Diplomacy and Political Secrets comprises a compilation of 4,204 rare China-related historical documents carefully selected from three series within the India Office Records now held at the British library: the Political and Secret Department Records, the Burma Office records, and the Records of the Military Department. These documents consist of manuscripts and monographs in the form of reports, memoranda, correspondence, pamphlets and official publications, intelligence diaries, accounts of political and scientific expeditions, travel diaries, handbooks and maps. Together they reflect the security concerns of British India. The frontier regions of China bordering British India were considered of strategic importance. This is why a large amount of material coming from Xinjiang (Chinese Turkestan), Tibet, and Yunnan was collected by the Political and Secret Department of the India Office, Military Department, and the Burma Office.

These records also exhibit the British India Office's interest in China's developments in various aspects after 1910, and the cooperation between China and Britain during WWII. Included also are official accounts of border disputes and negotiations involving China, India, Britain, Tibet, Xinjiang, Burma, Russia (later Soviet Union), Pakistan, and some other Central Asian countries. Military operations such as those during the Boxer Rebellion are also covered.

What Are the India Office Records?

The East India Company was founded in 1600 and received a monopoly on trade with all countries east of the Cape of Good Hope and west of the Straits of Magellan (mainly China and India). It transformed in the 18th century into a major territorial power that ruled large areas of India with its own private armies, exercising military power and assuming administrative functions, with its headquarters in Calcutta.

The British government established the Board of Control in London in 1784 to exercise supervision over the Company's Indian policies. Later, with the passage of the Acts of Parliament of 1813 and 1833, the Company lost its monopoly over the British trade with India and China. As a result, the Company withdrew completely from its commercial functions.

With the India Act of 1858, the Company and the Board of Control were replaced by a single new department of state, the India Office. The office functioned, under the Secretary of State for India, as an executive office of UK government alongside the Foreign Office, Colonial Office, Home Office, and War Office. The India Office inherited from the East India Company and the Board of Control all the executive functions and all the powers of "superintendence, direction and control" over the British Government in India.

The constitutional reforms initiated during the World War I and the India Acts of 1919 and 1935 led to a significant relaxation of India Office supervision over the Government of India, and a gradual devolution of authority to legislative bodies and local governments. The same reforms also led in 1937 to the separation of Burma from India and the creation in London of the Burma Office, separate from the India Office though sharing the same Secretary of State and located in the same building.

With the independence of India and Pakistan in 1947 and Burma in 1948, both the India Office and the Burma Office were dissolved.

The India Office Records are the repository of the archives of the East India Company (1600–1858), the Board of Control or Board of Commissioners for the Affairs of British India (1784–1858), the India Office (1858–1947), the Burma Office (1937–1948), and a number of related British agencies overseas which were officially linked with one or other of the four main bodies. The focus of the India Office Records is in the territories mainly that today include Central Asia, the Middle East, regions of Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia and their administration before 1947.