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Section F is an alphabetical list of Colonies with lists of Governors and the Colonial or Chief Secretaries in each. Section G covers the structure of the Colonial Office since 1854 and lists its senior officials until its merger with the Commonwealth Relations Office in 1966. Sections H, I and J relate to the India Office between 1858 and 1947 and provide coverage of both Indian Governors and the senior staff of the India Office in London.
SOURCES A Select Bibliography is provided on page 8. Initially the principal source used was the annual Foreign Office List(from 1965 the Diplomatic Service List). However publication of this invaluable source ceased in 2006. In addition, latterly the annual editions only provided complete lists of the names of Ambassadors for the previous twenty years or so. My access to these Lists (and to those of the Colonial Office, India Office and Commonwealth Relations Office-as the project expanded) was through very lengthy periods over many years spent working in the Reference Room of the Edinburgh Public Library. That library however does not hold copies of these lists from the earlier part of my chosen period. In the later stages of the exercise I had the advantage of being able to work at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Library and at the National Archives at Kew and to make use of the Lists unavailable in Edinburgh.
DIPLOMATS AND HOME CIVIL SERVANTS While the great majority of officials in this Directory would nowadays be called diplomats, thus justifying the title of this Directory, many of them were not defined as diplomats at the time of their service. The definition of a diplomat has widened significantly since the early twentieth century. Until 1919 a British diplomat was a member of the Diplomatic Service, which staffed missions overseas. It had been uncommon for such a diplomat to be employed within the Foreign Office in London although such employment had been increasing prior to the end of the First World War. When the Diplomatic Service and the Foreign Office were officially merged in 1919 all of the staff became members of the new Diplomatic Service. Foreign Office staff, in other words, became diplomats. Similarly, the Consular Service had been separate until it too was merged with the Diplomatic Service at the end of the Second World War. All former Commonwealth Relations Office and Colonial Office staff who joined the Foreign Office in the mid-1960s to create the Foreign and Commonwealth Office were transferred from the Home Civil Service to the Diplomatic Service, thereby becoming diplomats.