Military Department Library

Both the Military Department and the Political and Secret Department built up working reference collections, or 'libraries', which were housed within their offices in the India Office building and which was kept apart from the main India Office accumulation of Official Publications. The Military Department acted as a distribution point for certain official publications from India, such as the various runs of Army Lists, keeping its own reference sets of them. It also received relevant British publications together with a large number of confidential or secret prints produced in India or the UK, and purchased commercially published monographs. The collection, which was completely uncatalogued, was arranged in a series of cupboards according to broad subject or geographical divisions, e.g. British Army, Africa. The present arrangement reproduces these divisions, as follows: L/MIL/17/1 British Army L/MIL/17/2 Bengal Army L/MIL/17/3 Madras Army L/MIL/17/4 Bombay Army L/MIL/17/5 Indian Army L/MIL/17/6 Indian States Forces L/MIL/17/7 Burma Army L/MIL/17/8 Royal Navy L/MIL/17/9 Indian Navy L/MIL/17/10 Royal Air Force L/MIL/17/11 Miscellanea L/MIL/17/12 India, Bhutan & Sikkim, Ceylon L/MIL/17/13 North-West Frontier, Baluchistan L/MIL/17/14 Afghanistan, Central Asia, Tibet L/MIL/17/15 Iran, Iraq, Persian Gulf L/MIL/17/16 Arabia, Syria, Turkey, Cyprus L/MIL/17/17 Africa L/MIL/17/18 North-East Frontier L/MIL/17/19 Burma, South-East Asia L/MIL/17/20 China, Japan

Unrestricted