British Colonial Service

The Colonial Service, also known as His/Her Majesty's Colonial Service, was the British government service which administered most of Britain's overseas possessions, under the authority of the Secretary of State for the Colonies and the Colonial Office in London. It did not operate in British India, where the same function was delivered by the Indian Civil Service.

Before 1931, there was no unified Colonial Service, nor even unified sub-services. Each British colony and overseas territory had its own administrative service, and prospective officers needed to apply directly to one or more of them. Once appointed, a colonial administrative officer wishing to transfer to another colony needed to make a new application to the government of that entity. However, the term "Colonial Service" as a general term for all these services was in use at least as far back as the 1860s.

In 1931, a unified Colonial Service was created, with sixteen sub-services, and each of its officers was a member of the civil service of the territory in which he served and also of the appropriate sub-service of the Colonial Service.

With almost all of the British overseas possessions in Asia gaining independence between the 1940s and 1950s, followed by most of those in Africa between the 1950s and the 1960s, the Colonial Service shrank dramatically in numbers. In the late 1960s, it was amalgamated with Her Majesty's Diplomatic Service.

The Colonial Service grew substantially from 1900, when there were only 1,000 overseas positions, through the period immediately following the Second World War when the number had grown to about 10,000. This largely reflected the increased numbers of technical and professional staff employed in medical, educational, agricultural, mining and other specialist areas (see "Other services" below). The disbanding of the separate Indian and Sudan Civil Services, in 1947 and 1956 respectively, led to an influx of former officials who sought to continue their careers in a Colonial Service which reached its maximum size of 18,000 in 1957. Thereafter, it diminished rapidly with the granting of independence to most of the colonial territories.

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