Papers of Trafford Smith CMG

Papers related to posting in the British colonies of the western Pacific, 1938-1941; material chiefly concerning British territories in the western Pacific, 1941-1966; material mostly received or written in, or dealing with Ceylon, 1944-1948; material concerning Palestine, 1947-1949; papers concerning appointment in Malta, 1952-1959; papers relating to Burma, 1967-1975; papers relating to various interests, 1928-1963; engagement diaries, 1947-1975

Trafford Smith (1912-1975), civil servant and diplomat, began work in the Colonial Office in 1935 before being seconded to Fiji in 1938. He was made Assistant British Resident Commissioner, New Hebrides in 1940, served in the British Solomon Islands from the same year and in the Gilbert and Ellis Islands from 1941. He was Secretary of the Soulbury Commission on Constitutional Reform, Ceylon, 1944-1945 and Assistant Secretary, Colonial Office, 1945. He was attached to the British delegation to the United Nations, New York, for the Special General Assembly on Palestine, 1948. From 1953 to 1959 he was Lieutenant-Governor of Malta, and Acting Governor May-September 1953 and July-September 1954. He was made Assistant Under-Secretary of State, Commonwealth Office, 1959-1967 and Ambassador to Burma, 1967-1970. He was awarded a CMG and the Cross of St. John. In 1937 he married Mary Isabel Smith, with whom he had two daughters.

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Collection level description created by Paul Davidson, Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House.

Listed as no. 618 in Manuscript Collections in Rhodes House Library Oxford, Accessions 1978-1994 (Oxford, Bodleian Library, 1996). A handlist is also available for consultation in the library.

No reproduction or publication of personal papers without permission. Contact the library in the first instance.

Letters, programmes of tours, texts of talks and printed material relating to service as an administrator in Fiji and to tours made of the Caribbean and western Pacific territories as Assistant Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, 1938-1966 (ref. MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 490); typescript, Two Family Histories, by Mary Isabel Smith, also held by the library.