Hall Collection

The Hall Collection features around 600 books and pamphlets along with the papers of historian and public servant Hessel Duncan Hall. Covering topics from Commonwealth and English political history to international relations, migration, World War II, and the Suez crisis, the collection reflects Hall’s extensive career spanning Australia, Europe, and the United States. His work with the League of Nations, academia, and wartime diplomacy is captured through rich materials illuminating 20th-century political thought and global affairs.

Key items in the collection

Highlights from this collection demonstrate its historical significance and variety.

The collection donated to the Library contains a considerable quantity of:

books
pamphlets
reprints
government reports
serials.

It is a scholar’s working library. None of the material is exceptionally rare, it is nearly all in English, and the bulk of it was published between 1900 and 1950.

The principal subjects are:

the British Commonwealth
individual Commonwealth countries
English political and constitutional history
Ireland
political biography
international relations
the League of Nations
mandates
race relations
migration
the United States
World War II
the United Nations
the Suez crisis of 1956
political thought.

The personal papers and manuscripts of Hall comprise of:

correspondence
diaries (1942–47)
drafts of books
subject files
newspaper cuttings
lectures
official documents
reports
printed items.

They mostly date from after Hall’s departure from Australia in 1926. They are arranged in the following series:

General correspondence, 1927–75
History of the British Commonwealth of Nations
Mandates, dependencies and trusteeship
Psychological warfare
British Raw Materials Mission
Drugs
League of Nations
Commonwealth Parliamentary Association
Institute of Pacific Relations
Conferences
Lectures, talks, addresses
Personal papers
General subject files
Other papers.

About Hessel Hall

Early life and education

Hessel Duncan Hall (1891–1976) was born at Glen Innes, New South Wales. He was educated at Sydney Boys High School and the University of Sydney. Before pursuing further study, he worked as a school teacher. Hall then attended Balliol College, Oxford, where he earned a B.Litt. in 1920. He also tutored for Oxford University’s extension program.

Career and international work

Hall returned to Australia in 1920, working with the University of Sydney’s Department of Tutorial Classes and as Sydney correspondent for the Manchester Guardian. In 1926 he moved overseas and lived abroad for the rest of his life.

He was Professor of International Relations at Syracuse University before joining the League of Nations Secretariat in Geneva in 1927. In 1935 he was assigned responsibility for the British dominions within the Secretariat. Hall returned to the United States in 1939, held a visiting professorship at Harvard University in 1940, and served with the British Raw Materials Mission in Washington from 1942 to 1945. Later, he worked at the British Embassy in Washington, overseeing the North American volumes of the official war history. After retiring in 1956, he remained in Washington and focused on historical research.

Publications

Hall’s first book, based on his Oxford thesis, was British Commonwealth of Nations (1920). Most of his writings focused on international relations. Other notable works include:

Mandates, Dependencies and Trusteeship (1948)
North American Supply (1955)
Commonwealth: A History of the British Commonwealth of Nations (1971)

Background to the collection

Hall had a long association with the Library and as early as 1960 he stated that his personal papers and research material would be donated. In 1972 the first instalment of pamphlets and reprints were received and the bulk of the collection was transferred after his death in 1976.

About 600 books and pamphlets have been kept together as a collection. They are catalogued individually. The call numbers have the prefixes HALL and HALL PAM. The other publications were integrated into the general collection, the catalogue entries indicating that they formed part of the Hall Collection.

The Manuscripts collection holds the personal papers. Use the finding aid.

This guide was prepared using these references: