The National Archives of Kenya (full name-The Kenya National Archives and Documentation Service-The Kenya National Archives and Documentation Service, hereinafter-KHA) is located in the center of Nairobi and occupies a spacious building that previously belonged to one of the Indian banks. The KPA was established in 1965 on the basis of the colonial Kenyan archive service, which had existed since 1956. As T. K. Ombati, deputy director of the KPA in the 1990s, notes, by the time of Kenya's independence in 1963, this service was nothing more than a" document warehouse " [Ombati, 1976, p.34]. Archival materials on Kenya's colonial history were concentrated in the State Archives in London, where T. K. Ombati writes that all of these materials were "legally or illegally" removed from Kenya. In 1963, they were held mainly in 17 funds of the British Colonial Office, two of which were classified. 15 open funds contained a total of 934 volumes of documents related to the period 1900-1962 and organized according to chronological and thematic principles [Ombati, 1976, p. 34]. They were also kept in the National Archives of Ireland (Belfast) and Scotland (Edinburgh), the archives of the Confederation of Missionary Societies of England and Ireland, the British Library of Political Science (London), other archives, research centers and universities in the UK, some European countries and the United States.
The KPA was created with the financial and technical support of the West, primarily the United Kingdom and the United States. Many Kenyan historians and archivists currently working in the KPA and other archives, libraries and museums in Kenya, were educated abroad, including in the USSR (T. K. Ombati, K. Mosonik Arap Korir, who since the end of 1990-He is the chairman of the Presidential Advisory Council for State Archives and Museums, and others). The structure of the KSA, methods and techniques for completing and storing its collections were largely influenced by foreign experience in the field of archival science.
Initially, the KPA was subordinate to the Office of the Vice-President and the Ministry of the Interior of Kenya, and since the mid-1990s to the Joint Ministry of the Interior and National Heritage. Research work at the archive is coordinated by the Presidential Advisory Council for State Archives and Museums of Kenya.
Access to the KPA is open to all comers, both Kenyan citizens and foreigners. According to the "Rules for KPA users", to access the archive, you must submit an application addressed to the chief archivist (director), provide recommendations and pay an entrance fee. Kenyans, as well as citizens of other countries who have a residence permit in Kenya, are eligible for permanent passes. Foreigners arriving in Kenya on a three-month tourist visa can only receive one-time or short-term passes. The archive provides paid services for everyone: copying and microfilming documents, thematic search for documents in the electronic catalog, guided tours of the exhibition of archival materials and the sculpture and painting gallery. Such excursions, as well as viewing movies and videos, are free of charge for school,college and university students [Rules and Regulations..., 1981].
The main tasks of the KPA, according to the decree of the Kenyan Parliament on its establishment, are: acquisition and storage of all valuable documents; ensuring access to them for researchers and those who need information; return to Kenya of all valuable documents.-
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assistance to civil servants in improving office work in the management system [An Invitation..., 1997, p 4].
In 1997, the KPA's holdings totaled over 1.5 million items, including originals and copies of various documents, both printed and handwritten (official publications of the British colonial authorities, the Government, Parliament, local authorities, political parties, trade unions, and public organizations in Kenya), personal correspondence, newspaper clippings and photographs, books,etc. brochures, pamphlets, as well as documentary films and videos. The printed and handwritten documents of the KPA include, among others, such topics as"government, finance, education, agriculture, law, sociology, history, religion, anthropology, economics and state planning". Film and video materials focus on "the struggle for independence, political development, the role of parliament, agriculture, urban growth, customs and traditions, and the environment" [An Invitation..., 1997, p. 2]. Film and video materials are mainly informational, educational, and propaganda in nature.
Most of the KPA's materials on the history of Kenya date back to the colonial period. Conventionally, they can be divided into several thematic groups: the British Imperial East Africa Company (1887-1895) ; the Colonial Administration of Kenya (1895-1963), its structure, activities, relations with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (before 1905) and the Ministry of Colonies of Great Britain (1905 - 1963); Punitive expeditions against the African population during the war. colonial subordination of Kenya (late 19th - early 20th centuries); Colonial troops (Royal African Rifles) and police; Legislative Council, legislative acts; Legal system; Indigenous politics, local governments; Land question and land policy; First African Political organizations; Armed anti-colonial uprising May May (1952-1956); The East African Royal Commission (1953-1955); the colonial reforms of the 1950s and early 1960s; the London Constitutional Conferences on Kenya (early 1960s); and the Constituency and Provincial Boundary Commissions. The Somali problem; Colonial administrators, politicians in Kenya and Great Britain. Their personal archives.
