Blue Books for Colonial British Africa in the Penn Libraries: Home

Blue Books are a mainstay for research on the British colonies in Africa. Blue Books are annual reports of the British colonies. Colonial regulations issued in 1843 state:

The Annual Blue Book containing accounts of the Civil Establishment, of the Colonial Revenue and Expenditure and of various statistical particulars, etc. ... must be filled up with the greatest possible accuracy and the Statistical Tables must be full and complete.

It has been observed that the Annual Report series for the colonies was developed as a readable companion to the Blue Books.

The Penn Libraries have a good collection of Blue Books, but our holdings are scattered among print copies in several locations and in microform. The Center for Research Libraries has digitized runs of Blue Books, and these are also available to Penn readers; and some Blue Book issues are available online through HathiTrust. This guide will explain what a Blue Book is and will direct you to our copies of Blue Books.

If you cannot find your Blue Books, if you are confused about our holdings and their locations, that's okay! Just ASK FOR HELP!

Some samples pages from Blue book for the colony of Mauritius 1897 (from HathiTrust):

• Table of contents, with alphabetical index of contents on following pages.
• Page Q1, Population (first page).
• Page BB1, Hospitals (first page).