Public Record Office Collections: general overview and overview of Caribbean holdings

IDENTITY STATEMENT AREA

Reference code(s): PRO

Title: Public Record Office Collections: general overview and overview of Caribbean holdings

Date(s): 1100- -

Level of description: Fond

Extent and medium of the unit of description:

CONTEXT AREA

Name of creator(s): Public Record Office

Administrative/Biographical history:

Archival history:

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CONTENT AND STRUCTURE AREA

Scope and content: The Public Record Office (PRO) is the national archive of the UK, holding primarily records of central government departments. It brings together and preserves the records of central government and the courts of law, and makes them available to all who wish to consult them. The records span an unbroken period from the 11th century to the present day.

The PRO holds a range of records relevant to the Caribbean, and the history of Black and Asian peoples in the UK, please see the PRO pilot survey report and the PRO records included in the CASBAH database for further details.

An overview of the PRO's Caribbean holdings follows,which spans the period circa 1600-1971: these include the Colonial Office and its predecessors and successors, the records of which include correspondence from the governors of British dependencies in the Caribbean from the earliest years of English settlement (with associated registers and indexes for some periods), and collections of sessional papers, locally enacted statutes, government gazettes, and statistical returns (blue books).

Other Colonial Office series include records of the West Indies Development and Welfare Organisation, records relating to United States Bases, and records of the Imperial Department of Agriculture in Barbados. Full details of Colonial Office records are given in Anne Thurston, Sources for Colonial Studies in the Public Record Office, volume 1 Records of the Colonial Office, Dominions Office, Commonwealth Relations Office and Commonwealth Office (HMSO, London, 1995).

Also included among the colonial records are collections of newspapers published in Antigua & Montserrat, Bahamas, Barbados, Bermuda, British Guiana (Guyana), Dominica, Jamaica, St Lucia and Trinidad for the period 1826-1856 only. There are records of a variety of commissions and committees, including the West India Royal Commission (1938-39), the British Guiana Sugar Industry (Venn) Commission (1948-49), the British Guiana Constitutional Commission (1950-51), the British Guiana Constitutional Commission (1954), and the Commission of Inquiry into Disturbances in British Guiana in February 1962. Records of the West Indian Incumbered Estates Commission include papers of 205 estates, mainly in Jamaica and Antigua.

The colonial records also include material on some Caribbean islands which were under British administration for comparatively short periods, for example Curaçao, Guadaloupe, Havana, Martinique, St Croix, St Eustatius, St Thomas, Santo Domingo, and Surinam.

The Commonwealth Relations Office (and its successors the Commonwealth Office and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office) assumed responsibility for British relations with each colony as it achieved independence, and the correspondence and reports arising from this relationship are also in the PRO. Records of the Foreign Office also contain material about the colonial possessions of other European powers, and the independent states not formerly part of the British Empire.

Records of the British military presence in the Caribbean, in both wartime and peacetime, can be found in War Office and Admiralty record series, and to a lesser extent those of the Air Ministry. Records of the Treasury include those of the Office for the Registry of Colonial Slaves and the Slave Compensation Commission. The slave registers cover the period 1817-1834 and provide much information about slaves and their owners, although the detail varies from island to island. Records of the Treasury itself are also important because of its role in approving expenditure of other departments, as are the records of the Crown Agents, the Overseas Development Administration and its predecessors, and the British Council. Many other government departments will have had an occasional or sporadic involvement in matters relating to the Caribbean.

The Cabinet and its committees discussed particularly important issues, especially those relating to constitutional change, and references may also be found among the records of the Prime Minister's Office. The Cabinet also provided the secretariat for many constitutional and other international conferences, as well as the regular meetings of Commonwealth prime ministers.

Numerous maps are held, many of which have been described in Maps and Plans in the Public Record Office, volume 2, America and West Indies, ed. P A Penfold (HMSO, London, 1974). Photographs are more difficult to identify; many remain undiscovered in files and volumes of correspondence, but a partial index exists at the PRO. Among discrete collections of photographs mention should be made of the British Empire Collection of Photographs, 1945-1965.

The PRO does not usually hold the locally created records of colonial governments, which are now held in the relevant national archives. For the Caribbean, the exception to this rule is that Colonial Office records include some documents of the Dutch West India Company relating to the administration of Essequibo, Demerara and Berbice (1686 to 1792), which are in the series British Guiana Miscellanea (CO 116). They were surrendered to the UK government by the government of the Netherlands in 1819, on the ground that they were needed for the effective administration of the territories. The remainder of the records are in the Rijksarchief at The Hague.

Appraisal, destruction and scheduling information:

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System of arrangement: Most of these records are in separate series for the individual islands and mainland territories, but there are also series for the entire region, and for the Leeward Islands, Windward Islands, and the Federation of the West Indies.

During the twentieth century the Colonial Office moved gradually away from a purely geographical arrangement of its work and records, and much material about the Caribbean is included in subject department series such as those of the Economic Department, the Social Services Department, and the Defence Department.

CONDITIONS OF ACCESS AND USE AREA

Conditions governing access:

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Language/scripts of material: English

Physical characteristics:

Finding aids: The PRO's catalogue is available online at http://www.pro.gov.uk. It should be noted, however, that for many series no detailed descriptive lists are as yet available, and researchers need to use original registers and indexes available only at the PRO. This is true particularly of Colonial Office correspondence before 1926, and Foreign Office correspondence before 1919. Volumes of the Indexes to Foreign Office General Correspondence, 1920 to 1951, have been reprinted by Kraus International Publications.

ALLIED MATERIALS AREA

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Publication note: For the period from 1574 to 1739, précis and transcripts of documents in the PRO relating to the region have been published in the Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies (40 volumes, HMSO, London, 1860-1994, and CDROM version, Routledge, London, 2000).

DESCRIPTION CONTROL AREA

Recorder's note:

Rules or conventions: Compiled in compliance with General International Standard Archival Description, ISAD(G), second edition, 2000; National Council on Archives Rules for the Construction of Personal, Place and Corporate Names, 1997.

Date(s) of descriptions: January 2002

Interest: Caribbean, Black, Asian

Specific group:

Subjects

Colonization

Colonial countries

Black peoples

Caribbean peoples

Asian peoples

Interethnic relations

Personal/Corporate names

Places

Caribbean