Title: FO 566 Foreign Office
Description: The indexing of FO 605: Foreign Office: Registers (Library Series) and Indexes of General Correspondence runs up to 1890, after which point the FO 566 series becomes the primary series of registers. Indexing to the volumes of FO 566 included in Imperial China and the West can be found in FO 738: Foreign Office: Indexes to General Correspondence, Photographic Copies and FO 804: Foreign Office: Indexes to General Correspondence. Within FO 566 there is some variation, but in general the researcher will find information on despatches received by the Foreign Office in black ink on the left-hand side of the page. Despatches sent by the Foreign Office are usually noted in red ink on the right-hand side. Further information might include any or all of the following elements: Despatch number; Author (when other than the Foreign Office representative); Recipient (when other than the Foreign Office representative); Date of the despatch; Subject of the despatch; Reference number for previous correspondence relating to the subject of the despatch. The FO 566 Registers do not supply the volume number for the FO 17 series, so identification of the volume in question must be made based on the volume title, looking at the named author or recipient, the date of the volume and any numbered despatches contained in it. A browsable list of all the volumes in part 2 of FO 17 can be found on the Collection page for that series.
Subjects: Sources, Foreign relations, History, Politics and government, Great Britain. Foreign Office, Great Britain
Places: Great Britain, China
Time periods: 19th century