My two cents...

I have sat back and let Abe do most of the work on this blog... until now. Oh, who am I kidding? He'll still do most of the work. But I thought I would take a minute to update you all on what I am doing during the day while Eli gallivants around France.

I have been working for the past few days in the Archives of the Ministery of the Navy and Colonies, which are housed here in Aix-en-Provence. They used to be attached to the National Archives in Paris, but when many of the colonial archives were repatriated, they created this separate institution to house all documents pertaining to the French empire. Since I work on French imperialism, I spend a lot of time here. Not so bad, eh?

Here I am working hard at the archives. I thought about putting up an image from one of the documents I've been working with, but I think that would violate some law.

Anyway, I am primarily working on fleshing out some of the sections of my manuscript - which is merely adapted from my dissertation. The last few days, for example, I've been checking out any ministerial correspondence I could get my hands on pertaining to the Marquesas Islands between 1844 and 1854. In one of my chapters, I tell about how three men were deported from Lyon to the Marquesas Islands in 1851 for conspiracy against the state. These men brought their wives and children with them to this practically deserted island (Nuka Hiva was the site of the second season of the American TV show, Survivor). What I am now trying to do is find more evidence about what conditions were like on the eve of their arrival. In Lyon, I hope to consult the archives of the Society for the Propagation of the Faith, which should have information from some Catholic missionaries living on Nuka Hiva when my deportees arrived. I hope they will tell me more about what life was like for the deportees and the French officials responsible for watching over them.

I've pretty much finished up with the Marquesas now. From French Polynesia, I'm now moving to the Indian Ocean and looking for correspondence records from the Seychelles Islands and from the Islands of Réunion (formerly Ile de Bourbon) and Mauritius (formerly Ile de France).

Today I also looked at a dissertation written in 1901 - and evidently deposited unread into the archives. I had to ask the archivists to cut the pages open. The diss was printed on the cheap, four sheets to a page, then folded and bound. Consequently, every few pages, either the right edge or the top edge needs to be cut so that the pages will open normally. That took awhile. When she was done, I just photographed the entire book.

That is the main method of research here. The archive allows digital photography, as long as you don't use a flash and none of the information is protected under French law. Since all of my work is from the nineteenth century, I'm free to click click click away. So I stand at the table and photograph endless pages of nineteenth century scribbling that will have to be deciphered back home when I'm not in such a hurry to make the most of precious moments in the archives.

So, that's that for now.

I hope you all enjoy(ed) the post Abe is writing about Eli's big day and big vat of paella! Here's the happy boy I came home to (jealous, much?)!