Crown colony

A Crown colony, also known in the 17th century as a royal colony, was a type of colonial administration of the English and later British Empire.^[1][2]

Crown, or royal, colonies were ruled by a governor appointed at first by the Monarch and later by the Secretary of State for the Colonies.^[3] Under the name of "royal colony", the first of what would later become known as Crown colonies was the English Colony of Virginia in the present-day United States, after the Crown took control from the Virginia Company in 1624.^[4]

Until the mid-nineteenth century, the term "Crown colony" was primarily used to refer to those colonies which had been acquired through wars, such as Trinidad and Tobago^[5] and British Guiana, but after that time it was more broadly applied to any colony other than the Presidencies and provinces of British India and the colonies of settlement, such as The Canadas, Newfoundland, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, Western Australia, and New Zealand, later to become the Dominions.^[6]

The term continued to be used up until 1981, when the British Nationality Act 1981 reclassified the remaining British colonies as "British Dependent Territories". From 2002 they have been known as British Overseas Territories.

Types of Crown colony

There were three types of Crown colony as of 1918, with differing degrees of autonomy:

Crown colonies with representative councils such as Bermuda, Jamaica, Ceylon, British Columbia and Fiji contained one or two legislative chambers, consisting of Crown appointed and some locally elected members.

Crown colonies with nominated councils such as British Honduras, Sierra Leone, Grenada and Hong Kong were staffed entirely by Crown appointed members, with some appointed representation from the local population. It should be noted that Hong Kong became a Crown colony with a representative council following the introduction of election for the Hong Kong Legislative Council in 1985.

Crown colonies ruled directly by a Governor such as Basutoland,^[7] Gibraltar, Saint Helena and Singapore were fewest in number and had the least autonomy.

See also

• Direct rule
• Crown dependency
• Self-governing colony
• Colonial Office
• British overseas territories
• British Empire

Notes

1. ^ U.S. Library of Congress - Glossary of terms
2. ^ Compact Oxford English Dictionary - "Crown colony"
3. ^ Jenks, p.70
4. ^ Porter, p.477
5. ^ History of Parliament: Parliament of Trinidad and Tobago - Parliament of Trinidad and Tobago
6. ^ Olson, p.343
7. ^ Jenks, p.71-4

References

• Jenks, Edward (1918). The Government of the British Empire. Little, Brown, and company. 
• Olson, James (1996). Historical Dictionary of the British Empire. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 031329366X. 
• Porter, Andrew (1998). The Nineteenth Century, The Oxford History of the British Empire Volume III. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0199246785. 
• Wrong, Hume (2009). "The Old Representative System: The Change To Crown Colony Government". Government of the West Indies. England: Oxford University Press. p. 71. ISBN 111374149X. http://books.google.com/books?id=hIx3hR0-HkIC&pg=PA71&lpg=PA71#v=onepage&f=false. Retrieved 2010-03-30. "The phrase 'Crown Colony Government' is used with various meanings. In the broadest, and perhaps most correct, sense it is applied to all the colonies in which the Crown retains the real control of the executive (i.e. to all the West Indian colonies). By both official and common usage, however, it is often narrowed as to exclude colonies with elected Assemblies, though without a responsible executive."