According to the director of the KPA M. Musembi, the archive materials most fully represent "the administrative history of colonial Kenya, i.e. the activities of the British administration" [Musembi, 1998, p. 23]. Materials on the actual" African history " of the colonial period are still less, although among the new arrivals to the archive in the 1980s and 1990s, their number has increased markedly.
The KPA systematically systematizes materials on the history of the colonial period, and begins compiling a catalog of documents of the modern (since 1963) period. A Guide to the Materials of the National Archives of Kenya is being published, of which only two parts were available to me, and it is being distributed in other countries as well. Special thematic publications on funds are issued, mainly intended for work directly in the archive [List of Special Guides, 1998].
Computerization of the KPA, first of all its catalogues, began. However, the electronic system for searching and storing documents has not yet been sufficiently developed; in the 1990s, the old storage system was in operation at the same time, old catalogs and codes, typewritten inventories were used.
The National Archives of Kenya is constantly updated with new historical documents. Based on my personal experience in the KPA, I would like to single out among them: first, previously unknown or inaccessible to researchers materials on the history of May May - one of the most significant anti-colonial armed actions in the British possessions of Tropical Africa after the Second World War. For many years in the history of May May, "white spots" remained, an objective assessment of this uprising was virtually impossible. Many important documents about May May were classified and placed in one of the closed collections of the British Ministry of Colonies of the London State Archives. In the mid-1980s, the ban on access to these documents expired, and in accordance with the Anglo-Kenyan agreement, most of them were returned to Kenya. And secondly, private collections of manuscripts, documents, books and other materials transferred to the archive by their owners or heirs of the owners, as well as some foreign archives and libraries.
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Among the materials about May May in the KPA, now open to the public, the declassified documents of the Kenyan Military Council, which coordinated all actions to suppress the uprising, the unpublished memoirs of E. Mutonya, the first chairman of the "Central Committee of the May May movement", who organized the uprising, the so-called testament and other documents of D. Kimati, one of the main leaders of the the rebel "Army of Land and Freedom", sentenced to death by a British colonial court. "Kimati's Testament" is his letter to the priest of the Catholic mission in Nyeri, O. Marino, which, as well as his appeal to the Royal Court of Appeal of East Africa and other documents about Kimati, is on display at the permanent exhibition of documents in the archive building [Mutonyi].
Documents of the Military Council (956 items of storage) are in the joint fund of the Military Council of Kenya (1953-1960) and the Council of Ministers of Kenya (1954-1963) [A Guide to the Private ..., 1987]. These are the minutes of many hundreds of its meetings, its decisions and recommendations to the British Joint Security Forces Command (which consisted of units of the British Army, Intelligence and Counterintelligence, the Royal African Rifles, the White Kenyan Regiment, the Native Police and local self-defense units), the Governor of Kenya and the British Colonial Office.
The Military Council discussed the situation in the uprising zone and in the country as a whole, inter-ethnic relations, the situation in African reserves and concentration camps for members of the May May movement and captured rebels, the tactics and results of the actions of the security forces and the Land and Freedom Army. Here is the agenda of the 78th meeting of the Military Council, held on January 18, 1954.:
"Intelligence Report: Kenyan Intelligence Committee memorandum on terrorist activation in (province) Rift Valley; joint Emergency Headquarters memorandum on accommodation of surrendered terrorists; punishments (prisoners) of female terrorists; hunger strike (prisoners) of terrorists; cattle abductions. Tracker team information; progress with the introduction of passes for Kikuyu, embu and Meru. Report of the Minister of African Affairs; school security ... " [KNA. WAR/c / MIN 78 (Minutes 895-909)].
The documents of the Kenyan Military Council are not only one of the main sources for the history of the May May uprising, a kind of chronicle of Kenya during the state of emergency. They also contain important information about the methods of action of the special services of Great Britain in its colonial possessions.
Among the private archives held by the KPA, the richest collection of J. R. R. Tolkien bequeathed to the Government of Kenya stands out. Murumbi, who held high positions in the leadership of the ruling KANU Party and the Government in independent Kenya. Its documentary part (13.6 thousand units of storage) consists of books and publications, including rare manuscripts, documents of the Pan-African movement, international anti-colonial associations and African emigrant organizations in Europe and Asia, anti-colonial organizations and political parties in a number of African countries. A significant part of the collection consists of documents on the political history of colonial and postcolonial Kenya, as well as Murumbi's personal correspondence [A Guide to the Private..., 1987]. The collection of African sculpture and painting, which is another part of the Murumbi collection, formed the basis of the KPA Gallery's exhibition.
The KPA also holds several other private archives and collections. In particular, the documents of the Goan Institute in Mombasa (minutes of its meetings in 1955-1962); more than 300 microfilms, clippings from Kenyan, Tanzanian and Ugandan newspapers (1902-1977) from the archive of the Kenyan newspaper concern "East African Standart"; personal archives of some Europeans who have lived in Kenya for a long time and left their names on the Internet. a trace in its history [A Guide to the Private..., 1987].
