The Foreign and Commonwealth Office Migrated Archives are a collection of about 20,000 files and other records created by the governments of 41 British colonial dependencies, removed to the UK at independence, and held clandestinely for decades in various repositories in and around London. They came only from territories administered by the Colonial Office, so not from India and other dependencies administered by the India Office and its predecessors, whose records are in the India Office Records at the British Library.
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) was finally forced to admit the existence of the 'migrated archives' in 2011 during the course of the 'Mau Mau litigation', a case brought against the British government by veterans of the 1952–1960 struggle for independence in Kenya who claimed compensation for ill-treatment and torture. Foreign Secretary William Hague announced in the House of Commons on 5 May 2011 that he intended "to release every part of every paper of interest subject only to legal exemptions". The collection was transferred to the UK National Archives (TNA), and opened to the public, during 2012 and 2013. It is held at TNA under the reference FCO 141. There are redactions and closed and retained items, but it appears that nothing was destroyed during the process of transfer. Unknown quantities of related material were destroyed by the British authorities in the former dependencies during the decolonisation period. It is not known if anything was destroyed after the removal to the UK. Certainly some was lost during the many moves from one building to another.
Because of the circumstances of the release of these records it was initially believed that the entire content was sensitive and potentially incriminating. In fact, content is highly miscellaneous and sometimes mundane. FCO 141 also includes files created by the FCO, TNA, and their predecessors which are about the 'migrated archives' rather than part of them. Material in FCO 141 covers dates between 1835 and 2012.
Background
The process of removal/destruction
The British government's policy towards 'migrated archives' emerged from a wartime emphasis that sought to keep information valuable to a "potentially hostile power" out of official publications.FCO 141/1158, Colonial Office confidential circular, 6 June 1939; cited in Banton, Mandy. Displaced Archives in The National Archives of the United Kingdom, Mandy Banton. In: By 1943 a new file classification system was adopted to define authorised access to files. As ex-dependencies asserted their independence the same policy was adapted to keep information deemed sensitive and potentially embarrassing to the British government from the ministers and officials of the newly formed governments. The first of the 'migrated archives' sent to the UK came from Ceylon (Sri Lanka), which achieved independence in 1948. These records contained 464 volumes of dispatches between successive governors of Ceylon and the Colonial Office in London dating as far back as 1835. Documents in the 'migrated archives' for as many as 11 territories date to the nineteenth century and many more to before the Second World War.
Archival evidence suggests that in the first instance the decision to move records was motivated by 'historical interest' in the records. Later, however, it became evident that the decision to move the records would set a precedent and shape the memory of the Empire. The process of migration, and destruction of files was named Operation Legacy. Sohei Sato states that this was a nomenclature applied at a later stage in the process of the transfer or destruction of documents. Sato calls this an apt name reflecting the colonial government's effort to control the empire's legacy.
Documents that were to be left to post-independence governments, known as "legacy files", were separated from "watch files", which were marked for destruction or repatriation. Africans were forbidden from involvement: only "a servant of the Kenya government who is a British subject of European descent" could participate. The watch-file instructions also made clear to leave no trace of their existence to successor governments: "The legacy files must leave no reference to watch material. Indeed, the very existence of the watch series, though it may be guessed at, should never be revealed." If possible, a dummy file was inserted to ensure file and page numbering was uninterrupted by the cull; when too many dummies were needed, they simply removed or destroyed the entire section.
Before documents were transferred from Ceylon there were debates about whether the documents should be handed over to the new government or to the incoming British High Commissioner to Ceylon. It was eventually decided that secret and personal documents should 'either be destroyed or sent home'. The Ceylon project did not raise any eyebrows. An undated British document stated that there had 'been no reports that there is any local knowledge of records having been removed'. The policy for the migration or destruction of archives was first formalised in the Gold Coast (Ghana). In May 1956 the Colonial Office in Britain, which was overseeing the transfer of power, was apprised by the Governor's Office in the Gold Coast of the decision to set up a committee for scrutinising the records in their custody. The scrutiny would segregate records to be handed over to the new government from records which:
would be of no use to a future Gold Coast Government; might embarrass a member of Her Majesty's Government if seen by a Gold Coast Minister; or might embarrass members of the Gold Coast Police or military forces or public servants or who had cooperated with the British; or might compromise sources; or might be used unethically by Gold Coast Ministers.
