On August 30, 2008, The Treaty of Friendship, Partnership and Cooperation was signed between Italy and Libya. This treaty constitutes the first case of a European nation-state paying reparations to one of its former colonies. A $5 billion investment plan and until very recently the first and only treaty of apology and reparations to be signed between a sovereign postcolonial nation-state and its former colonial occupier, the Treaty stipulates that over a period of twenty years Italy would spend $5 billion on infrastructural projects, aid for landmine victims, and other assistance, and repatriate stolen archeological artifacts and manuscripts to atone for the plunder and terror waged on its former colony between 1911 and 1943 under liberal and fascist colonial rule. This restitution was however contingent upon the externalization of the Italian border onto the Libyan shore, charging the aggrieved Libyan party with policing the outer borders of the European Union against crossings from the African continent. The paradox that couples colonial reparations with the externalization of border policing crystallizes the contradictions of postcolonial capitalism with its partial inclusions, shifting of the color line, and morphing forms of subjugation. This paper highlights the colonial archives and postcolonial counter-archives that preceded and enabled the signing of this treaty, beginning with the creation in 1978 of a Libyan historical research center tasked with amassing evidence of colonial and fascist violence to be mobilized toward articulating and make legible the claim for reparation and restitution. By tracking the circulation of archival documents from one shore of the Mediterranean to the other, and foregrounding the transformation of these documents—be it through decay, re-interpretation, re-organization, or translation—this paper argues that one can read mutations of sovereignty and momentous conjunctural shifts within the materiality of the archive.