Confidential Print: Africa, 1834-1966

The Confidential Print: Africa, 1834-1966 is Official British government correspondence concerning Africa from the Foreign Office and the Colonial Office. The papers range from single-page letters or telegrams to comprehensive dispatches, investigative reports and texts of treaties. All items marked 'Confidential Print' were printed and circulated immediately to leading officials in the Foreign Office, to the Cabinet, and to heads of British missions abroad. From coastal trading in the early nineteenth century, through the Conference of Berlin of 1884 and the subsequent Scramble for Africa, to the abuses of the Congo Free State, fights against tropical disease, Italy's defeat by the Abyssinians, World War II, apartheid in South Africa and colonial moves towards independence, the documents in Confidential Print: Africa cover the whole of the modern period of European colonization of the continent.