La fabrique des archives coloniales et la naissance d'une conscience impériale (France, XVIIIe siècle).

The article discusses the development and function of colonial archives during the eighteenth century in France. The Secretary of State for the Navy created a Paper Office in 1699 whose function was to collect papers from the Colonial Office in order for the government of metropolitan France to maintain records of its overseas territories. Throughout the 1700s, these archives evolved to provide records not only of the overseas territories, but of colonial administrators, and later, a Colonial Papers Office was opened to provide official copies of vital records. In 1776 these records were transferred to a Public Colonial Papers Office in Versailles.