‘Apply the Flame More Searingly’: The Destruction and Migration of the Archives of British Colonial Administration: A Southeast Asia Case Study

Abstract

In 2011, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office formally acknowledged that it held records of local colonial administration that had been removed from their repositories prior to independence and eventually transferred to the United Kingdom. These records are in the process of transfer to the National Archives. Using records released as part of the transfer so far, this article analyses the process of assessment, destruction and removal of local administrative records in Malaya prior to independence in 1957, and North Borneo and Sarawak prior to their incorporation into Malaysia in 1963. Due to the survival of unusually detailed lists of the records held in the North Borneo and Sarawak registries and their fates, a comparative analysis of two parallel processes can be undertaken that sheds light on the physical practicalities of the selection, removal and destruction process: in short what survived and why. This article also assesses the extent to which this process was managed from the metropole or locally, how the process changed over time and how the colonial officials who undertook this work understood, justified and rationalised what they were doing.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Drs Mandy Banton, Richard Smith and Stephen Twigge for their helpful comments on the text.

Notes

The views expressed here are personal and should not be taken to represent the policies or views of the British government, the National Archives, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Ministry of Defence or the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst.

https://www.gov.uk/archive-records. Note that not all of the ‘migrated archives’ relate to transfer from colonies on the verge of independence. The migrated archive for the British Indian Ocean Territory (‘BIOT’) was transferred to the United Kingdom just before the independence of the Seychelles, the colony from which BIOT was administered until 1976. Also, the migrated archive for Anguilla covers the ‘revolution’ period from 1967 to 1971 until the introduction of British direct rule.

For an example of a pair of historians who did use the material before 2011, see Murray and Sanders, Medicine Murder in Colonial Lesotho, bibliography and sources, 464; original box and file numbers in Hanslope Park are given.

Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 39, no. 5 (2011).

Banton, ‘Destroy? “Migrate”? Conceal?’.

The migrated archives for Brunei have also been transferred to the National Archives, but are a relatively small group made up of three parts: those records from the Governor of Sarawak's office in his role as Brunei High Commissioner (Foreign and Commonwealth Office (hereafter FCO) 141/12435, 12443B–12490, 12505, National Archives of the United Kingdom (here after TNA)), records from the Resident's office from the period 1949–53 (FCO 141/1545–1594) and a short run of earlier records perhaps also originating from or later held by the Governor of Sarawak (FCO 141/12277–12281). None of these records contains any material on the processes by which they were removed. The migrated archive for Singapore has not yet been transferred at the time of writing, but cross-references to the Singapore process are few in the documents analysed here in comparison to those among Malaya, North Borneo and Sarawak.

The 1877 Public Records Act gave power to the Public Record Office to order the destruction of ‘valueless’ documents: Statute 40 and 41, Victoria, 55: 14 Aug. 1877: An Act to Amend the Public Record Office Act, 1838, section 1.

Schedules for the destruction of records can be found in official publications such as Statutes, Rules and Schedules. The oldest working retention schedule this author has found has been for the records of the Admiralty: ADM 116/3193, Admiralty schedules 1880, TNA.

For example, see the institution of the ‘member’ (i.e. quasi-ministerial) system in Kenya in the 1940s. Berman, Control and Crisis, 282–292.

Registry systems were, until as late as 1970, developed individually within each dependency and might have their own idiosyncrasies, although many did have elements in common.

Secretary of State for the Colonies (circular despatch), 26 May 1950, folio 2, FCO 141/4989, TNA. The timing of this initiative also suggests that it is not impossible that the investigation into the loss of documents from the British embassy in Moscow between 1944 and 1946 (later found to have been perpetrated by Donald Maclean) had also weighed on the decision to institute this new centralised process.

