The “Project to Inventory the Archives of the Ministry for Colonial Affairs” is aimed at recovering the historic memory of the Portuguese overseas by locating and describing records now split amongst various bodies
http://arquivos.ministerioultramar.holos.pt/

Presentation
José Mattoso

European colonialism and the responses it inspired in the second half of the 20^th century have shaped our understanding of the world today. Portugal played a critical role in this process. In seeking to define and explain this role it is essential to look back to the documents directly related to this period: the records of the Ministério do Ultramar (MU) [Ministry for Colonial Affairs]. Once the period in which consultation of these records might have heightened obvious tensions had passed, the issue of making them accessible to the public became the goal.

The “Project to Inventory the Records of the Former Ministry for Colonial Affairs” was funded by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (FCG) and carried out initially from January 2007 until March 2008 on the basis of two Cooperation Agreements, one signed with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on 25^th January 2007, and the other with the Ministry of Finance, signed on 24th July 2007. These agreements sought to recover the historic memory of the Portuguese overseas presence by recreating their intellectual order using finding aids based on national and international archival standards.

In the first phase, the project focused on records of the Ministry for Colonial Affairs currently held in the Instituto Português de Apoio ao Desenvolvimento (IPAD) [Portuguese Development Support Agency], the Arquivo Histórico Diplomático (AHD) [Historical Archives of the Diplomatic Service], the Direcção-Geral do Tesouro e Finanças (DGTF) [Treasury and Finance Department] and the Direcção-Geral da Administração e do Emprego Público (DGAEP) [Department of Administration and Public Employment].

Once the inventory of the records held by these four agencies was completed, the project leaders believed the data base that had been developed could be made available for public consultation. It can be accessed via the portal Inventário dos Arquivos do Ministério do Ultramar thanks to an agreement between the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the Direcção-Geral de Arquivos (DGARQ) [Department of Archives].

A second phase is planned to inventory the records of the Ministry for Colonial Affairs currently held in the Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino (AHU) [Colonial Archives] resulting from a new cooperation agreement already signed with the Ministry of Science and Technology.

The Ministry for Colonial Affairs, which was extinguished in 1974, had an extremely complex organizational structure. The records resulting from its activities formed an organic whole which should be approached as a single body of information. Since the records were dispersed after 1974 those which were regarded as inactive historical documentation were passed to the Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino while others were handed over to government bodies such as IPAD (Portuguese Development Support Agency) or DGAEP (Department of Administration and Public Employment) that still required them to carry out their business activities. A systematic inventory and recovery of the original classification systems then had to be undertaken in order to reconstitute the entire context in which the documentation was created. Information technology allows this to be done without requiring any change in the physical location of the actual documents.

In addition to the challenges of recovering records dispersed since 1974, and the complex organizational structure of the Ministry for Colonial Affairs, there were also countless changes in structures and functions throughout the course of the ministry’s existence. The project team has sought at all times to respect the classification system used by a particular colonial body responsible for keeping the records in its final stages, to provide the necessary information about changes in the structure and functions of government departments prior to the extinction of the Ministry for Colonial Affairs, and to note any points of archival relevance.

In any case, the different kinds of access offered by information technologies provide multiple options in searching and overcoming those anomalies deriving from the complex variety of contexts in which the Ministry was involved.
(text reproduced with kind permission of the Gulbenkian Foundation)