Royal Archives

The ‘Foreign and Commonwealth Office migrated archives’ are sensitive and incriminating collections of documents from Britain’s former colonial governments that were sent back to the UK on the eve of decolonization for storage in the FCO archives to avoid their disclosure and subsequent embarrassment to Her Majesty's Government. In 2011, human rights atrocities were uncovered from these archives that were committed by British troops during the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya during the 1950s. There were details in the uncovered documents about detention camps and torture that occurred during the conflict. It gave grounds for surviving Mau Mau to seek compensation against the crown in recent years. The atrocities of the conflict were not widely known about until then.