Tasks

The Centre historique des archives is responsible for :

• collecting, preserving, inventorying and communicating the archives of the General Secretariat for Defence and National Security and the Ministry of the Armed Forces, as well as the National Gendarmerie, until 31 December 2008, with the exception of the archives of the General Directorate of Armaments and the individual and collective archives of civilian and military personnel;
• ensuring the scientific and technical control of the current and intermediate archives under its responsibility;
• collecting, preserving, inventorying and communicating archive documents that are assigned or handed over to the Ministry of the Armed Forces, whether in return for payment or free of charge, as well as oral testimonies;
• to respond to research requests, particularly those made by the staffs, directorates and services of the Ministry of Defence and other public administrations;
• receiving and directing the public;
• processing requests for communication and consultation of archives. To proceed in this framework to the declassification of the defence archives;
• contributing to the study and development of the funds and collections it holds.

Practical information

The general operation of the reading room is as follows:

1 / I note the opening hours of the Louis XIV reading room:

• Monday: 1pm-5pm
• Tuesday to Thursday: 9am-5pm
• Friday: 9am-4pm
• Saturday: 9.30am - 3pm

Sessions for the consultation of iconographic documents in the specialised room are possible by reservation only on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9am to 4pm.

These opening hours allow for the disinfection of equipment and furniture at the end of the consultation sessions.

2 / I prepare my visit to the reading room by reserving in advance the documents I wish to consult:

From now on, all documents held at the SHD in Vincennes must be reserved in advance (including microfilms and documents that could previously be consulted without prior reservation), using the form available on the website, in my personal space (all my online procedures / reserve call numbers). Please allow 8 days between your reservation request and the desired date of the session.

Air purifier in the Vincennes reading room:

To ensure your health safety, the air purifiers in the SHD reading room at the Château de Vincennes are equipped with HEPA13 filters, which comply with the NF EN 1822 standard. The HEPA13 filter - of very high efficiency - is called "ABSOLUTE". It stops 99.95% of the dust present in the air. This dust in suspension as well as the water particles on which viruses attach themselves are sucked up by the machines. This equipment is used in a large number of medical facilities. The filters are changed regularly. The machines are all equipped with potentiometers, so that the air flow can be adjusted according to the number of patients.

The SHD has chosen to guarantee you maximum hygiene and comfort in your research. The four air purifiers that cover the volume of the reading room contribute to the best possible sanitary conditions during your visit to the SHD. 
 

As a reminder:

It is necessary to be registered as a SHD reader to reserve and consult documents in the reading room. If you are not yet registered, please create a personal space and fill in the registration form. A reader's number will be sent to you by message, enabling you to make your reservations. You can then collect your reader's card at the registration desk.

It is important to remember that all documents must be reserved in advance. Please send us your reservations using the form available on the personal area.

A maximum quota of documents per reader is set:

• Archival documents: as from 05/09/22, it will now be possible to reserve up to 10 items per session according to the following distribution: 10 INDIVIDUAL FILES PER SESSION or 5 CARDBOARDS (maximum) and 5 INDIVIDUAL FILES. See for more information.
• Library documents: a quota of 12 documents per reader and per consultation session is fixed.

On site, a 1 euro coin or token is required in order to deposit your belongings not allowed in the reading room in the lockers. The dimensions of the lockers are as follows W 40 x H 60 x D 36 (small lockers) - W 40 x H 130 x D 36 (large lockers). The SHD does not provide tokens or coins.

A collection with an eventful history

In Caen, the Archives Division for Victims of Contemporary Conflicts (DAVCC) holds the archives that have enabled and still enable the rights of five million civilian and military victims of the last two world conflicts to be honoured and asserted, as well as those of more recent wars such as those in Indochina, Algeria, the Korean War, overseas operations, etc.
Currently, 20 linear kilometres of archives are kept in Caen, whose origin and the very history of their creation reflect the diversity and complexity of the policies implemented by the various institutions in charge of war victims over the last century. The collection originated during the First World War, in 1915, with the creation of the mention "died for France" and the evolution of pension law, which led to the creation of the Ministry of War Pensions, Grants and Allowances. It was attached to the Veterans' Administration in 1940, and in 1999 was placed under the authority of the Directorate for Memory, Heritage and Archives, before being integrated into the Historical Service of Defence in 2005.

The archives kept at the DAVCC, mainly files and individual dossiers, are those produced by the Ministry of Pensions and its successors since 1916 in the context of their missions:

• establish death and disappearance certificates;
• awarding the mention "Died for France";
• repatriating, exhuming and returning bodies
• maintaining national graves and necropolises;
• researching archives after the Second World War;
• awarding the title of Resistance or political deportee or internee.
• awarding war widows', orphans' or ascendants' pensions, military invalidity pensions (funds currently being processed)

Warning for consultation requests in the reading room

Research, the free or non-disclosure of documents and the storage of archives for consultation can be very time-consuming and consequently lead to long waiting times for communication in the reading room. 

For this reason, and taking into account the constraints of the service, requests to consult the archives held by the DAVCC, which can be consulted on site, are only made by appointment after having made a request by post (see postal address) or by e-mail to 

shd-caen.courrier.fct@intradef.gouv.fr 

A written reply will be sent to the applicant as soon as the archives identified can be made available. It is then up to the applicant to contact the DAVCC on 02 31 38 45 82 or 02 31 38 45 44 to arrange one or more dates for consultation in the reading room.

