Great Britain. Colonial Office : Throughout the seventeenth century, various committees of the British Privy Council provided advice to the King on plantations or colonial affairs including, in 1670, the Colonial Council which assumed two functions: the review of colonial laws and the preparation of instructions for colonial governors. In 1672, the parallel Council for Trade was joined to the Colonial Council and the two became a joint Council for Trade and Plantations. The instructions for the new council formed the basis for subsequent councils. In 1674 the Privy Council Committee once again assumed responsibility for control of the colonies. In 1675, a special Privy Council committee, the Lords of Trade and Plantations assumed authority until 1696. The secretaries of state conveyed the King's will to the Lords of Trade and the colonial governors but did not acquire a monopoly of correspondence with the governors.
The Board of Trade (abbreviation for the Lords of Trade and Plantations), established by William III in 1696, consisted of Ministers of State and was led by a president. It was to advise the Crown on questions relating to plantations, trade and poor law. In practice, it confined its activities to plantations, investigating colonial administration of justice, the governors' instructions, candidates for colonial appointments, colonial legislation and the activities of the colonial governor himself. The Board was subordinate to the secretaries of state but they were dependent upon it for effective action in many fields of colonial affairs. The secretaries, northern and southern, relied on the Board of Trade's advice regarding colonial affairs. A third secretary of state was created in 1768 responsible primarily for the colonies.
With the loss of the American colonies, the Board of Trade was abolished in 1782 as was the third secretaryship but were revived in 1784 and in 1794 respectively. The office of the third secretary was revived to supervise war with France and nominally also the colonies, setting the scene for the actual union in 1801 of the War and Colonial Departments under one secretary of state. While the Colonial Office did not emerge as an entirely separate department of state until 1854, save for the fleeting existence of the third or American secretary of state during the revolutionary period, it is common to refer to 1801 as the birth date of the Colonial Office. In this year, responsibility for colonial affairs was transferred from the Home Office to the secretary of state for the new department of War and the Colonies.
From at least 1822, the work of the Colonial Office was organized into four geographical departments, one of which being North America (including Bermuda). However, not all the work fitted a territorial framework since some matters affected the colonies collectively. In 1854, with the onset of the Crimean War and reforms in the British civil service, the Colonial and War Offices were split from one another and a separate Colonial Office, headed by a secretary of state for the colonies, was established. By the 1870s events in the British Empire, including the growth of autonomy in British North America, the Australian colonies and New Zealand, provided the Colonial Office with diplomatic responsibilities.
In 1907, pursuant to a decision of the Imperial Conference, the Colonial Office was divided in two: the Crown Colonies Division for dependencies and the Dominions Division for the self-governing parts of the empire. Thereafter, the role of the Colonial Office in relation to the dominions declined. This arrangement ended in 1925 with the establishment of a separate Dominions Office for self-governing colonies, which included Canada. In 1966, the Commonwealth Relations Office and the Colonial Office merged to form a single Commonwealth Office. In 1968, the Commonwealth Office and the Foreign Office merged and any vestige of the old Colonial Office disappeared. R.B. Pugh, The Records of the Colonial and Dominions Offices. Public Record Office Handbooks, No. 3, London, 1964.
