While the examination of European imperial expansion has long been a focal point of historical inquiry, it is only two decades that scholars have begun to systematically question how knowledge production imbricated the vectors of colonialism and to rethink bureaucracy as an instrument of governance. When one looks at archives as subjects, anthropologist Laura Stoler has argued, archives can be more fruitfully conceptualized as a knowledge field where regimes of credibility are constructed. On the one hand, studies that view archives as agents endowed with epistemic force have gained much traction: a consensus among historians of empire and colonialism seems to be emerging around the notion of archives as loci of scribal power. On the other, recent studies have shown that archives are also sites of nescience or unknowing: empires, past and present, were often built on ignorance as much as on knowledge.

This scholarly trend, commonly known as “the archival turn,” thus leaves historians of imperial expansion and colonialism with a conceptual impasse. Once we have established that starting from the sixteenth century state formations made substantial investments in the production of knowledge resulting in new archival regimes, how can we explain that this knowledge was often not put to governmental service, was never exploited, or was simply ignored? In other words, is there a way for historians to explain the accumulation of documents in the archives beyond the “knowledge = power” equation? This conceptual impasse invites us to pursue further our engagement with the archival turn and at the same time encourages us to move beyond conventional approaches to the preservation of records.

This conference aims at examining how archives have grown along with imperial expansion from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century. It invites proposals that engage with the history of empires, knowledge production, record keeping, and governance across different geographies. We especially encourage papers on documentary cultures across Eurasia, including contributions from scholars specializing in the history of Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia, East, South, and Southeast Asia. The goal is to historicize archival impulses globally by linking practices of record-keeping with the history of books and readership, scholarship, and education across Eurasian imperial formations. Looking at processes of knowledge production and circulation linked to colonial conquests from the early modern era through the nineteenth century, we aim at dissecting the multifaceted contexts and dynamics that have historically shaped archives. This exploration will consider the evolution of these processes over time and their intricate entanglements with concepts of power, governance, and authority. Furthermore, we will interrogate how archival transformations have mirrored and influenced local and global political realignments.

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