Catalogue description Commonwealth Office and Foreign and Commonwealth Office: East Africa Departments: Registered Files (P and JE Series)

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Details of FCO 31
Reference: FCO 31
Title: Commonwealth Office and Foreign and Commonwealth Office: East Africa Departments: Registered Files (P and JE Series)
Description:

This series consists of records of the East Africa Department (January to March 1967 and February to October 1968) and the East and Southern Africa Department (March 1967 to February 1968) of the Commonwealth Office dealing with UK and Commonwealth relations with Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Malawi, Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland and Mauritius, and Commonwealth interests in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa and, (for the period March 1967 to February 1968), Portuguese Africa and South Africa. From October 1968 the records are those of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office East African Department dealing with Rwanda, Burundi, Ethiopia, Congo (Kinshasa) from July 1969 on, Kenya, Mauritius, Somalia, Tanzania and Uganda, as well as the East African Community and the Organisation of African Unity.

Date: 1967-1992
Arrangement:

By former file reference within file cycles

Related material:

For earlier Commonwealth Office files dealing with relations with East and Central Africa see:

For earlier Colonial Office files on Swaziland see CO 1048

DO 212

DO 213

DO 214

Held by: The National Archives, Kew
Former reference in its original department: JE and P file series
Legal status: Public Record(s)
Language: English
Creator:

Commonwealth Office, East and Southern Africa Department, 1968-1968

Commonwealth Office, East Africa Department, 1967-1967

Commonwealth Office, East and Southern Africa Department, 1967-1968

Foreign and Commonwealth Office, East African Department, 1968-1992

Physical description: 7218 file(s)
Access conditions: Open unless otherwise stated
Immediate source of acquisition:

From 1999 Foreign and Commonwealth Office

Accruals: Series is accruing
Administrative / biographical background:

The East Africa Department of the Commonwealth Office was renamed the East and Southern Africa Department in March 1967 when responsibility for Commonwealth relations with Swaziland, South Africa and Portuguese Africa passed to the new department from the Southern Africa Department. The East Africa Department was reconstituted in February 1968 when a separate Zambia, Malawi and Southern Africa Department was formed (in the lead up to the achievement of full independence by Swaziland in September 1968).

These changes were largely due to the need to accommodate a declining geographical work load in the Commonwealth Office in the months leading up to the formation of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The Department was abolished in October 1968 and its functions were split between the Southern African Department and the East African Department, which dealt with Commonwealth East Africa, Rwanda/Burundi, Ethiopia, and Somalia and, from July 1969, Congo (Kinshasa) and the East African Community and the Organisation of African Unity. Responsibility for relations with the French Territory of Afars and Issas was added in 1971. The name of Congo (Kinshasa) was changed to the Republic of Zaire in 1971.

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