Open 600,000 secret British files, scholars demand

Eminent British scholars have challenged the government to release a cache of secret files dating back almost 400 years that they say could spur a reappraisal of some contentious episodes of British colonial history and the cold war.

The foreign ministry only publicly admitted the existence of the so-called "special collection" of 600,000 dossiers in 2011, when an historian came across a 45-year-old memo that referred to it. Among the documents are reports on the slave trade dating back to 1662.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office says it did not have the resources to sort through the files, despite laws requiring disclosure, but that it is now reviewing them to prioritise material of greatest public interest for release.

But a group of 27 scholars from the British Academy used a letter to The Guardian to demand all available records be released to ensure a full account of Britain's colonial past or the espionage mysteries of the cold war.

"The government must release these files," said Richard Evans, a professor of history at Cambridge who is an expert in German history and one of the signatories to the letter.

"A full and objective account of Britain's colonial past, involvement in the cold war and many other important historical topics will only be possible when they are freely available. Of course, I can't say how they might change our view of the past since I don't know what's in them."

From the realpolitik of Britain's imperial past and the African slave trade to the betrayals of KGB double agents during the cold war, the true historical worth of the documents is unknown, historians say.