Colonial Fragility: British Embarrassment and the So-called ‘Migrated Archives’

Abstract

In the aftermath of the Hanslope Park disclosure and the release of the ‘migrated archives,’ the United Kingdom’s (UK) Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) had to supply a reason for how it came to pass those tens of thousands of classified records documenting Britain’s colonial administrations were stored in secret for half a century. Officially, the FCO responded that its own accidental neglect had resulted in the scandal. This article, by using archival materials released as part of the ‘migrated archives’ and research conducted at the Kenyan National Archive, argues that the contrary was true. In response to growing pressures from former colonies and international organisations, the FCO intentionally concealed ‘embarrassing’ colonial administrative files from public view as a strategy to preserve the UK’s diplomatic standing and political prowess amidst the geopolitical shifts caused by decolonisation and the Cold War. The article describes this strategy in the context of colonial fragility, or the cosmetic interest in protecting the UK’s reputation as a ‘good’ state, which in turn propagated harm along racialised lines by dislocating evidence of the colonial past.