This is the case with the destruction of what would have become the migrated archive for British Guiana. FCO 141/13100, TNA, is not a record of colonial administration but of the Commonwealth Office's Intelligence and Security Department (ISD) which processed the notifications of accountable documents at the London end. It records correspondence in 1967 with the high commissioner in Georgetown over ‘very old’ documents held in the Commission's strong room which were transferred just before independence, but which there seemed ‘little justification for keeping’ any longer. ISD approved their destruction. H. M. S. Reid, British High Commission, Georgetown, to C. H. R. Darby, 3 Feb. 1967, and associated minute sheets 13 and 14 Feb.1967, folio 6, FCO 141/13100, TNA. The linkages between destruction prior to independence and the accountable documents process can also be glimpsed in a memorandum concerning the Gold Coast by P. A. Bunce, 31 Dec. 1956, folio 210, FCO 141/4989, TNA.

This rationale for destruction of top secret records is specifically given in: Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Finance to Secretary to the Governor, 4 March 1957 (re-sending certificates of 28 Feb. 1956), folio 212, FCO 141/4989, TNA.

One substantial set of records of colonial administration removed to the United Kingdom at the end of British rule were those of the Ionian Islands on their incorporation into Greece in 1864. These records have been at the National Archives/Public Record Office since the late nineteenth century and are to be found in Colonial Office (hereafter CO) 136/300 to 1433, TNA. See Banton, Administering the Empire, 24–25. There is no evidence that the Ionian Islands example was used as a precedent in or before 1948.

The types of records kept include Colonial Office circulars and runs of despatches and telegrams to and from the secretary of state for the colonies at the levels of confidential, secret, and secret and personal. One consequence of this ‘take-all’ approach is that the catalogue descriptions for the Ceylon material are very poor compared to those for the other ‘migrated’ records. See also Low, Iltis and Wainwright, Government Archives, 15, for a reference to a collection of Ceylon government records being described as a ‘weeded series’. Whether this weeding occurred as part of the migration or not is unclear.

Memorandum by O'Brien, 9 April 1963, folios 21 and 22, FCO 141/13025, TNA.

As was the case in Malaya, all records to be removed were consolidated in a single building a few months prior to independence; that building would on independence become the British High Commission.

W. J. Watts, Ministry of External Defence, to Private Secretary to High Commissioner, July 1956, folio 2, FCO 141/7524, TNA; see also W. J. Watts to Secretary to the Government, Federation of Malaya, July 1956, folio 3, ibid.

FCO 141/7344, TNA, gives casualty and compensation lists for members of Force 136 (wartime ‘stay-behind’ units).

Secretary for Internal Defence and Security to Secretary for External Defence, 12 July 1957, folio 5, FCO 141/7524, TNA; Secretary for External Defence to Secretary for Internal Defence and Security, 13 July 1957, folio 6, ibid.; Secretary for Internal Defence and Security to Secretary for External Defence, 2 Aug. 1957, folio 7, ibid.

FCO 141/7380, TNA. The date 1958 is given in the National Archives catalogue which suggests, if it is correct, a listing created after Merdeka, probably in the High Commission.

FCO 141/7444, TNA. Note that none of the files on the list which are marked ‘T[op] S[ecret]’ have survived.

See below (and notes 30 and 31) for Mills’ comments on the already removed material in the High Commission in 1963

This analysis was undertaken by reviewing each file or volume in turn, as the former references as given in the National Archives catalogue are not reliable indicators of the file's provenance. Certain references seen on the docket front as well as docket patterns and titles and reviews of the content give a more reliable indicator of the origin of the records.

D. C. MacGillivray to Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra, 30 July 1957, folio 5, FCO 141/13034, TNA.

F. Mills, British High Commission, Kuala Lumpur to M. MacMullen, c/o Secretariat, Kuching, Sarawak, 18 May 1963, FCO 141/13039, TNA; memorandum O'Brien to Holby, 3 May 1963, folio 3, FCO 141/13034, TNA.

Mills to MacMullen, para. 3, 18 May 1963, FCO 141/13039, TNA.

Ibid., para. 4

Ibid., paras 6, 7

It is possible that the three lists mentioned above were part of this second stage of review for destruction as they do list some files that have not survived

Mills to MacMullen, para. 8(7), FCO 141/13039, TNA.

