Papers of Sir Herbert Ralph Hone

Papers relating to the military administration of Malaya, including minutes of meetings of the Supreme Allied Commander, South East Asia; signals, correspondence, etc., 1945-1953; report on the British military administration of Malaya as Chief Civilian Affairs Officer, Malaya, 1945-1946.

Sir (Herbert) Ralph Hone (1896-1992) became Assistant Treasurer, Uganda in 1920. He was called to the Bar by the Middle Temple and practised law in the South-East Circuit, 1923-1924. In 1925 he became Registrar, High Court, Zanzibar. He served as Resident Magistrate, 1928 and Crown Counsel, 1930, Tanganyika. In 1933 he took the post of Acting Assistant Legal Adviser, Colonial Office/Dominions Office and in the same year became Attorney-General, Gibraltar. In 1937 he took up the same post in Uganda, becoming Commandant of the country's defence force in 1940. In 1942 he began work as Chief Civil Affairs Officer in the Middle-East. He held the same post in the War Office, 1943-1944 and in Malaya, 1946. He became Secretary-General to the Governor-General, Malaya in the same year and Deputy Commissioner-General (Colonial Affairs), South-East Asia in 1948. He was made Governor and Commander-in-Chief, North Borneo, 1950, after which he retired, to be re-appointed Assistant Legal Adviser, Colonial Office and Commonwealth Relations Office in 1954.

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

Listed as no. 690 in Manuscript Collections in Rhodes House Library Oxford, Accessions 1978-1994 (Oxford, Bodleian Library, 1996). A handlist is also available in the library reading room.

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

• Personal papers relative to the preparation of a constitution for a projected independent federal republic of East Africa, 1963-1964 - closed to access
• Secret papers relating to the military administration of Malaya, 1945-1946; legal notes, memoranda, statutory instruments, reports, etc., 1947-1965; papers relating to the dissolution of the Rhodesia/Nyasaland Federation, 1963; private personal papers dealing with proposals for constitutions for South Arabia, Bermuda, Bahamas and East Africa, 1963-1967; confidential papers dealing with the dispute between the Grand Bahama Port Authority Ltd. and the government, 1967-1970 - closed to access
• Correspondence, reports, memoranda, etc. relating to the administrations of the Italian colonies in East Africa, Malaya, North Borneo, Southern Rhodesia, Kenya, the East African Federation and the Bahamas, 1937-1972 (ref. MSS. Brit. Emp. s. 407)