In 1815, the British Empire emerged from a half century of war a more diverse and extensive entity, including old, self-governing colonies, vast new territories in the Indian subcontinent and a cache of formerly French, Dutch, and Spanish colonies scattered around the globe. How could these disparate people and places be incorporated into empire? To answer this question, commissions of inquiry were sent to diagnose law, governance and labour in 19 colonies from the Caribbean to Australia between 1819 and 1833. They collected testimony from thousands of people ranging from slaves and convicts to officeholders and they produced a new blueprint for the British imperial constitution. This paper discusses how the Inquiring into Empire DP project plans to tackle this enormous and important archive – spanning from digital research methods to old-fashioned systematic note taking. It will also share some early conclusions about we have found so far.