Ghana achieved independence in 1957, by which time this separation had been successfully effected. This process was subsequently codified in what came to be known later as 'Operation Legacy'. It was successfully adapted and refined to the context of Malaya, Tanganyika, Uganda and Kenya and other colonies that achieved independence in the 1950s and 1960s. The operation in the Gold Coast became the blueprint for directives from the Colonial Office to the colonial governors from 1961 onwards.
Development of Colonial Office policy
Policy for the destruction or removal of documents in states where the transfer of power was to take place was not initially uniform. Mandy Banton, an expert on the 'migrated archives', writes that there are more differences than similarities in many practices in the British Empire's different colonies that evolved locally over many years. Individual governors and their staffs had a degree of autonomy. Those colonies that became independent in the years up to 1960—Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Gold Coast (Ghana), Malaya (Malaysia) and Nigeria—discussed the disposal of their government records with the appropriate Colonial Office geographical department and with the Colonial Office Librarian who was responsible for the Office's own archives. Early interest in retaining the records or transferring them to the Colonial Office appears to have been motivated primarily for preservation for historical reference. In 1961, responsibility for the 'disposal' of colonial government records was assigned to the Intelligence and Security departments of the Colonial Office. These departments worked closely with the Security Service which oversaw intelligence and security matters in the British dependencies. It was only then that a standard policy emerged. The priorities and the interest in the transfer of the records shifted from archival interest to matters of sensitivity to the Empire's security and the prevention of embarrassment to the UK. Banton quotes C. E. R Darby, who was responsible for the transfer:
Standardised instructions were sent first to the East African dependencies in early 1961, and subsequently to those colonies still to achieve independence. The emphasis of the Colonial Office was not primarily on destruction of documents or their transfer to London, but on avoiding passing them to incoming independent governments and peoples who might find information that prejudiced the interests of the departing imperial power. Governors were specifically asked to ensure that certain records were not left for ministers and officials in the incoming independent governments, viz. those which: Might embarrass HMG (Her Majesty's Government) or other governments; Might embarrass members of the police, military forces, public servants or others (such as police agents or informers); Might compromise sources of intelligence; Might be used unethically by ministers in the successor government.
Despite the advice passed to the governors, the policy of removing or otherwise disposing of documents was still unevenly executed, as implementation depended largely on the decisions of local officials. The actions of the governors varied wildly. Some were anxious to preserve as much as possible, while others consigned huge quantities to the flames. David Anderson's article, 'Guilty Secrets' describes the anecdotal account of a woman who spent the last weeks as a clerk in Nairobi's Government House in Kenya "taking bundles of documents onto the governor's lawn and stuffing them into a brazier. The fires never ended, she exclaimed with a laugh."
Material held in other collections
In 1947 India was granted independence from Britain. Prior to this much of the Indian subcontinent and beyond was governed first by the British East India Company (Company rule in India). The British East India Company was founded in 1600 and were initially given exclusive rights to trade in Asia. They then officially governed India between 1757 and 1858, after which the British Crown took over until 1947. At the end of British crown rule in 1947 the territory that Britain ruled over was divided or partitioned into India and a new state of Pakistan (with East Pakistan later becoming Bangladesh).
Many of the records that relate to this extended period of British rule and of the subsequent handover and nation-building at partition are housed in the archives of the British Library India Office.
As Mandy Banton notes in 1947 "the India Office was abolished, and its staff transferred to the CRO. The Indian Records Section (later the India Office Records) and the India Office Library, however, continued to exist as distinct entities."
For the British authorities the task dealing with the wide-range and nature of the documents they had created was problematical. Cahal Milmo describes the now 'infamous' bonfire of documents as British authorities left India, describing a note found in TNA documents for officials to "carefully control any bonfires of secrets" to "avoid a situation similar to Indian in 1947 when the local press was filled with reports about the "pall of smoke" ...over Delhi at the end of the Raj as British officials burnt their papers.". Destruction, as Ian Cobain's book 2016 book 'The History Thieves' details, later became official British policy in colonies in the 1950 and 1960s with regard to the secretive FCO 141 'migrated archives'.
Since 1947 there was a steady stream of demands from the newly formed Indian government requesting the return of the India Office Library from the UK. These many disputes spotlight "independent contestations over the inheritance of an imperial archive, reveals a post-colonial retention regime that resisted both parting with its riches as well as releasing classified documents, and traces the trajectory of a tussle over the centralisation of this corpus". The partition also highlighted the problems relating to partitioning archives relating to the independent countries arising from the partition, for example with the feeling that "Pakistan was created with a deficit not only in funds, armies, bureaucracies, but also in history".