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The Colonial Office Confidential Print online catalogue covers over 1000 documents from 1848 to 1915 pertaining to Africa. Selected correspondence, memoranda and other documents were copied for internal use in the Colonial Office and in some cases circulation to the Cabinet and brought together to form this collection. The documents range from a single page to a substantial volume, many containing maps.

The informaton in the online catalogue is based on information from the 'List of Colonial Office Confidential Print to 1916', London, HMSO, 1965.

For the historian this is an incredible set of primary source documents. They are a window to Britain's colonial past. Documents are numbered i-xxix, 1-1037.

 You can search for documents by:

•  Jurisdiction
•  Date
  
•  Document number
•  Keyword search 
  

You then have the option of emailing the results in a spreadsheet format.

The search will also return:

• Whether Oxford holds the document or not
• How many pages it has
  

The collection is held in the closed stack of the Bodleian Library of Commonwealth & African Studies at Rhodes House. A green slip should be filled in to request documents, quoting the collection shelfmark (100.27 s.10) and individual document number. Photocopying the documents is not permitted, however they can be scanned by Imaging Services. Personal scanners and cameras are not permitted.