Due to security measures linked to the state of emergency, readers are invited to contact the DAVCC secretariat (02 31 38 45 82) to inform them of their arrival. They must bring their reader's card or an identity card.

Book: Discovering the world Brest, port of explorers  The spirit of adventure, the thirst for knowledge and the experience of explorers, seafarers and ship designers has given rise to an exceptional maritime culture in Brest, which can be seen in the past as well as the future. A pictorial journey through 3 centuries of innovation.

Since 1982, the Historical Service has been located at 4, rue Commandant-Malbert, at the entrance to the commercial port and near the arsenal. It occupies the second floor of this building and most of the lower floor where the archives and library, which cover almost 13 km, are kept in 13 shops.

Since the 17th century, the port of Brest has been the major port of war for the Ponant squadrons. Since the 1970s, it has been devoted primarily to nuclear deterrence, using the submarines of the Strategic Oceanic Force (FOST) and their naval, aeronaval and industrial environment. The archives of the 2nd Maritime Prefecture, the directorates, the ships at sea and naval aviation cover the entire Atlantic. In addition, there are the archives of the Navy overseas in New Caledonia, the West Indies and French Guiana, French West Africa, French Equatorial Africa, the Pacific, and Saint-Pierre and Miquelon.
Consultation of the archives allows you to explore and discover the maritime memory of Brest from the 17th century to the present day.

Resources available to all

Located in the commercial port, the service has a reading room with 25 seats and premises that allow it to receive groups, especially school groups. It has an educational service run by a relay teacher who receives classes and teachers.

In partnership with the network of Brest municipal libraries, the Musée National de la Marine in Brest, the University of Western Brittany and the Centre de Recherche Bretonne et Celtique, it organises an annual series of conferences, the "Rendez-vous Maritimes".

The SHD regularly organises exhibitions based on the archives and old works it holds.

Touch screens installed in the reading room allow consultation of the collections digitised by the department, including the collection of Lieutenant-Colonel Maurice Laureau (12 S) on the First World War, the collection of Maurice Rollet de l'Isle, a naval hydrographic engineer at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries (24 S), several works by the Académie de Marine, the prison registers, the registers of naval officers, and the photographic albums of several naval vessels.

The Naval Archives Centre of the Atlantic Maritime District

The mission of the SHD in Brest is to collect, classify, conserve, communicate to the public and promote the archives produced by the services of the Atlantic maritime region (2nd Maritime Region), the naval and air and sea forces and the ships located within the perimeter of the Atlantic maritime region.

The most remarkable collections are the following: 

• Archives of the Navy command in Brest from the 17th century to the present day (series A and series E)
• Archives of crews and ships: crew rolls, logbooks and navigation logs, end-of-command reports (series C and 4 E)
• Fonds de l'arsenal maritime et des chantiers navals militaires de Brest, notably all the registers of naval personnel attached to the port of Brest since the 17th century (series 3 E, 1 L, 1 M and 6 M)
• Fonds du Service de santé du port de Brest (since 1682) 
• Fonds des prises et réquisitions des bâtiments, corsaires (series Q)
• Engineering Department fonds: plans of military buildings under the authority of the Engineering Department
• Fonds des divers quartiers maritimes de l'arrondissement maritime de Brest: matricules of seafarers, matricules of vessels, armament rolls and disarmament of vessels (series P)
• Prison fund: matricular registers opened in 1749, listing nearly 70,000 convicts (series 2 O - digitised registers 2 O 1-39 which can be consulted on the CRBC/digital library/https://bibnumcrbc.huma-num.fr website)
• Iconographic collections: DCNS collection (9 Fi) consisting in particular of more than 250 photographic albums of naval vessels built at the Brest arsenal since 1948, including the Jeanne d'Arc; other iconographic collections of disarmed vessels (series U)
• Continuous series (in perpetual growth): deposits from the Préfecture Maritime and all the units of the French Navy located in the maritime district.

Educational offers

Discover the letter of the educational service of the SHD of Brest

• Borrowable exhibitions
• Illumination of the marine collections of the SHD in Brest from the 17th century to the present day (15 kakemonos and exhibition catalogue)
• The Académie de Marine, knowledge and learning: the "Internet" of the 18th century (20 kakemonos)
• In the footsteps of Lapérouse (11 posters)
• Writing as a naval officer (12 posters and exhibition catalogue)

Pedagogical files

• The Naval Academy
• The prison and the convicts
• The Lapérouse expedition
• The Americans in Brest in 1917-1918

Two educational publications for teachers

• Teaching Defence in Brest
• The Maritime Prefect in Brest
• 250th anniversary of the Royal Naval Academy of Brest (1769-2019)

A specialised library

The origins of the department's library date back to the creation of the Académie de Marine founded in Brest in 1752 by letters patent from Louis XV. It is a library specialising in maritime history, the history of the navies of war, commerce, fishing and pleasure craft. It has a particularly rich heritage dealing with shipbuilding as well as the discoveries made during the great scientific expeditions that left from Brest, including many other subjects such as theology, astronomy, architecture, geography, history and medicine. In this respect, we should mention the existence of the former library of the health service of the port of Brest with the collection of the Naval Medical School (from the Army Training Hospital). The Brest library is enriched each year by several hundred works.

Some figures

The team consists of 13 people.
The reading room welcomes more than 400 readers per year, who carry out approximately 2,000 working sessions.