F. Lequin, In memoriam M.A.P. Meilink-Roelofsz:
At the end of 1965 she spent three months in the West. This trip had been commissioned by the Dutch Government and STICUSA (Stichting Culturele Samenwerking met Suriname en de Nederlandse Antillen). Her gruelling schedule again started with a conference - an international conference at the University of the West Indies, Jamaica, to discuss better cooperation between institutions in the Caribbean preserving sources for West-Indian history. Mrs. Meilink here presented part of her 'A survey of archives in the Netherlands pertaining to the history of the Netherlands Antilles' (published in 1955).
(...)
Although her name had already been mentioned in connection with a professorial chair shortly before she took her doctorate, it was not until March 1970 that the Leiden University appointed her 'Bijzonder Hoogleraar' of the History of Western European Overseas Expansion, a chair especially founded by the 'Leidsch Universiteitsfonds'. Professor Meilink delivered her inaugural lecture (Van geheim tot openbaar; Een historiografische verkenning) on November 6th of the same year. It dealt with the
interrelationship between public accessibility and national and international interest in the Dutch colonial archives. The essential aim of a well organized archival system is the public accessibility which makes the archives available for the common good. Inaccessible archives will in the end be destroyed or eliminated. An important driving force behind her work from the early fifties onward - and obviously the background of this lecture - was the idea that by making the 'colonial archives' accessible, a historiography of the so-called developing countries would be made feasible, which would enhance the national and cultural identities of these countries.
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