Abstract:

This essay provides a brief overview of themes that emerge in historical research when we consider the low-technology and simple methods of digital photography in archives of empire. A brief consideration of how to incorporate aspects of digital capture in the classroom is also discussed. The core of the article is a case study of gun permit applications and the circulation of guns between France and French West Africa in the 1950s. The increased capacity to amass material through digital technologies—namely, digital photography in archives—pushes historians to develop sorting methods that open up new analytical terrain in histories of the French empire. Deconstructing the deceptively straight-forward and formulaic gun permit as the primary text in question, the essay explores the following question: what is the relationship between close reading and aggregate methods, and how do we use them together to see different angles on historical process?

摘要：

当我们考虑帝国档案中的低技术和简单的数码摄影方法时，本文简要概述了历史研究中出现的主题。还简要讨论了如何将数字捕捉的各个方面纳入课堂。文章的核心是1950年枪支许可证申请和法国与法属西非之间枪支流通的案例研究s。通过数字技术（即档案中的数字摄影）收集材料的能力不断增强，这促使历史学家开发分类方法，为法兰西帝国的历史开辟新的分析领域。本文将看似简单、公式化的枪支许可证解构为主要文本，探讨以下问题：细读和聚合方法之间的关系是什么，我们如何将它们结合起来以不同的角度看待历史进程？