Ibid., para. 8

Secretary of State for the Colonies to Officer Administering the Government of Tanganyika, 3 May 1961, folio 59, FCO 141/6957, TNA; Governor of Uganda to Secretary of State for the Colonies, 22 March 1961, folio 42, ibid.

J. D. Higham, Colonial Office to Sir William Goode, 29 Oct. 1962, note covered by folio 1, FCO 141/13034, TNA.

Higham to Goode, ibid.

Chief Secretary, Jesselton, circular, 5 Feb. 1963, folio 12, FCO 141/13025, TNA.

Chief Secretary, Jesselton, circular, 21 Feb. 1963, folio 13, FCO 141/13025, TNA.

Chief Secretary, Entebbe, ‘Operation Legacy’ circular memorandum, 28 Feb. 1961, folio 37/1, FCO 141/6957, TNA. The terms ‘DG’ and ‘Watch’ were stamped on the dockets of the files in question; ‘DG’ stood for deputy governor in the former case.

F. Mills, British High Commission, Kuala Lumpur, to M. MacMullen, Confidential Branch, Kuching, 18 May 1963, FCO 141/13039, TNA.

Ibid.

Mills to C. O. Shipp, SIFE, Singapore, 13 June 1963, FCO 141/13039, TNA.

M. MacMullen to F. Mills, 18 June 1963, FCO 141/13039, TNA.

Sir William Goode to J. D. Higham, Colonial Office, 11 June 1963, folio 5, FCO 141/13034, TNA.

C. O. Shipp, SIFE, Singapore to F. Mills, British High Commission, Kuala Lumpur, 22 July 1963, 141/13039, FCO.

F. Mills to T. O'Brien, June 1963, FCO 141/13039, TNA

Memorandum by T. O'Brien to Sir William Goode, 7 June 1963, folio 4, FCO 141/13034, TNA.

T. O'Brien to F. Mills, ‘Disposed of Secretariat Files’, 4 July 1963, FCO 141/13039, TNA.

O'Brien to Mills, 4 July 1963, FCO 141/13039, TNA.

O'Brien to Mills, 4 July 1963, annexes A and B, FCO 141/13039, TNA.

All of these are within the ranges FCO 141/12282–12287, 12289–12302, 12305–12311, 12575–12578 and 12999 to 13099, TNA. Note that O'Brien's total of 72 relates to file titles. A file title might be made up of a number of physical files (part 1, part 2, etc.) which would be given separate references in the National Archives catalogue

Early handwritten draft lists from April 1963 for defence files only can be found in folios 14 to 20, FCO 141/13025, TNA. These do give registry numbers and file titles, and give valuable information about the content of some of what was eventually destroyed. See also a list from August 1963 in folios 32 to 35 which lists all those defence files which were transferred to the secretariat. The hand annotations give further evidence of the provenance of some of the North Borneo records in FCO 141, TNA.

Mills to O'Brien, 20 July 1963, FCO 141/13039, TNA.

These files survive in FCO 141/12804 to 12905, TNA.

Only two non-current files have survived: FCO 141/12303 and 12304, TNA.

M. MacMullen to F. Mills, 8 May 1963, folio 6, FCO 141/13025, TNA.

Ibid.

M. MacMullen, Confidential Branch, Kuching to F. Mills, Kuala Lumpur, 18 June 1963, FCO 141/13039, TNA.

FCO 141/13031, TNA.

Table 4 is compiled from totals given at the end of the secret and top secret lists in FCO 141/3031, TNA, and from the totals given in MacMullen to Mills, 18 June 1963, FCO 141/13039, TNA. The total column does not necessarily give the total number of files in the registry, as some files (circa 5 per cent) had no recommendation against them.

The pre-1953 registry system Sarawak material—i.e. the non-current material—is in FCO 141/12288, 12312–12362, 12368–12434, 12436–12443A, 12491–12504, 12506–12531, 12783, 12784, 12786–12791, TNA.

Chief Secretary, Entebbe, ‘Operation Legacy’ circular memorandum, 28 Feb.1961, para. 6, folio 37/1, FCO 141/6957, TNA