ממלכתיות וארכיון לאומי במדינת ישראל: בין תיאוריה, היסטוריה ופרקטיקה, 1955-1948: ‏ת‏יאוריה, היסטוריה ופרקטיקה, 1948-1955

The article discusses the question of why the Central Zionist Archives (CZA) the institutional archive that served the two main pre-State infrastructures, the Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency, was not transformed into a State Archive in 1948, despite the suggestion of its directors. Instead, a new institution,the Israeli state archives (ISA) was established with anew foreign director from New York.We try to answer this question from three perspec-tives. The first, the theoretical-historical background,discusses the importance of the state archive in the modern state, particularly in the establishment of an industrial nation-state. The second perspective examines the case of Israel, focusing on the pro-cesses that led to the establishment of the ISA in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Here two central issues are studied: first, the failure of the directors of the CZA – the country’s oldest and most prominent institutional archive at the time of Israel’s establish-ment – to recast it as Israel’s national archive; second,the ISA’s activities during the state’s nascent years.The paper’s final perspective discusses the ISA’s establishment in light of the concept of Israeli mamlakhtiyut, a fundamental concept that shaped the character of the state in its early years.