Oral archives in France

French oral archives are more recent than American oral archives. This began with interrogation of people who don't usually appear in history book. They are the   workers, the artisans.".An oral history” developped which took methods of journalism and politicals sciences with narratives of remarquables, and political personnalities. First, it is the ethnology which develops exploitation of oral archives. These had a real public interest. 

The first investigation began in the 1960's. Several historians used oral archives to make their thesis. For example,  Antoine Prost interviewed ex-servicemen to illustrate his thesis intitled Les anciens combattants et la société française.Another example, Jean Delmas defended his thesis of Ecole nationale des Chartes thanks to magnetic tapes about occitan words of buidling.At this time, the oral recordings are transcribed again in a written version to be conserved. Indeed, they didn't know long this recordings could be conserved and used with quality. These interviews became specific sources.

After individual initiatives, associations created their oral heritage. These projects aimed to make attractive regional identities. André Parcher threw this project in Poitou Charente, interviewing peasants within an association  "Union pour la culture populaire en Poitou-Charentes".

 The History of present times developed in the 1970's with the exploration of audiovisual sources.However, this method is criticized by a lot of historians because  witnesses are still alive and he could give a false reality of events.

Faced with to success of oral history, several institutions of  the French state decided to create a  service in charge of collecting oral recordings. In 1974, the Service historique  de l'Armée de l'air created  a section of oral archives thanks to  initiative of General Christenne. He had this idea after he discovered oral history in the United States. This section wasr esponsible to interview aviators of the World War I.

Unlikely other oral history projects, these institutions led a critrical historical studies about recordings. This work aimed to improve informations.

In the 1980's, some departments constituted corpus of archives of oral history.For example, department of Finances created the CHEFF (Comity for economic and financial  history of France) in 1986.This comity aims to promote economic and financial history of France since Middle ages.It has to enable to constitute historical sources for historical research. Historians sit in Scientific committee. Archivists work in this comity and they have to collect, classify, conserve and communicate records of ministry and other collections of archives about financial and economic history. This comity has collected  narratives of 300 persons since the beginning of Comity.It represents 3000 hours of recordings. in the majority of cases, These interviews are biographical, and describe professional career of interviewed persons (majority inspectors of finances). An anthology of these recordings was published and entitled Les voix des finances. 20 governement officials  talk about rebuilding of the country after World War II,as the birth of European economic Community.

Florence Descamps, L'historien, l'archiviste et le magnétophone

Then local communities have followed this movement.

Gwendoline CLAY.