outcome – The Committee of Military Archives

Poland 2022

New activities in the Committee of Military Archives meetings

28th August-2nd September 2022, Wrocław-Opole, Poland

From 28 August to 2 September 2022, the Polish Commission of Military Hystory hosted the XLVII congress of the International Commission of Military History in Wroclaw and Opole. The CAM agreed with the Polish Commission point of contact, Professor Tomasz Ciesielski, the draft of our activities. So, on 29 August, the Committee, its delegates and other participants visited the Wroclaw State Archive.

29 August 2022, Professor Tomasz Ciesielski introduces the CAM members and other ICMH congress participants to the Wroclaw State Archive

On 30 August the Committee of Military Archives had its first meeting in the morning at the Wroclaw University – Institute of History.

29 August 2022, the CAM Secretary-General introduces her paper on “Sources dans les archives: types et expériences”

The session was suspended because some delegates had other obligations on the same day presenting their papers. So the Committee convened again in the late afternoon in the hotel where the session continued.

29 August 2022, in the afternoon Col Marius Croitoru, Romanian delegate to the CAM, presents the Romanian Military Archive to the Committee.

Initially, with a first tour of the table the delegates and the attendees presented themselves. The first part of the meeting has been reserved to the approval of the minutes of the meeting held in Athens in 2021 (see the post published here). The presentation moved to the Committee of Military Archives blog, providing some facts and figures of the job done along the year September 2021 / August 2022. The steering committee asked for a strong support by the delegates and the friends of the CAM in order to launch the Military Archives Online Guide harvesting campaign during the year September 2022 / August 2023. Finally, the presentation ended with some conclusions agreed by the delegates.

Because of the lack of time, the Committee decided to meet again in the late afternoon thanks to the availability of the meeting rooms booked in the hotel. During the second phase of the meeting the delegates received the presentation of the Romanian Military Archives (see the post published in our blog) by their director, Colonel Marius Croitoru, and the archives of the Belgian War Heritage Institute by Dr. Patrick Nefors.

On 1 September, the congress moved to Opole, hosting one of the session at the Opole State Archive. Thanks to the full support of the Opole Archive Director, Professor Miroslav Lenart, the CAM members and other participants to the congress had the opportunity to visit the archives briefly.

Opole 1st September 2022, the CAM steering committee together with Marius Croitoru, Romanian delegate to the Committee, and other participants to the congress in front of the Opole State Archive main entrance.

In other posts, the steering committee will present the visits to the State Archives in Poland.

Athens, August 2021

The Committe of Military Archives meeting

On 29th August 2021, the Committe of Military Archives convened in Athens in the framework of the XLVI International Congress of Military History on the theme “Independence wars since the XVIII Century” (29 August – 03 September 2021).

The Hellenic Military Archives presentation by Pigi Kalogeraton

According to the agenda of the meeting, the Committee discussed for 2 hours of the main important topics as in the agenda. Ten attendees (delegates or observers) from 8 countries (Belgium, Italy, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Romania, Turkey and USA).

After a quick introduction by each attendee, the discussion took place and then two presentations were held by Pigi Kalogerakou (on the Hellenic Military Archives within the Ministry of Defence) and Kathleen Van Acker (new privacy rules and declassification). The presentations will be published in future posts.

The Hellenic Military Archives presentation by Pigi Kalogeraton (2)

The first main outcome is connected an initiative that the Committee launched some years ago. The CAM decided to continue the project launched by the previous steering committee led by Michael Steidel, the Online Guide of Military Archives.

The Online Guide of Military Archives project (see below the ICMH Newsletter n. 35 – June 2021, pp. 20-21 where there is an history of the guide as well) has the aim to become a gateway the help researchers and scholars to find the most important military archives or archives with significant military archival funds.

The form is very simple and it takes about 30 minutes to be filled with the all the relevant information. No specific requirements are needed to fill the form.

At the moment, a first group of national commissions members of the ICMH sent the template filled as proposed (the template is available in the ICMH Newsletter as above, p. 22). As far as a second group of national commissions will send other filled forms, the Guide will be available on-line on the ICMH website. The subsequent forms will be added subsequently.

The declassification process presentation by Kathleen Van Acker

The second main outcome of the discussion was related to “Mars&Janus”, the CAM newsletter according to the Statutes. The newsletter has not been published since 2010. So to re-launch the information strategy of the Committe, it has been approved to transform the newletter in a permanent blog hosted on line (here the presentation). There are some reasons behind the decision. The most important, in our view, is to spread as much as we can the information and products that CAM received.

So the steering committee of the CAM decided to move to Hypotheses.org because it is a platform for humanities and social science research blogs. The texts are in open access and they are not intended at specialists solely; in this regard it could be raise more to a broad audience.

The results of the meeting have been presented to the general assembly of the International Commission of Military History on 3 September 2021.

ICMH Newsletter 35-JUN2021