House, City, World, Nation, Globe

THIS IS A DRAFT

Natacha Roussel

This timeline starts in Brussels and is an attempt to situate some of the events in the life, death and revival of the Mundaneum in a broader context, and in relation to both local and international events. By connecting several geographic locations at different scales, this small research will hopefully provoke cqrrelations in time and space that could help us formulate questions about the ways local events repeatedly mirror and recompose global situations. Hopefully, it can also help to see which contextual elements in the first existence of the Mundaneum were different from the current situation of our information economy.

The ambitious project of the Mundaneum was imagined by Paul Otlet with support of Henri La Fontaine at the end of the 19th century. At that time colonialism was at its heights, bringing important income to occidental countries, and creating a sense of security that made everything seem possible. In the opinion of even some of the most forward thinking persons of the time, it felt the intellectual and material benefits of rational thinking could universally become the source of all goods. Far from any move for independence, the first tensions between colonial/commercial powers were only starting to manifest themselves, already some conflicts opposed them for the defense of commercial interests during Fashoda and also the Boers war. On another hand, the sense of strength brought to colonial powers by the large commercial incomes, was quickly tempered by the first world war that was about to start in modern European society.

In this context Henri La Fontaine, while constantly energized by Paul Otlet's encompassing view of classification systems and standards, strongly associates the Mundaneum project with an ideal of world peace. This was a conscious process of thought; they believed this universal archive of all knowledge, represented a resource for the promotion of education towards the development of better social relations. However, while on the one hand Otlet and La Fontaine were not directly aware of economical and colonial issues their ideals were nevertheless fed by the wealth of the epoch. Furthermore the Mundaneum archives were established with an intention, and a major effort was done to include documents that referred to often neglected topics, or that could be considered as alternative thinking, such as the well known archives of the feminist movement in Belgium, but also information on anarchism and pacifism. On an other hand, in line with the general dynamism caused by a growing wealth in Europe at the turn of the century, the Mundaneum project seemed to be always growing in size and having larger ambition. It also clearly appears that as the project was embedded in the international and "politico-economical" context of its time, the Mundaneum was also linked by many aspects to a larger movement that engaged civil society towards a protostructure of networked society, via the development of means of communications and international regulations, Henri La Fontaine was part of several international initiatives for example as early as in 1907 the Bureau International de la paix, but also little after, in 1910, he launched the International Union of Associations; overall his intervention helped to root the process of archive collection in a larger network of associations and regulatory structures. In fact, Otlet's view of archives and organization extended to all domains and became overwhelming, and La Fontaine asserted that general peace could be achieved through social development by the means of education, and access to knowledge. Their common view was nurtured by an acute perception of their epoch, they observed and often contributed to most of the major experimentations that were triggered by the ongoing reflection about the new organization modalities of society.

From The Itinerant Archive (print):

Museology merged with the International Institute of Bibliography (IIB) which had its offices in the same building. The ever-expanding index card catalog had already been accessible to the public since 1914. The project would be later known as the World Palace or Mundaneum. Here, Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine started to work on their Encyclopaedia Universalis Mundaneum, an illustrated encyclopaedia in the form of a mobile exhibition.

The ever ambitious process of the Mundaneum archives took place in the context of a growing internationalization of society, at the end of the 19th century, while at the same time the social gap was increasing due to the booming of industrial society. Furthermore, the internationalization of finances and relations did not only concern industrial society, it also acted as a motivation to structure social and political networks, among other things via political negotiations and the institution of civil society organizations. Several broad structures dedicated to the regulation of international relations were created at the same time as the worldwide spreading of an industrial economy, they aimed to formulate a world view that would be based on international agreements and communication systems regulated by governments and structured via civil society organizations, rather than left to individual and commercial initiatives. Otlet and Lafontaine spent a large part of their lives attempting to formulate a mondial society. While La Fontaine clearly supported the organization of international networks of civil society organizations, Otlet, according to Vincent Capdepuy , is the first person to use the term Mondialisation in French far ahead of his time in advocating what would become after World War 2, an important movement that concerned a number of instances who claimed to work for the development of an international regulatory system. Otlet also mentioned that this "Mondial" process was directly related to the necessity of a new repartition and the regulation of natural goods (understand diamonds and gold...), he says: « Un droit nouveau doit remplacer alors le droit ancien pour préparer et organiser une nouvelle répartition. La “question sociale” a posé le problème à l’intérieur ; “la question internationale” pose le même problème à l’extérieur entre peuples. Notre époque a poursuivi une certaine socialisation de biens. […] Il s’agit, si l’on peut employer cette expression, de socialiser le droit international, comme on a socialisé le droit privé, et de prendre à l’égard des richesses naturelles des mesures de “mondialisation”. » . The two approaches of La Fontaine and Otlet might already bear certain differences, as one (Lafontaine) emphasizes an organization based on local civil society structures, which implies direct participation, while the other (Otlet) focuses more on management and global organization managed by a regulatory framework. It seems interesting to take a look at these early concepts that were participating to a larger movement called "the first mondialization", and understand its difference with actual globalization, that also involves private and public instances and different infrastructures.

