By Paule Verbruggen - historian and director of Amsab-ISG
A long history: the National Institute of Social History
Amsab-ISG has a history, but also a prehistory. As early as 1937, the socialist insurance company La Prévoyance Sociale established a National Institute of Social History , modeled on the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam.
The NISG was intended to be an independent scientific archive, a library, and a research center for social history, without any political ties. A unique initiative in a context where the historiography of social movements (such as political parties) still primarily served a legitimizing function and was highly compartmentalized. It was not to be, however, because as early as October 1940, the institute was forced to close, and the German occupiers plundered the acquired collections. These were only rediscovered in the 1990s at the Special State Archives in Moscow by Wouter Steenhaut, the first director of Amsab-ISG, and archivist Michel Vermote.
From party archive to independent institute
After the war, there was little interest in the socialist movement for its own archives or for actively exploring the archives. This concern, however, grew in academia. During his research on the seventy-five-year history of the Belgian Socialist Party, published in 1960, Ghent professor Jan Dhondt realized that there were hardly any sources available. He urged anyone with documents related to that history to donate them to a library. He also encouraged his students to search for interesting sources.
Museum and Archives of the Ghent Socialist Movement had already been established in the 1950s . The librarian of the Vrijzinnige Werkmansbibliotheek Leren Vereert (Free Workers' Library) and the federal secretary of the Ghent Socialist Party had joined forces to create this. They brought together numerous archives and library and iconographic materials in the Feestlokaal Vooruit (Foreign Festival Hall), but were unable to establish a structural operation.
A next step was taken by Herman Balthazar, a doctoral student of Jan Dhondt. While preparing for the centenary of the socialist First International in 1964, he rediscovered the documentation of the former Museum and Archives and, together with the then federal secretary of the Ghent party, Gilbert Temmerman, established a Ghent party archive . It occupied two small rooms in the Vooruit party hall and relied primarily on volunteers. Over the following years, the archive expanded further, not only geographically but also thematically: more and more archives were received from the trade union, the mutual insurance company, and the cooperatives.
Meanwhile, Balthazar had also taken over as professor from Jan Dhondt, who had died suddenly and prematurely in 1972, and continued the critical academic research on the socialist labor movement. In 1974, Wouter Steenhaut became his assistant. His contributions in the archive's early years were invaluable. However, finding sufficient funding for further professionalization, with sufficient staff and a more adequate infrastructure, remained a major challenge; the endowments from the Ghent Socialist Party were insufficient.
Professionalization and recognition
In the 1970s, not only at Ghent University but also at KU Leuven, there was a growing focus on a more scholarly and independent approach to social history, and a related realization that a structured archive policy was needed for civil society organizations. Thus, in 1976, KADOC was founded within KU Leuven, originally as a Catholic Documentation and Research Center and with an initial focus on the heritage of Catholic organizations.
It's important to note that the archival legislation at the time didn't accommodate these new developments in research: the 1955 Archives Act stipulated that the national archives were only required to store the archives of government institutions or public authorities. Few private institutions and individuals were therefore willing to deposit their archives there.
Because the Ghent socialist party archive and KADOC shared a need for structural financial support, they joined forces to apply for subsidies from the new Flemish government. During the first state reform of 1980, Belgium was divided into three cultural communities (Dutch, French, and German), and education, culture, and scientific research became regionalized responsibilities. To qualify for support within this new structure, the Ghent party archive had to transform into a non-profit organization. Finally, on May 23, 1980, ownership of the socialist movement's archive was transferred to the non-profit organization AMSAB ( Archive and Museum of the Socialist Workers' Movement ), with Wouter Steenhaut as its director.
The first and most important financial incentive, however, came from the province of East Flanders. On the occasion of Belgium's 150th anniversary in 1980, it proposed the concept of a Museum of the Flemish Social Struggle. Professors Emiel Lamberts and Herman Balthazar, the chairs of KADOC and AMSAB, respectively, played a key role in this. Together with the Daens Museum, founded in 1978, and the Archive of the Flemish Social Struggle (later the Archive for National Movements or ADVN), and with the province's structural financial support, the initiative was developed into a "virtual" museum. Within this museum, private archive and documentation centers—the Liberal Archives joined in 1982—could take turns developing their own research projects with a public component. The numerous exhibitions and publications that resulted have significantly contributed to the wider awareness of the rich heritage of civil society.
However, real security of existence for KADOC, AMSAB, ADVN, and the Liberal Archives only came with the statutory recognition and thus with permanent funding from the Flemish Government in 1985.
