Owning Memory: How a Caribbean Community Lost Its Archives and Found Its History

120 Pages·2003·2.573 MB·English

by  Jeannette Allis Bastian

OWNING MEMORY
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OWNI(cid:1)NG MEMORY
How a Caribbean Community Lost Its
Archives and Found Its History
JEANNETTE ALLIS BASTIAN
ContributionsinLibrarianshipandInformationScience,Number99
RichardJ.Cox,SeriesAdviser
LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData
Bastian,JeannetteAllis.
Owningmemory:howaCaribbeancommunitylostitsarchivesandfounditshistory /
JeannetteAllisBastian.
p. cm.—(Contributionsinlibrarianshipandinformationscience;no99)
Includesbibliographicalreferences(p. )
ISBN0–313–32008–X(pbk. : alk.paper)
1. Archives—VirginIslandsoftheUnitedStates. 2. VirginIslandsoftheUnited
States—Historiography. 3. Memory—Socialaspects—VirginIslandsoftheUnited
States. I. Title. II. Series.
CD3985.V5B37 2003
027.07297(cid:1)22—dc21 2003054609
BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationDataisavailable.
Copyright(cid:2)2003byJeannetteAllisBastian
Allrightsreserved.Noportionofthisbookmaybe
reproduced,byanyprocessortechnique,withoutthe
expresswrittenconsentofthepublisher.
LibraryofCongressCatalogCardNumber:2003054609
ISBN:0–313–32008–X
ISSN:0084–9243
Firstpublishedin2003
LibrariesUnlimited,88PostRoadWest,Westport,CT06881
AMemberoftheGreenwoodPublishingGroup,Inc.
www.lu.com
PrintedintheUnitedStatesofAmerica
Thepaperusedinthisbookcomplieswiththe
PermanentPaperStandardissuedbytheNational
InformationStandardsOrganization(Z39.48–1984).
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
ForIsabel,Madison,andZeke.
Anewgeneration.

CONTENTS
Preface ix
1 A Community of Records 1
2 How the Virgin Islands Lost Its Memory 19
3 Reconstructing Whose Memory? Writing History 35
4 A Community Constructs Its Memory:
Commemorations 53
5 “Go Back and Fetch It”: Owning History 75
Selected Bibliography 91
Index 97

PREFACE
Theconstructionofcommunitymemoryisahotlydebatedissueashistorians,
socialscientists,literarycritics,andothersgrapplewithincreasinglycontested
and reinterpreted pasts. Rarely heard is the voice of the archivist into whose
care the documents of the past are entrusted, even though it is the archives
that contain many of the key pieces to this puzzle. Without historical docu-
mentscancommunitiesbuildreliableanddurablememory?Itwasthisques-
tion plus the strong conviction that archivists needed to define a role for
themselves in the memory debates that fueled my interest in pursuing this
studyofthecommunitymemoryofapostcolonialsociety,theUnitedStates
Virgin Islands. My concern was driven by the recognition that behind the
theoreticaldiscussionsliesthepracticalrealitythatownershipofhistory(and
therefore memory) is often obtained through hard-fought battles with un-
certainoutcomesforsmalldisenfranchisedsocietiesorgroups.
In the mid-1970s I relocated to the U.S. Virgin Islands where I began
working as a librarian in the territorial library system. We regularly received
requestsformaterialthatwedidnotown—thehistoricalrecordsoftheVirgin
Islands. The bulk of these records were in the Danish National Archives in
CopenhagenorintheU.S.NationalArchivesinWashington,D.C.Themost
thatthelibrarycouldprovide,withthefewmicrofilmcopiesofcrucialrecords
that had been purchased from these national institutions, was inadequate to
answer all but superficial questions dealing with family history. We certainly
couldnotsatisfytheinquiriesofresearchersandhistorianspursuingthe pri-
mary sources of Virgin Islands history. Fifteen years later, when I was the
directoroftheTerritorialLibraryandwasattemptingtoestablishanarchive,
IagainconfrontedthisholeinVirginIslandshistory,thistimeasanarchivist,