ABSTRACT
Memoranda are written communications that give directions and transmit information within bureaucratic structures.1 For the purpose of this chapter, the bureaucratic apparatus of interest is the state, and here the distinctive feature of memoranda is political analysis and stocktaking, and then policy recommendation. With reference to the nation-states of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, memoranda can be political position papers, opinion pieces, longer ‘think pieces’, or short briefing notes on topics varying from foreign policy to issues of state finances to social matters. Any of these types of memoranda can be both solicited and unsolicited documents, mostly produced and consumed within the governmental machinery – by which is meant the civil servants, personal political advisors, and ultimately the decision-makers; although certainly in the early modern period many of the unsolicited memoranda were written by (more or less expert) people from outside the government. Significantly, memoranda can also take the form of short notes of discussions or minutes.
