KOBLENZ, Germany. Aug 19 (AFP) - Germany has opened its archives to its former colonies in Africa, Asia and the South Sea Islands, revealing administrative structures, the legal system and the names of convicted offenders, the National Archive office said on Thursday.
Germany was stripped of its colonies, including what are now Cameroon, Namibia, Burundi, Tanzania and the Solomon Islands, under the 1919 Treaty of Versailles after it lost World War I.
The documents contain details of missions by German scientific exploration teams, raw materials trade agreements, food production and transport, said archive director Hartmut Weber.
He said files dating from the German colonial period between 1884 and 1918 had been copied on to microfilm for despatch to the countries concerned.
Delivery had been delayed "because it was only after German reunification (in 1990) that we obtained the right to make copies", he said. A large section of the archives had been kept by the former communist authorities in East Germany.
Burundi, Cameroon, the Marshall Islands, Namibia (German Southwest Africa), Papua New Guinea (German New Guinea), Rwanda, the Solomon Islands, Samoa, Tanzania (German East Africa) including Zanzibar, and Togo (Togoland) were all either once wholly or partly under German colonial rule.
Under the Treaty of Versailles they came, until independence, under the mandate variously of France, Britain, Belgium, Japan and South Africa.