Secrecy classification in colonial archives governed internal circulation, not public access

Evidence

Mailrapporten were classified as “geheim” (secret, usually marked with an X) or remained unmarked. Since the Minister of Colonies archives were only open to the public in 1918, at the tail end of the period discussed in these chapters, the question of “secret” was never about public access. Geheim marked rather the care taken to limit circulation of such documents within the colonial administration itself and, as I note in chapter 2, many matters were not “secret” at all. The designation “secret” was an administrative label. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 88

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to scholarship on archival classification and colonial administrative secrecy regimes, and to the reader’s broader work on colonial archival epistemics.
• DEFINE: Clarifies that ‘geheim’ was an internal circulation control, not public-secrecy, correcting a common misreading of colonial archive classifications.