FO 1111 index cards available online

12 Nov 2014 01:40 PM

We have put online over 750,000 digitised records relating to the Foreign Office for the period from 1906 to 1920. These FO 1111 index cards provide a way into some of the most important documents relating to British foreign policy in this period, including those on the outbreak of the First World War. 

These records are the original index cards produced by the Foreign Office as a means of searching the vast quantity of correspondence that the department was producing. The cards are arranged alphabetically for each year. They have a unique alpha-numerical code which, where they survive, enables readers to find the original file within our record series, in particular FO 371. 

You can search the index for free, from home, to look for thousands of topics relating to British foreign policy in the period.

For more information on these index cards and how to translate the references found in them into current references used here at The National Archives, see our research guide.