© Amsab-ISG
A broader view
New social movements
From the late 1980s onward, AMSAB gradually began receiving archives from what were then called "new" social movements, such as the peace movement, the women's movement, organizations committed to global justice and fair trade like 11.11.11 and Oxfam Wereldwinkels, and the LGBTQIA+ community (then still referred to as the LGBTQIA+ movement). This broadening of the collection profile came about through an interplay between active prospecting and archive creators seeking a heritage institution with a mission that aligned with their social values and that offered guarantees for the safe and sustainable preservation of their archives.
Bread & Roses
In response to this broadening of interest, AMSAB researcher Guy Van Schoenbeek took the initiative in 1996 to transform AMSAB-Tijdingen "Bread & Roses ." He drew inspiration from the slogan " We want bread and roses too, " sung by textile workers during the now-famous strike in Lawrence, US, in 1912. The journal will celebrate its thirtieth anniversary in 2026.
This steady expansion of the collection also fueled discussion about the name AMSAB. Ultimately, at the end of 1999, it was decided to retain the acronym Amsab (in lowercase) and combine it with the title "Institute for Social History ." This explicitly referred to the independent and scholarly course of the pre-war National Institute for Social History.
Environment & migration
Meanwhile, a new theme emerged: the environmental movement. In 1996, we received the first "green" archive, rather coincidentally, from Greenpeace Belgium. The real catalyst, however, was the collaboration with the Bond Beter Leefmilieu (BBL) in 2002, after which the archives of all kinds of environmental and nature action groups flooded in. In the 2024-2028 policy period, the environmental movement will even be the focus of our entire operation.
Around the year 2000, the topic of migration came into focus. As a closely involved scholar in this field, Piet Creve identifies two factors that were important for this evolution. First, the publication of a book about Pierre De Geyter, the composer of the song "The International," and one of the hundreds of thousands of Belgians who migrated to France in the nineteenth century in search of work. This led to a demand at Amsab-ISG for the archive of more recent labor migration to Belgium. A second factor was the increasing number of searches in the reading room. Due to the ongoing diversification of society, the topic of migration attracted increasing attention from historians and social scientists, and the demand for archives increased. The subject gradually broadened in scope: from the integration sector to self-organized organizations, from the immigration of guest workers to refugees worldwide. We strive to collaborate systematically with other heritage organizations, and especially with the migrant community itself. A good example of structural collaboration was the project "A Map of the Migrant Sector and its Heritage in Flanders 1830-1990 " which we developed in late 2008 together with KADOC. This resulted in a repertory of all organizations in the migrant sector and their heritage, primarily archives, publications, and audiovisual materials. To this day, migration remains a central theme in both institutions.
Symbolic in the gradual depillarization of our work was the decision of Amnesty International, an organization that makes political neutrality its hallmark, to entrust its archives to Amsab-ISG in 2000.
© Amsab-ISG
An open house in motion
The most recent developments in our collection profile relate to the expansion to other forms of heritage. This is linked to the ongoing digitization of our society. Since 2020, we have been developing a digital strategy, initially focusing on the websites, Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, and so on of our existing archive creators and new organizations and initiatives focused on current themes. Besides our archive creators, we also capture hashtags relevant to our mission. Research by Amsab staff members Jeroen Fernandez-Alonso and Kim Robensyn showed that social media also gives a voice to underrepresented groups, because they operate largely bottom-up and decentralized. Anyone can use hashtags to express personal experiences and give them a place in the public debate. Hence their call for developing methods to capture, collect, and value this online activism in all its diversity.
In our outreach efforts, we're also focusing more on participation and co-creation with underrepresented groups . This also implies a greater investment of time and a commitment to more and different forms of communication. But this doesn't mean we're abandoning our connections to our roots, or conversely, endlessly expanding our content. Quite the contrary, we're keeping a close eye on our collection profile, in line with our mission: to be the memory of social movements and individuals who resist injustice and inequality, striving for equality, sustainability, and a better quality of life.
We strive for the greatest possible openness and dialogue. With this in mind, Amsab-ISG began a major renovation of our Bagattenstraat building in 2017. The goal was to create a more open environment and make it easier for all visitors to reach us. Our audience reach figures demonstrate that this mission has been successful.
In this way, we hope, together with many other heritage players in Flanders, to contribute to greater historical awareness and a society in which everyone feels seen, heard, and valued. In an increasingly polarized world, this is quite a challenge.
