Research trends and theoretical foundations developed around the Family Archives

the case study of the Calisto Pinto da Silva Family Archive. Contributions to the study of Historical Archivistic in the Região Autónoma da Madeira

Abstract

This text is the result of the work developed at the Direção Regional do Arquivo e Biblioteca da Madeira (DRABM) in the context of a curricular internship, as part of the Postgraduate Course in Historical Archivistics at the NOVA School of Social Sciences and Humanities of the NOVA University of Lisbon. The aim of this research was to study the Calisto Pinto da Silva Family Archive based on the methodological principles in Historical Archivistics advocated by Professor Maria de Lurdes Rosa in her article: “Reconstructing the production, recording and conservation of Pre-modern organizational information. Theoretical perspectives and research proposal”.

In the last two decades, a renewed position and a particular interest in the “Archives” has been notorious, materializing all this attention in the fruitful debates encouraged by the academy with the significant increase of the formative offer to dynamize and promote epistemological perspectives resulting from the production of Master's and Doctoral Dissertations, as well as by the archive institutions themselves, which have demonstrated the ability to promote a critical sense and develop an effective dialogue between a practical-technical dimension. At the same time, the general interest in archival science is accompanied by the importance given to issues of community, family and personal archives.

Despite the vitality and remarkable momentum corresponding to the dawn of the 21st century, reference should be made to the 1980s of the last century, a moment in which an embryonic phase was established in terms of the visibility and primary focus of the respective studies in Portugal. Conferences and meetings of an international nature and inestimable value were organized for the publication of numerous titles. More recently, the efforts of Professor Maria de Lurdes Rosa in raising studies on the Family Archives should be noted, materialized in the organization of colloquiums and meetings alluding to the theme, namely the colloquium held in Lisbon in 2010, Arquivos de Família, séculos XII-XX: que presente, que futuro? and in the commitment to curriculum offer through the inauguration of the Postgraduate Course in Historical Archivistics and the Phd in Historical Archivistics at the NOVA School of Social Sciences and Humanities of the NOVA University of Lisbon.

The Calisto Pinto da Silva Family Archive, donated to the Arquivo Regional e Biblioteca Pública da Madeira, brings together a set of 95 documents, dating from 1824 to 1930. The overwhelming majority of the titles present in the aforementioned collection correspond to instruments of an administrative-financial nature and asset management of properties registered in favor of this family. The Calisto Pinto da Silva Family Archive had an inventory dated 1999, the year of the donation. It should be noted that the available inventory was out of date, allowing the reader to access only the minimum of information elements of a documentation described at the simplest level. The description did not respect, at all, the international norms of archiving, enshrined by the Council International Archives.

Oriented according to an eminently chronological and empiricist principle, the previous descriptive instrument, in addition to being not very detailed, revealed considerable absences regarding the contextualization and framing of the documents. Through the treatment of the Calisto Pinto da Silva Family Archive, several questions of great interest to the theme of the Family Archives arise, namely deep reflections on the role played by the archive in the construction of a family and personal identity and memory. This Archive turns out to be truly illustrative of an attempt to preserve, legitimize and consequently defend a very significant commercial image, achieved in the circumstance that the majority of documentation corresponds to titles of a financial management nature and others records guaranteeing the effective ownership of a given immovable property. In practice, the aim is to perpetuate an essentially economic and financial memory of the family, in an incessant appreciation of contractual matters, as well as the transmission of assets.

Linked to a set of family rituals, visible right from the start, in the preservation of the legacy and subsequent transmission of the patronymic to the firstborn, in an express act of perpetuation of traditions, the Calisto Pinto da Silva Family reveals, within the scope of its dynamics and family interactions and to the values ​​and mentalities of the time, the circumstance of the patriarch taking on an important role in the management of resources and in the administration of properties. Similarly to what generally happened in the Madeira Archipelago, several family members resorted to emigration in order to seek better conditions and business opportunities with the city of Caracas, Venezuela, as their primary destination.

From the detailed analysis of the Calisto Pinto da Silva Family Archive, at first sight, lines of investigation of the greatest relevance to the history of local commerce emerge, with particular emphasis on the social, economic and cultural aspects linked to commercial practices and their impact on mentalities and experiences in a period between the middle of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. In this sense, participatory archival activities and crowdsourcing around the archives of historic stores or small traditional family businesses would be interesting, in which testimonies alluding to the memory and stories of these places that represent the culture, habits and customs of the people of Madeira Island.