Indeed, Otlet and Lafontaine's project took place in an era of international agreements over communication networks. While it is known and often a subject of fascination that the global project of the Mundaneum, also involved the conception of a technical infrastucture and communication systems that were conceived in between the two World Wars. Some of them such as the Mondothèque were imagined as prospective possibilities, but others were already implemented at the time and formed the basis of an international communication network, consisting of postal services and telegraph networks. It is less acknowledged that the epoch was also of international agreements between countries, structuring and normalizing international life; some of these structures still form the basis of our actual global economy, but they are all challenged by private capitalist structures. The existing postal and telegraph networks covered the entire planet, and agreements that regulated the price of the stamp allowing for postal services to be used internationally, were recent. They certainly were the first ones during where international agreements regulated commercial interests to the benefit of individual communication. Henry Lafontaine directly participated to these processes while when he asked for postal franchise to be negotiated for the transport of documents between international librairies, to the benefit of among others the mundaneum archives. Lafontaine was also an important promotor of larger international movements that involved civil society organizations; he was the main responsible of l'"Union internationale des associations", that acted as networks of information-sharing setting up modalities of exchange to the general benefit of civil society. Furthermore, concerns were also raised by the necessity to rethink social organization that was harmed by industrial economy. This issue was addressed in Brussels by the brand new discipline of sociology l'"Ecole de Bruxelles" to which Otlet and La Fontaine took part was very early in the process of trying to formulate a legal discourse that could help to address social inequalities, and eventually think regulations that could help to "re-engineer" social organization.

The Mundaneum project differentiates itself from the contemporary search engines such as Google, not only from its intentions, but also from the context of its organizations as it clearly inscribed itself in an international regulatory framework that was dedicated to the promotion of local civil society. In the same way as previously, it could be interesting to understand similarities and differences between the actual development of the Mundaneum project and the actual knowledge economy? Therefore the current timeline attempts to re-situate the different events in order to help to situate the differences between past and contemporary processes.

