Foreign Office: Consular Department: General Correspondence from 1906

This series contains correspondence, etc, of the Consular Department.

From the beginning of 1950 a revised filing system was adopted by the Foreign Office. This system was based on:

• i) an initial letter (or letters) indicating the Department concerned
• ii) a file number
• iii) a further number indicating the particular paper in the file

A separate series of code numbers for countries was used together with the file numbers for papers filed in the Claims, Consular and Information Policy Departments. This modification does not affect the basic filing principle, thus KG 1021/7 stands for paper 7 on file 1 in the consular Department's Argentina series.

Departmental index letters:

• K Consular
• K General
• KE Estates
• KG Geographical
• KL Legislation of Documents

For records from 1967 to 1968 see FCO 47

The records of the Consular Departments before 1906 are in the various country series of general correspondence, where they are usually bound separately, and distinguished in the catalogue by the description 'Consular' for the relevant pieces. Some consular correspondence is included in the confidential print.

from 1939 Foreign and Commonwealth Office

Topics

International

A separate Consular Department was set up in 1825 to deal with the consular correspondence of the Foreign Office. Between 1866 and 1872 it was combined with the Commercial Department as the Consular and Commercial Department, between 1872 and 1880 with the Slave Trade Department as the Consular and Slave Trade Department, and between 1882 and 1893 with the African Department as the Consular and African (East and West) Department. Between 1912 and 1919 a controller of commercial and consular affairs was responsible for both the Commercial and Consular Departments, which remained, however, separate entities.

In March 1967, in preparation for the formation of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, a Joint Foreign Office/Commonwealth Office Consular Department was established, replacing the Consular Department and the Commonwealth Office Nationality and Consular Department. This became the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Consular Department upon the creation of the new Office in October 1968.