimidating to others, pick up this book. If you want to know why we shouldn't "just digitize everything," read this book. If you wonder how historians -- or at least those who use archives -- get from raw primary sources to telling the story historically -- read this book. If you're not just curious about the past, but also want to hold it your hands, get thee to your nearest archive. Where I disagree with Farge: it's okay to not use a pencil to take notes. A quiet laptop works fine.

Provides first hand accounts of what it is like working with an archive

Parts of this are excellent, but I wanted more flesh and blood encounters. Too academic.

A charming book of essays, surprisingly lyrical, about 18th-19th-century police archives from Paris and the social experience of working with them now.

Product as described.

First rate.

If you have never researched at archives, you will start doing it after reading this book..

I liked the way archival information is presented in an educational and informative style.

This book is a gem: a must read for those who are either new to archival research or have done much of it and have grappled with its loneliness and complexity.