"Spotlight on..." Archival Work

GIGA Doctoral Researcher Diba Mirzaei recently went to the UK National Archives in London, to do research in their archives for her dissertation. Get to know more about Diba's visit to the archive in this interview.

How did you organise the visit?

I visited the UK National Archives in London in October, which is the official archive and publisher for the UK government and for England and Wales. To be best prepared for my visit, I started off with browsing the archive’s website to understand their visiting policies and what to expect upon visiting the archive. This served as a good introduction to the archive, before I could devote my attention to the most important and difficult step – identifying documents relevant for my thesis. Since I had never visited an archive before, I was anxious about missing documents or not ordering the right ones. Therefore, I spend much time searching the catalogue to order as many documents as possible. First, I checked out the work of other researchers with similar topics to mine, who visited the archive. I wrote down all the files they had used that appeared to be relevant for my topic, too. Those were the first documents I ordered. Then, I wrote down, which dates, events, persons, and ministries were relevant for my topic and started searching for those. As you can order only 12 items per day in advance, I kept a separate file with relevant documents that I could order on site. This last information kept me from losing my sanity. Knowing that I could always order further documents on the day of my visit, was a great relief.

In what way are the sources important for your dissertation and how will you incorporate them?

Since I am doing a PhD in History, I draw my main sources from archives. My topic is on Iran-Saudi relations in the 1970s and how they were affected by the prevalent US policy of that time. Since this US policy only became relevant because of Britain’s withdrawal from the Persian Gulf in 1971, I decided to visit the archive in London. I was told by a few researchers that my dissertation would appear incomplete without the British archive, and I am glad that I listened to their advice. I found so many fascinating documents that either complemented or broadened my understanding of the topic or introduced me to new information that changed my approach to the topic. As not too many articles and book have been written recently on Iran-Saudi relations before the Iranian Revolution in 1979, the sources I have collected give a more nuanced understanding of their relations and in some instances even refute predominant narratives.

Why is/could archive work be important?

I believe that in order to understand the past, it is important to know what relevant personalities, countries or governments of that time or event were saying, thinking and doing. One way of course is to conduct interviews with people who were present in discussions and negotiations. However, you can never be sure if their recollection of events is accurate or if they aren’t concealing facts to push for a certain narrative. Archival data, thus, is a great way to reduce that risk. Especially if policies, arguments or opinions are expressed in more than one document, you can be sure that you are on the safe side. Archival data is also a great source for understanding how policies really came about, what was discussed behind closed curtains and what people really thought when the cameras weren’t rolling. Thus, they provide background information that we otherwise wouldn’t have.