This volume, the fifth in a series providing key documents for the constitutional history of the British Empire and Commonwealth, deals with the evolution of representative and responsible government in the four main settler colonies. It covers the years from approximately 1842 to the dawn of the 20th century. The documents in this volume show how Britain attempted to devise government for those overseas dependencies which were then not thought suitable to be run under a more-or-less British constitution, due to the low numbers of white settlers. At the time this volume opens, the constitutional future of the dependent empire was quite uncertain: there was still a strong underlying sentiment that the colonies should be self-governing and self-sufficient. The first section of this volume focuses on British imperial authority and supervision of the Empire. The Crown’s role was undefined, but, as these documents show, it was very concerned with the reaction to its authority in the colonies’ parliamentary councils. India is the subject of the second section; documents are here included covering the transfer of power from a chartered company back to the crown and the hesitant moves toward quasi-representation on the Indian councils. The collapse of the old representative system in the West Indian colonies and the tinkering with a responsive government in Jamaica are documented in the third section. The next section of documents shows what happened to the original Crown colonies and their adjacent spheres of influence (often controlled by a rival European power). The volume concludes with a group of special cases: the Ionian Islands, Cyprus and Egypt. Also covered here are the unique problems with Ireland that placed the Crown between Irish aspirations and its own authority. This book may be of value to library reference collections and scholars of the history of the British Empire.
