The purpose of this article is to throw some light on the origin, arrangement, content, indexing and availability of Colonial Office Confidential Print and to suggest that for students of British imperialism, especially as it developed in Africa, CO Print deserves more attention than it currently receives. Admittedly there are difficulties in discovering precisely what was issued in Print format, particularly for the period from 1920 up to the demise of the Colonial Office in 1966, but with the assistance of the guides and indexes, some unpublished, to which reference will be made, access can be gained to this valuable resource.

Confidential Print first appeared within the Colonial Office in the mid nineteenth century, principally for reasons of administrative convenience. At a time when correspondence with the colonies was conducted by the exchange between individual Governors and the Secretary of State, of handwritten despatches – typewriters were not introduced into the colonial Office until 1893 – the production of printed volumes of correspondence on the more important issues of the day was necessary in order that the main papers on a subject could be widely circulated within the office without constant reference to the original despatches.