On Crown Service: A History of HM Colonial and Overseas Civil Services, 1837-1997

Anthony KIRK-GREENE, On Crown Service: A History of HM Colonial and Overseas Civil Services, 1837 1997, I. B. Tauris & Co. Ltd, London, 1999, 276pp.

Thanks to its expansive title, prospective readers of On Crown Service will be forgiven for expecting a large, substantial history of the administrative bureaucracies which ran the British Empire beyond India and the Dominions. In fact, Mr Kirk-Greene has provided something different, and no less valuable to a small niche of historians. On Crown Service is less a history than a chronology. Its value lies in provision of fast access to core facts, in a superb biography, and in the useful selection of primary resources reproduced in the book's latter half. As such, this work is successful as a light reference for experienced historians and, to a lesser extent, a primer for novices with an interest in the organisation and recruitment of those who administered the smaller colonies upon which the sun has finally set.

Mr Kirk-Greene's introduction goes to some Length explaining why this book, commissioned by the Corona Club to commemorate its members and their accomplishments, is not a meatier tome about those who ran the empire, perhaps...