Crown colony

The administration of Crown colonies changed over time and in the 1800s some became, with a loosening of the power of royal governors, self-governing colonies, within which the sovereign state (the UK Government) delegated legislation for most local internal matters of governance to elected assemblies, with consent of the governor, overseen by the Colonial Office and the Board of Trade and Plantations. The Colonial Office gave way to the Dominion Office for some of these territories in 1925. Elected lower houses had their beginnings in the House of Burgesses of the Colony of Virginia in 1619 and the House of Assembly of the Parliament of Bermuda in 1620. While initially limited in government even with an elected lower house, over the centuries in some Crown colonies, more independent authority was given.

Like most colonial establishments, the main focus was the extraction of local resources and raw materials. All remaining British colonies, whether Crown (such as the Falkland Islands) or self-governing (such as Bermuda), were renamed "British Dependent Territories" from 1 January 1983 under the British Nationality Act 1981. Many British citizens in the colonies (with the exceptions of the Falkland Islanders and subsequently the Gibraltarians) found that their "Citizenship of the United Kingdom and Colonies" had changed overnight to British Dependent Territories Citizenship, a form of British citizenship that stripped them of some of their rights, including the right to reside and work in the United Kingdom. From 2002, the dependent territories have been known officially as British Overseas Territories.

History

Early English colonies were often proprietary colonies, usually established and administered by companies under charters granted by the monarch. The first "royal colony" was the Colony of Virginia, after 1624, when the Crown of the Kingdom of England revoked the royal charter it had granted to the Virginia Company and assumed control of government of the territory.

Executive crown governors are sometimes complemented by a locally appointed and/or elected legislature with limited powers – that is, such territories lack a fully sovereign government locally, as some powers (eg over foreign relations, or constitutional amendment, or defense) remain in the hands of the parliament or executive government in London. For example, while the House of Assembly of Bermuda has existed continuously since its first session in 1620, Bermuda has only had a fully sovereign locally elected responsible government since 1968. (Bermuda became a Crown colony in 1684, when the government revoked a royal charter given to the Somers Isles Company, successor to the Virginia Company, which had previously controlled administration, including the appointment of governors; thenceforth (until 1968) the government in London appointed the Governor of Bermuda.)

Despite its later usage, the term "Crown colony" was used primarily, until the mid-19th century, to refer to colonies that had been acquired through wars, such as Trinidad and Tobago. From the mid-19th century, the term was more broadly applied to every British territory other than British India, including many self-governing colonies, amongst them the Province of Canada, Newfoundland, British Columbia, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, Western Australia, and New Zealand.

By the mid-19th century, the monarch was appointing colonial governors only on the advice of the Secretary of State for the Colonies, who in turn -- depending on the level of local government and representation present in the colony -- would also take soundings or receive suggestions as to the best person to appoint from those in the colony's extant in situ government.

Reclassification (1981)

The term Crown colony continued to be used until 1981, when the British Nationality Act 1981 reclassified the remaining British colonies as "British Dependent Territories". By this time, the term "Crown colony" referred specifically to colonies lacking substantial autonomy, which were administered by an executive governor, appointed by the British Government – such as Hong Kong, before its transfer in 1997 to the People's Republic of China. In 2002, the British Overseas Territories Act 2002 further changed their name to British Overseas Territories.