This guide will help you to find records created by the Foreign Office since its birth in 1782, and by its successor, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and now held at The National Archives.
The records of the Foreign Office provide a wealth of information on British relations with foreign states from 1782 to the present day and can also provide insights into the history of domestic issues in countries around the world.
The guide provides advice on the different ways in which you will need to use our own catalogue as well as the indexes and registers created by the Foreign Office itself to find individual records. There is also advice on how to find treaties dating back to 1695 and now held among Foreign Office records.
The Foreign Office was created in 1782 and became the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1968. It was the government department responsible for the conduct of British relations with nearly all foreign states between those dates (British colonies and dominions were dealt with by separate departments).
From 1968, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office assumed these roles, in addition to administering the remaining British dependencies and managing relations with the Commonwealth (previously the responsibility of the Commonwealth Office).
In September 2020 the Department for International Development was merged with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to form the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.
For further details, see the administrative histories in Discovery, our catalogue, for departments FO and FCO
