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In the early 1960s, British colonial administrations in East Africa organized the systematic destruction and removal of secret documents from colonies approaching independence. The Colonial Office in London arranged the deposit of these documents in high-security facilities, where they remained inaccessible until 2011. This book talk addresses processes of record dislocation, concealment and contestation, which characterized decolonization in and beyond East Africa in the second half of the 20^th century. In doing so, it historically reconstructs the formation of archival collections related to colonial administration and raises questions about the relationship between archival location, history-writing, and postcolonial claim-making.

Riley Linebaugh is a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the Professorship for Global History at the University of Potsdam. She holds a PhD in history from Justus Liebig University, an MA in Archives and Records Management at University College London and a BA in history from the University of Michigan. She is the author of Curating the Colonial Past: The ‘Migrated Archives’ and the Struggle for Kenya’s History (2025: Cambridge University Press).

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