The Dependent Empire and Ireland, 1840-1900: Advance and Retreat in Representative Self-Government Select Documents on the Constitutional History of the British Empire and Commonwealth--Volume V

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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.

Reviews

The volume will appeal most to specialist historians and graduate students. Research libraries, especially those with strengths in British history, should purchase the entire Greenwood series. The enormous value of a book such as The Dependent Empire is that it converts large amounts of manuscript material into accessible printed form.-HISTORY
"The volume will appeal most to specialist historians and graduate students. Research libraries, especially those with strengths in British history, should purchase the entire Greenwood series. The enormous value of a book such as The Dependent Empire is that it converts large amounts of manuscript material into accessible printed form."-HISTORY

Author Bio

FREDERICK MADDEN is Emeritus Reader in Commonwealth Government, Nuffield College, Oxford University. He was previously Beit Lecturer in Colonial History and is the author or coeditor of Oxford and the Idea of Commonwealth, Australia and Britain, Imperial Constitutional Documents, 1765-1965, A Supplement, and British Colonial Developmets, 1774-1834. DAVID FIELDHOUSE is Vere Harmsworth Professor of Imperial and Naval History, the senior imperial chair at Cambridge University, and Fellow of the Jesus College. He is the former Beit Lecturer, successor to Frederick Madden, and is the author of The Colonial Empires, Economics and Empire, 1830-1914, ilever Overseas and Black Africa.