There may be material in The National Archives on colonial administrators such as correspondence, appointments and promotions - a good source to start with is the Colonial Office list statement of services (annual from 1865) because these tend to give place of birth for colonial administrators - appointed by the colonial office. Depending on the grades of the people he is looking for the annual blue books of statistics (from 1820) give details of appointments for people appointed by the colonial office, governor and local government but not lower positions - these don't give place of birth.

My great-grandfather and his brother from Barbados both served in various roles in West Africa before finally retiring in Kenya and Mauritius respectively. Although both had English wives there is no evidence that they had close ties to the UK. I don't know how common it was for West Indian colonial administrators who worked in Africa to move to the UK - why would they - it was cold and grey!

Ethnicity / colour is not recorded on application forms and rarely in correspondence unless it is relevant. I don't know how relevant ethnicity is to his research.

Guy
----------------------------
Guy Grannum
Discovery Product Manager
The National Archives, Kew, Surrey, TW9 4DU, UK
tel: +44(0)20 8392 5330 x 2307
url: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk

-----Original Message-----
From: The Black and Asian Studies Association [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Peter B Freshwater MA, DipLib, FSA Scot
Sent: 12 August 2014 09:34
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: PhD student on BWI colonial officials in Africa needs advice

If the remit of this research were to extend to cover missionary societies, there are records of at least one instance (and there may have been more) of the London Missionary Society employing a Caribbean couple as missionaries in the very early years of the C20, ca 1900-1910, in North-Eastern Rhodesia. They get a mention in one of Robert Rotberg's books on Christian missions in Northern Rhodesia / Zambia, and details will be found in the LMS/Council for World Mission Archive in SOAS. The LMS regarded this as something of a failed experiment, if I remember rightly.

Peter

Peter B Freshwater MA, DipLib, FSA Scot
Editor, University of Edinburgh Journal
Edinburgh
Email: [log in to unmask]

On 12/08/2014 08:05, msherwood wrote:
> A PhD student from the USA has asked for advice - other than Jeff
> Greene, whom else could he ask for help? Or for sources (I told him to
> go to the National Archives, and ask Rhodes House and the Royal Af.
> Society)
>
>
>
>
>
> I am a Phd student at the University of Wisconsin, and I am working on
> a project about "Caribbean colonizers," people from the Caribbean who
> worked for the French and British colonial administrations in Africa.
> I am also interested in finding links between these colonizers and
> black intellectuals and black internationalist organizations during the interwar years.
> .....
>
> I've been doing some searching in Gold Coast newspapers, and have
> found a number of names of West Indian Police Superintendents,
> Sanitation inspectors, customs officers, postmasters, etc. I have not
> found any strong connections to black internationalist groups in
> London. So far the main lead I have is John Alexander Barbour-James, a
> man from British Guiana who worked as a postmaster in the Gold Coast,
> and then moved to London where he was involved in the African Progress
> Union, and likely other movements. His wife Edith Rita Goring seems to have followed a similar trajectory.
>



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