History
Royal Colonies
Royal Colonies were colonies in America that were under the direct control of the English monarchy. They were governed by officials appointed by the king, and their laws and regulations were subject to approval by the Crown. Examples of Royal Colonies included Virginia, Massachusetts, and New York.
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eBook - PDF- Simon Potter(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Red Globe Press(Publisher)
Across the British empire, who controlled what was never a simple matter and often a subject for debate. In this context, it is again useful to think about definitions. In writing about state power, some (but not all) historians draw a conscious and careful distinc-tion between the meanings of the words ‘imperial’ and ‘colonial’. ‘Imperial’ refers to the authority emanating from the London-based state apparatus in Whitehall and Westminster, and the coercive forces it was able to direct: the British Monarchy, Parliament and Cabinet; the Colonial Office, India Office, Foreign Office, and Treasury; the British Army, the Royal Navy, and so forth. ‘Colonial’ authority, on the other hand, refers to those elements of govern-ment and coercion that were based in the colonies themselves: governors and viceroys; colonial councils and assemblies; colonial civil servants; colonial army units, paramilitary police forces, and settler militias. Some of these colo-nial elements might have been despatched from London, and remained under London’s notional control. However, in reality they often proved difficult to manage from either Westminster or Whitehall. In an age when the rapid or regular movement of people and information was impossible, it could hardly have been otherwise. In the early nineteenth century, few policy-makers in London had any experience of the world beyond Europe. Later, railways and steamships made it easier for some to visit the colonies, and on their return to present themselves as experts with practical experience. However, their understanding of empire was often based on super-ficial impressions gathered during short stays overseas, and quickly became outdated. It was also difficult to generalize about the empire from experi-ences gathered in only one or two parts of it. Meanwhile, information and instructions travelled with frustrating slowness within the empire’s bounda-ries.
eBook - PDFLineages of Despotism and Development
British Colonialism and State Power
- Matthew Lange(Author)
- 2009(Publication Date)
- University of Chicago Press(Publisher)
The large and territory-wide administration, for 30 Chapter 2 example, provided numerous points of interaction between the colonized and the colonizers while effectively limiting the autonomy of local com-munities. The most common form of interaction was between the police, district officials, teachers, and the local population and involved tax collec-tion, public works and services, and law enforcement. In addition, many subjects in directly ruled British colonies were actually employed within the colonial administration, thereby opening many formal and informal avenues to the state. Despite the relatively high levels of interaction between colonized and colonizer in directly ruled colonies, all systems of foreign domination are one-sided and exclusionary, characteristics that affect the inclusiveness of the colonial state and its active incorporation of local communities into national political institutions. Among directly ruled colonies, the extent to which the colonial state institutions excluded the local populations varied considerably depending on the type of direct rule. Direct colonial rule was the most inclusive in the settler colonies, although this depended on one’s race. 4 As mentioned above, settler colonies were neo-Europes, in which settlers and officials established institutions very similar to those in the homeland. Because the settlers helped create the institutions and generally shared a common national identity with the officials, they were allowed to participate in colonial politics. Plantation colonies, on the other hand, had lower levels of European settle-ment and established strict racial hierarchies and coercive labor systems. Planters often had their own informal police forces and maintained high levels of influence within the colonial regime. With the help of the colonial state, they exploited and isolated the colored laboring classes (Stinchcombe 1995).
- Lawrence Lowell(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter(Publisher)
Control over The control of England over her self-governing colonies is governing n o w exer ^ed through four channels: the royal Governor, Colonies. the power to veto legislation, the control of foreign rela-tions, and the appeals from the colonial courts to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. 1 The Gov-The Governor in a self-governing colony has two func-Represen-he tions. He is an officer of the mother country appointed to tative of guard her rights and exercise a great part of the control which she still retains over the colony, and he is also the chief magistrate of the colony for its own internal govern-ment. In both he acts as the representative of the Crown, but, if one may use the expression, he acts in the former capacity for the Crown as titular sovereign of England or of the empire, in the latter for the Crown as titular sovereign of the colony. According to this distinction it is commonly said that in matters that affect other parts of the empire or foreign countries he must use his own discretion, or seek instructions from the Secretary of State in England; while England. Colonial 1 Almost every one of the self-governing colonies maintains an agent in Agents. England to watch over its interests; but with the growth of control over its own affairs, and the greater ease of direct communication by cable, his political functions have decreased. His duties are often rather those of a financial or commercial, and sometimes of a journalistic, agent. Whenever anything appeared in the press some years ago that reflected upon the economic or industrial conditions in one of the colonies, and might affect its credit or capacity for attracting investment, the agent felt bound to write to the papers at once and contradict it. As a bond of union, or as a political officer, it is hardly necessary now to- dwell upon the agent.
eBook - ePub- Robert J. C. Young(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Wiley-Blackwell(Publisher)
3 ColonyThe Temporality of Colonization
If there have broadly been three kinds of colonies – settlement, exploitation, and garrison – all colonies differ in turn with respect to the duration of their submission to colonial rule. The times and temporalities of colonization varied dramatically, from hundreds of years for Goa, Ireland, and Macau, to scarcely fifty in the case of Nigeria. Even so, Nigeria would not exist in its present form had it never been part of the British Empire. Periods of colonial rule were often highly unstable: some colonies were only ever controlled by one European state, but for others there were changes of rulers: before the nineteenth century, Caribbean colonies were frequently the object of international power struggles, seized by one country then appropriated by another; the Americas were variously colonized by the Portuguese, the Spanish, the French, the Dutch, the English, and, less well known, also by Couronians, Danes, Germans, Italians, the Knights of Malta, Norsemen, Russians, Swedes, and Scots; Sri Lanka was successively ruled by the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the British; while China was colonized (through “concessions” and extraterritorial zones) by almost every country that had any aspirations to international power at the beginning of the twentieth century. Colonies with changing rulers were not necessarily just outside Europe: in 1792 Poland was partitioned by Russia, Prussia, and Austria and ceased to exist for over a hundred years. Independence was restored from 1918 until 1939, when Poland was invaded by Germany, Slovakia, and the Soviet Union; after World War II it was governed under the umbrella of the Soviet Union until 1989.The word “colony” itself has changed over time. The underlying shift in all languages in the twentieth century was from a relatively positive to a negative connotation, reflecting the degree to which colonies are now regarded as negating the rights of local, indigenous, or aboriginal peoples, and empires seen as despotic systems in an age of democracy. Was the colony a particular European invention? The development of overseas colonies by Europeans from the fifteenth century onward can be linked back to the creation of Greek colonies detached from the Greek mainland in classical times. It was, however, the later colonies of European nations, intrinsically related to empire but also conceptually distinct, that established the modern notions both of a “colony” and, as a result, of “colonialism.”
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