Catalogue description Colonial Office and Successors: Agreements, Treaties and Miscellaneous Documents

This series contains the British Government's copies of formal documents relating to agreements, treaties, etc, with and concerning various Commonwealth countries. In addition to treaties on defence and security, treaties of independence and agreements confirming territorial boundaries, the series includes files relating to treaties of friendship and co-operation and contingency planning, as well as agreements on fiscal and taxation matters, on oil, on commercial debts, on the maintenance of minimum sterling reserves and on trade and customer policies.

This series also contains papers concerning agreements on matters as diverse as social security and pensions arrangements, railways, the establishment of telecommunications and air services, and loans of United Kingdom military, police and technical personnel to assist in the training of Commonwealth counterparts. A proportion of the records in this series contain reports of independence and constitutional conferences. Earlier records in this series concern grants made through the Colonial Office of licences to allow various private individuals and companies to occupy British colonial and territorial possessions for commercial, trading or mining purposes.

For further records relating to the 1919 agreement under which the British Phosphate Commission was established see DO 140