Confidential Print: Africa, 1834-1966 reproduces online in searchable PDF page images important British Foreign Office and Colonial Office documents on Africa from the start of the historical modern British colonial enterprise in Africa through the first years of African national independence.
Confidential Print: Africa was originally compiled as reprints of important correspondence for confidential circulation to leading Foreign Office officials, Cabinet members, and heads of British missions abroad. The set includes ingoing and outgoing diplomatic dispatches and other correspondence, statistical reports, accounts of tours and profiles of leading figures, minutes of meetings and conferences and texts of treaties. A collection of 300 maps separated from their parent print is included in the online resource.
The online collection reproduces these entire Confidential Print: Africa Colonial Office, Dominions Office, and Foreign Office file classes held at The National Archives (UK) including:
| CO 879/1-190 | Africa, 1848-1961 |
| CO 886/1-11 | Dominions, 1907-1925 |
| DO 116/1-8 | Dominions (South African), 1913-1944 |
| FO 341/1-3 | Africa 1884-1900 |
| FO 401/1-48 | Abyssinia, 1846-1956 |
| FO 403/1-482 | Africa, 1834-1957 |
| FO 413/1-99 | Morocco and North-West Africa, 1839-1957 |
| FO 458/1-157 | West Africa, 1882-1950 |
| FO 468/1-4 | British Commonwealth, 1945-1949 |
| FO 485/1-3 | Liberia, 1947-1949 |
| FO 540/1-6 | Libya, 1951-1956 |
and selected files from additional Colonial Office, Dominions Office, and War Office file classes:
| CO 885/1-140 | War and Colonial Department and Colonial Office, 1839-1966 |
| DO 114/1-120 | Dominions Office, 1924-1951 |
| DO 201/1-53 | Commonwealth Relations Office, 1946-1966 |
| WO 287/1-287 | War Office, 1904-1949 |
The online Confidential Print: Africa collection greatly enhances the Penn Libraries' British documents holdings. The print set, British documents on foreign affairs, covering the mid-19th century through 1956, reprints selections only from from the Foreign Office Confidential Print series.
Confidential Print: Africa is an Adam Matthew Digital Archives Direct product, a series from which the Penn Libraries has purchased Confidential Print: Middle East, 1839-1969 and the forthcoming Confidential Print: Latin America, 1833-1969.
For more information:
Lauris Olson, Librarian & Coordinator of Social Sciences Collections
