Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how record removal/destruction was not only a priority of outgoing colonial administrations recently engaged in counter-insurgencies, but how archival creation was of concern to independent governments, formed in the wake of such warfare.

Paper long abstract:

Not only was record removal and destruction an urgent priority of outgoing colonial administrations recently engaged in counter-insurgencies, but archival creation and the establishment of counter histories was of concern to emergent independent governments, formed in the wake of such warfare. In this way, the control over the past was of particular, and at times discordant, relevance in the future-making efforts of competing powers engaged in colonial (counter)insurgency. This is especially true in the Kenyan case. Taking a long view of colonial (counter)insurgency, wherein the colonial efforts to remove incriminating evidence and curate a favorable paper trail in situ were the direct results of counter-insurgent record-keeping policy, the establishment of Kenya’s National Archives just two years after constitutional independence can be seen as an act against the removal of the past. This paper explores the ways in which colonial officers, Colonial Office administrators, Kenya’s inaugural cohort of independent leaders, civilians and white settlers navigated the location and meaning of the counter-insurgent past -vis a vis archival preservation- in the forging of their respective post-colonial futures.