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A Nation's Memory

Philippe Chevalier
ONE cannot imagine a more fitting place to house the "Memory of the Nation". The historical quadrilateral formed by the mansions .of the Hotel de Soubisc and the Hotel de Rohan, in the heart of the Marais district In Paris. could only be intended for a prestigious institution; the French National Archives.
The idea goes back to 1194. When fighting Richard the Lion Heart In Frcval in Touruine. Philippe-Auguste not only lost the battle, but also the cart containing the most precious papers in the Kingdom. This created the need to keep them in a sale place from then on. And papyruscs and . parchments started to be stored here and there.
The Archives of the Nation and their present organization were created by the Rcvolu-' Uon: "Every citizen will be.able to ask for all the items contained In all the stores' (Law of 7th Mcssidor, year 11 in the Republican calendar (25th June 1794)).
The definition of an archive is "any document that a person, an organization or an institution creates in the course of its activity" taken literally, this official definition would
amount to storing a Himalaya of paper, so , much of it is eliminated and only that which preserves the memory of the past and enables citizens to trace their roots is kept, for the country, or the man, who suffers from amesia, at the same time loses his identity.
tn 1808, Napoleon set up the National Archives in the Hotel de Soubise. At the time, researchers there were few and far between. This low rate of use lasted until the Second World War. Since then there has been a real boom. In I960, there were 22.588 readers. Today, there are 140,000 of them
The spectacular growth in
the number of readers corresponds to an ever stronger taste for history", a curator explains. "In our fully changing industrialized society, our contemporaries increasingly aspire to delving Into their origins. They are nostaligic about bygone times.
Every day three tonnes of paper and cardboard are given out to readers, and this is only for the National Archives for, together with these, the Archives of France include: the Contemporary A rec hives Centre at present being set up in Fontainebleau to the"south of Paris, the Overseas Archives Centre in Aix-en-Provence, the World of Work Archives Centre
being set up in Roubaix in the North, the micro-film store in Espcyran in the Gard department in the south of Francell, 500 kilometres of film), and the archives of departments and communes scattered all over France.
In spite of very severe selection, the documents kept at the National and Departmental Archives are increasing at tremendous speed. In 1950, they took up 740 kilometres of shelving. Today, they use up more than 2,500.
At that rate, the institution, which was no longer suited, was becoming paralyzed. The structures needed to» be reviewed.