Despite the growth of revenues to the KPA, the acquisition of new and replenishment of existing funds is one of the problems that complicate the further development of the archive. The issue of full return of documents exported from Kenya to the UK remains open. According to some sources, they are located not only in the London State Archives, but also in departmental repositories with limited access. There may also be documents of the special branch of the Kenyan police and British military intelligence, which, as is known, were engaged in recruiting agents among Kenyans. Representatives of the African political elite also became targets of recruitment. Even half a century after the May May uprising, such documents are "explosive" when you consider that some of those recruited may have held important positions in the power structures of independent Kenya.
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The future of Kimati's so - called papers is uncertain-the archive of the Earth and Freedom Army created by his order, which was seized by security forces during counterinsurgency operations, taken to London, placed in one of the archives (presumably in the London State Archives)and classified. In a conversation with the author of the article held in KPA, its director, M. Musembi, said that according to the Anglo-Kenyan agreement of 1963, the Kimati papers should be returned to Kenya in 2013. The authorities of independent Kenya have repeatedly insisted on their early return. In 1987, Kenyan historian Maina wa Kinyatta claimed that the Kimati papers were already in the KPA (Kinyatti, 1987, p. XVIII). Officially, this statement was neither denied nor confirmed.
To some extent, a similar situation has developed around the archival legacy of major state and political figures in Kenya-its presidents and vice-presidents, leaders of political parties on a national scale. In many countries of the world, the personal archives of politicians of this rank become the property of the state after their death. In Kenya, as far as I know, in the 1990s this happened only with the personal archive of J. R. R. Tolkien. Murumbi. The KPA is negotiating with the heirs of some prominent Kenyan politicians about the possibility and conditions of transferring their personal archives to the National Archives, but for various reasons, these negotiations do not always lead to the desired results. In the 1990s, the KPA did not yet have sufficient documentary information about the lives and activities of all the "top officials" in Kenya. The archive did not contain, for example, a single foundation of Jomo Kenyatta, the first president of Kenya, the "founding father of the nation", as he is officially called in this country. Documents about Kenyatta are distributed in various KPA collections, and reliable information about Kenyatta's 17-year "European period" can be found in the archives of Great Britain and Russia, but not in the National Archives of Kenya. In the UK, much of the documentary evidence about Kenyatta is held in the London State Archives in the collections of the Ministry of the Colony, the Foreign Office,and the Police. Some of them were published (Kenyatta, 1970). Documentary information about Kenyatta's " Moscow period "(1929; 1932-1933) is contained in the collections of the Comintern and Profintern of the Russian State Archive of Socio - Political History (RGASPI).
The formation of new funds that would concentrate materials on the state and political institutions of independent Kenya, the socio-political, constitutional, economic and social development of the country, its foreign policy, relations with neighboring African states, and the like, is also a rather serious problem for the KPA. The current system of government in post-colonial Kenya limits the capacity of the KPA in its relations with government organizations, which can and should assist the archive in forming new collections and replenishing them with really important materials of scientific and practical interest. Such documents come to the archive quite rarely, more often they settle in the departmental archives of such government structures as the Office of the President, "power" ministries, etc.
As a result, the current period of Kenyan history is represented in the KPA mainly by publications of the Kenyan Government and local authorities, legislative acts, parliamentary reports and other official documents. At the end of the 1990s, the archive had not yet begun to systematize this block of documents.
The development of KPA is constrained by its limited financial resources. The Archive does not have sufficient funds to purchase scientific documents from individuals and organizations in Kenya and abroad. Some funds are replenished mainly through sponsors, donations and gifts. New electronic equipment also comes to the archive, usually free of charge, from the United States, the former metropolis, and other countries.
Despite financial and other difficulties, the National Archives of Kenya is operating quite successfully. In the 1980s, the formation of the KPA was completed: its personnel structure was formed, the formation of funds and their systematization began.
Over the three decades of the KPA's existence, many scientists and teachers, postgraduates and students of universities and colleges in Kenya and other countries have worked in this archive. In the 1960s and 1990s, many serious studies were published in Kenya and abroad, and interesting dissertations were prepared, the authors of which made extensive use of documents and materials stored in the National Archives of Kenya.
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list of literature
Ombati T. K. Organization of the National Archives and development of the history of Kenya (1965-1976). Diploma work, (manuscript) / / University of Peoples ' Friendship named after P. Lumumba, Moscow, 1976.
A Guide to the Private (Local) Archives. War Council and Council of Ministers // KNA (Nairobi). October, 1987.
