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Robert William Harley

British colonial administrator

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 19, 2026
Entity authorityQ7351088 ↗
Source-derived summary

Colonel Sir Robert William Harley (1829 – 23 August 1892) was a British colonial administrator. He served as governor-in-chief of the Gold Coast, between September 1872 and 2 October 1873.

Harley was born in 1829 and joined the Army in 1847. In 1860 he was a captain in the 3rd West India Regiment. He died on 23 August 1892 at the age of 62.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Robert William Harley” is british colonial administrator. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Robert, William and Harley, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1829, 1892, 1872, 1873—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1829. For this dossier, Robert, William and Harley is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “british colonial administrator” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7351088. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1829, 1892, 1872 and 1873.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Robert William Harley”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Robert William Harley primary sources, Robert William Harley archive and Robert research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Robert William Harley” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.