Tag: FCO

Destroying and Doctoring the Empire’s Past: Comparing Hong Kong with Other British Colonies

Published on by CIGH Exeter
Victoria Harbour in Hong Kong as it looks today (image courtesy of the author)

Matthew Hurst
University of York

Inside The National Archives (TNA) is a glass box. A reader entering this special area of the reading room must don blue plastic gloves, then locate their requested items from inside a box. Once the reader has finished, they must wipe down surfaces and anything they touched, tick a form to indicate they have finished, reseal the item inside its box and return it to the shelf. Amongst the series that must be handled in this way, due to possible insecticide contamination, is the infamous FCO 141.[1]

In 2011, the British Government was forced to admit a secret. It had for decades been holding onto tens of thousands of files created by former colonial administrations that had been shipped to London on the eve of British withdrawal from their colonies. These records were subsequently released to TNA, where they formed FCO 141. A windfall for those interested in the colonies to which they pertained, the series also inspired research into how records were handled towards the end of the British Empire. Although colonial officials had considerable volition over how they affected withdrawal, a shared commitment to protecting the legacy of the Empire meant that many treated the files they had created in similar ways. As such, recent research has revealed that outgoing officials often destroyed or doctored countless files in an effort to uphold the Empire’s glorious image: a project that became known as ‘Operation Legacy’.[2]

One former British colony has, however, remained absent from the literature: Hong Kong. In a recent paper, I addressed this gap by piecing together the past, present and future of colonial records that were moved from Hong Kong to the UK.[3] In this post, I summarise the main findings of my paper by comparing the Hong Kong case with that of other British colonies and arguing that the handling of Hong Kong colonial government records was unique and largely escaped Operation Legacy.

Continue reading “Destroying and Doctoring the Empire’s Past: Comparing Hong Kong with Other British Colonies” →

What the Foreign & Commonwealth Office is Hiding in its Secret Archive

Published on by CIGH Exeter1 Comment

FCOarchives
FCO archives in Hanslope Park – Katie Engelhart, Vice Magazine.

Richard Overy

Following a meeting last month with representatives from the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO), Exeter Professor Richard Overy reports on the status of over 1 million secret files that the FCO has long kept hidden from the public. What is in the files? Will they be made available? If so, when? As Prof. Overy puts it, the situation remains ‘a rather gloomy one’. The Forum has previously reported on the secret archive’s implications for the history of decolonisation. Katie Engelhart (@katieengelhart), James Renton (@RentonJE, #secretarchive), Richard Overy, and Richard Drayton, among others, continue to keep us informed as events unfold.

The meeting was called by the FCO to inform interested academics and archivists about the current position of the so-called ‘Special Collections’ still held in the Foreign Office archives. The object was to gather views about what priority should be given to particular collections and to give a detailed breakdown of the current programme for releasing material to The National Archives. Around 60 people were in attendance with a panel of six experts, including representatives from TNA and the Lord Chancellor’s Advisory Council on archives.

The following points summarize the information that was given at the meeting: Continue reading “What the Foreign & Commonwealth Office is Hiding in its Secret Archive” →