An Invitation to the Kenya National Archives and Documentation Service // KNA (Nairobi). 1997.
Kenyatta J. Malcom MacDonald and the Colonial Office. Some Documents from the P.R.O. // Canadian Journal of African Studies (Montreal). 1970. N 3.
Kinyatti Maina wa. Kenya s Freedom Struggle. The Dedan Kimathi Papers // KNA (Nairobi). 1987.
List of Special Guides. (1) A Guide to Government Monographs, November, 1984. (2) A Guide to the Private (Local) Archives. RNF. October, 1987. (3) A Guide to Political Organizations in Kenya N.d. (4) Kenya Archives Microfilm Guide. Syrocuse, 1968. Photocopy. (5) Records in the Kenya National Archives Relating to Education. N.d. (6) Agriculture in Kenya. Selected Documents held by the KNA. N.d. (7) A Guide to Records Retrieved from the UK. N.d. (8) Records in the KNA Relating to Religions. N.d. (10) Records in the KNA Relating to Land Tenure in Kenya. N.d. (11) Records Relating to the East African Community. N.d. // KNA (Nairobi). 1998.
Musembi M. A Guide to the Contents of the Kenya National Arhives and Documentation Service. P. 1. // KNA (Nairobi). March 1998.
Mutonyi E. Mau Mau Chairman // KNA (Nairobi). GP, 923, 2 MUT.
Rules and Regulations for Users (Revised 1981) // KNA (Nairobi). 1981.
BOOKS ON ORIENTAL STUDIES,
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Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 and geopolitical problems of modern Russia. Materials of regional scientific research. - Ist. konf. (March 26, 2004, Novosibirsk) / Novosibirsk. region, department of Ros. mor. Collected works, SPST SB RAS; Edited by S. A. Paichadze (scientific editor) and others. Novosibirsk. 133 p.
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Sogyal Rinpoche. The Tibetan Book of Life and Death. Ed. reprint. and add. / Translated from English. Ermoshina A. G. N. Novgorod: DECOM. 478 p. (Age of Aquarius).
Treasures of Buddhism. Collection of materials / Kalm. Friends of Tibet; Ed. and comp. Kookuyeva A. Elista: Dzhangar. 128 s.
Turkological collection. Mater. Mezhdunar. Turkol. conf. " Yaz. and lit. Turkic peoples: history and modernity". Issue 2 / Ed. by Valeev N. M. et al. Elabuga: 288 p.
Turkology on the eve of the XXI century: achievements, state, prospects. Tr. mezhdunar. congr. In 2 vols. Vol. 1 / Ed.: Nigmatullin R. I. (editor-in-chief) and others; / Institute of History, yaz. and lit. АН Респ. Башкортостан. Ufa: Gilem. Khaliullina N. U., Shaikhulov A. G. Turkic languages of the Ural-Volga region in the context of the Altai language community. (Experience lexicosemantic. and ideogr. dictionary). Part 1,2 / East. institute of Economics, humanit. sciences, management and law. Ufa: East. un-t. 224 s; 270 s.
Khamaganova L. D. Begstvo kapitala iz razvitivshikh stran i Rossii [Capital flight from developing countries and Russia]. Irkutsk. 408 pages.
Khodnev A. S. Islam: introduction to the study of social history of the XIX-XX centuries. Textbook / Yaroslav, State Pedagogical Institute. K. D. Ushinsky University. Yaroslavl. 99 s.
Central Asia and the Baikal Region in ancient times. Collection of scientific works, Issue 2 / Ed. Tsybiktarov A.D.; Buryat State University. Ulan-Ude, 207 p.
Borisova I. D., Makeev D. A., Nikonov O. A., Tretyakova O. D. Central Asia and the South Caspian Region in the Eastern Policy of Soviet Russia (1917-1922). un-t. Vladimir. 181 p. Jie Kun. The art of marriage chambers. I. Orel: INBI. 116 p. (B-ka Taoist Academy). Cherkasov M. A. In the sky of Afghanistan. Memoirs of the helicopter commander. Stupino. 136 p. Chimitdorzhin G. G. Pandito Hambo Lam Institute, 1764-2004 / Institute of Mongolian Studies, Buddhology and Tibetology SB RAS. Ulan-Ude: Buddiysk Publishing House. in-ta "Dashi Choynhorlin". 186 p.
Shevkomud I. Ya. Pozdnyj neolit Nizhni Amura [Late Neolithic of the Lower Amur]. Nesterov SP.; Khabar, Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, State Museum of History. N. I. Grodekov Oriental Museum. Vladivostok. 155 p. Yanguzin A. R. Sotsial'nye aspekty filosofii sufizma [Social aspects of Sufi philosophy].
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