• > Home
• > Introduction
• > Ministerial archives

MINISTERIAL ARCHIVES

At the end of the XVIIth Century the repository for the archives of the Navy and the Colonies was organised in Paris. When in 1894 the first Ministry for the Colonies was created, the collections for the colonies were added to those of the Navy and were housed in the Pavillon de Flore, the office of the new ministry, and then in 1910 in the rue Oudinot.

Within the ministerial archives you will find:

• the old collections or archives from the First Colonial Empire (XVIIth C - start of the XIXth C).
• the modern ministerial archives
  (mainly those of the Second Colonial Empire XIXth C - XXth C)

In the ministerial collections there are also two important collections which illustrate the specific nature of the colonial administration:

• the Colonial Public Papers Repository, created by the edict of 1776. The colonies had to send the copies of parochial and civil status registers, notaries' minutes, court registers, mortgages and censuses to Metropolitan France.
• the Colonial Fortifications Repository, created in 1778 which brought together maps, plans and memoirs concerning the French possessions (XVIIth C - XIXth C).

As well as the collections from the Ministry for the Colonies the archives from ministries responsible for Algeria were kept:

• F 80: Ministry of the Interior
• F 81: Ministry for Algerian Affairs.

Penal colonies