DATE	EVENT	TYPE	SCALE
1865	The International Union of telegraph, is set up it is an important element of the organisation of a mundial communication network and will further become the International Telecomunication Union (UTI) that is still active in regulating and standardizing radiocommunication .	STANDARD	WORLD
1870	Franco-Prussian war.	EVENT	WORLD
1874	ONU creates the General Postal Union and aims to federate international postal distribution.	STANDARD	WORLD
1875	General Conference on Weights and Measures in Sèvres, France.	STANDARD	WORLD
1882	Triple Alliance, renewed in 1902.	EVENT	WORLD
1889	Henri Lafontaine creates La Société Belge de l'arbitrage et de la paix.	EVENT	NATION
1890's	First colonial wars (Fachoda, Boers ...).	EVENT	WORLD
1890	Henri Lafontaine meets Paul Otlet.	PERSON	CITY
1891	Franco-Russian entente, preliminary to the Triple entente that will be signed in 1907.	EVENT	WORLD
1891	Henri Lafontaine publishes an essay Pour une bibliographie de la paix.	PUBLICATION	NATION
1893	Otlet and Lafontaine start together l'Office International de Bibliologie Sociologique (OIBS).	ASSOCIATION	CITY
1894	Henri Lafontaine is elected senator of the province of Hainaut, and later senator of the province of Liège-Brabant.	EVENT	NATION
1895 2-4 September	First Conférence de Bibliographie at which it is decided to create l'Institut International de Bibliographie (IIB) founded by Henri La Fontaine.	ASSOCIATION	CITY
1900	Congrès bibliographique international in Paris.	EVENT	WORLD
1903	Creation of the international Women's suffrage alliance (IWSA) that will later become the International Alliance of Women.	ASSOCIATION	WORLD
1904	Entente cordiale between France and England over the colonies who define their mutual zone of influence in Africa.	EVENT	WORLD
1905	First Moroccan crisis.	EVENT	WORLD
1907 June	Otlet and Lafontaine organize a Central Office for International Associations that will become the International Union of Associations (IUA) at the first Congrès mondial des associations internationales in Brussels in May 1910.	ASSOCIATION	CITY
1907	Henri Lafontaine is elected president of the Bureau international de la paix that he previously initiated.	PERSON	NATION
1908 July	Congrès bibliographique international in Brussels.	EVENT	CITY
1910 May	Official Creation of the International union of associations (IUA). In 1914, it federates 230 organizations, a little more than half the existing ones. The IUA promotes internationalist aspirations and desire for peace.	ASSOCIATION	WORLD
1910 25-27 August	Le Congrès International de Bibliographie et de Documentation deals both with issues of international cooperation between non-governmental organizations and the structure of universal documentation.	ASSOCIATION	WORLD
1911	More than 600 people and institutions are listed as IIB members or refer to their methods, specifically the UDC.	ASSOCIATION	WORLD
1913	Henri Lafontaine is awarded the Nobel Price for Peace.	EVENT	WORLD
1914	Germany declares war to France and invades Belgium.	EVENT	WORLD
1916	Lafontaine publishes The great solution: magnissima charta while in exile in the United States.	PUBLICATION	WORLD
1919	Opening of the Mundaneum at the Palais Mondial	EVENT	CITY
1919 June 28	The Traité de Versailles marks the end of World War I and creation of the SDN (Societé Des Nations) that will further become UN	EVENT	WORLD
1924	Creation (within the IIB), of the Central Classification Commission focusing on the development of the Universal Decimal Classification (UDC).	ASSOCIATION	NATION
1931	The IIB becomes the International Institute of documentation (IID) and in 1938 is named International Federation of documentation (IDF).	ASSOCIATION	WORLD
1934	Publication of Otlet's book Traité de documentation.	PUBLICATION	WORLD
1934	The Mundaneum is closed after a governmental decision. A part of the archives are moved Rue Fétis 44, Brussels to the house of Paul Otlet	MOVE	HOUSE
1939 September	Invasion of Poland by Germany, start of World War II.	EVENT	WORLD
1941	Some files from the Mundaneum collections concerning international associations, are transferred to Germany. They are assumed to have propaganda value.	MOVE	WORLD
1944	Death of Paul Otlet. He is buried in Etterbeek cemetery.	EVENT	CITY
1947	The International Telecomunication Union (UTI) is attached to the UN.	STANDARD	GLOBE
1956	Two separate ITU committees, the CCIF (Consultive Committee for International Telephony) and the CCIT (Consultive Committee for International Telegraphy) were joined to create the CCITT, an institute to create standards, recommendations and models for telecommunications.	STANDARD	GLOBE
1963	American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) developed.	STANDARD	GLOBE
1966	The ARPANET project is initiated.	ASSOCIATION	NATION
1974	Telenet, the first public version of the Internet founded.	STANDARD	WORLD
1986	First meeting of the Internet Engineering Taks Force (IETF) , the US-located informal organization that promotes open standards along the lines of "rough consensus and running code".	STANDARD	GLOBE
1992	Creation of the Internet Society, an American association with international vocation.	STANDARD	WORLD
1993	Elio Di Rupo organizes the transport of the Mundaneum archives from Brussels to 76 rue de Nimy in Mons.	MOVE	NATION
2012	Failure of the World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) to reach an international agreement on Internet regulation.	STANDARD	GLOBE

Additional timelines

• https://www.timetoast.com/timelines/la-premiere-guerre-mondiale
• http://www.telephonetribute.com/timeline.html
• https://www.reseau-canope.fr/savoirscdi/societe-de-linformation/le-monde-du-livre-et-de-la-presse/histoire-du-livre-et-de-la-documentation/biographies/paul-otlet.html
• http://monoskop.org/Otlet
• http://archives.mundaneum.org/fr/historique

References