Governors Politics And The Colonial Office

This book fleshes out the impact of political figures and how their actions, and inactions, affect various imperial or Hong Kong political and administrative affairs. The tendrils of Hong Kong's budding autonomy from the United Kingdom are identified and followed with attention paid to the various actors, including observing which actors fade in importance and which ones seize more of the stage.

Oft-ignored in the study of Canadian history or dismissed as a vestige of colonial status, the governor general's office provides essential historical insight into Canada's constitutional evolution. In the nineteenth century, as today, individual governors general exercised considerable scope in interpreting their approach to the office. The era 1847-1878 witnessed profound changes in Canada's relationship with Britain, and in this new book, Barbara J. Messamore explores the nature of these changes through an examination of the role of the governor general. Guided by outmoded instructions and constitutional conventions that were not yet firmly established, the governors general of the time - Lord Elgin, Sir Edmund Head, Lord Monck, Lord Lisgar, and Lord Dufferin - all wrestled with the implications of colonial self government. The imprecision of the viceregal role made the character of the appointee especially important and biographical details are thus essential to an understanding of how the new experiment of colonial self-government was put into practice. Messamore's book marries constitutional history and biography, providing illumination on some of the key figures of nineteenth-century Canadian politics.

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"In nineteenth century settler colonies such as New Zealand, Upper Canada and New South Wales, governors not only administered; they stood at the head of colonial society and ordered the festivities and ceremonies around which colonial life centred. Governors were also expected to be repositories of political wisdom and constitutional maxims. The public also held them responsible for prosperity, education and culture. Such prominence brought criticism as well as praise. Almost all governors were as some time burned in effigy, and they were frequently the targets of scurrilous and libellous comment. Transfigured as ideal rulers -- and disfigured as the embodiments of tyranny and personal vice -- they played the symbolic roles of both hero and sacrificial victim in the emerging settler societies. "Governors and settlers" explores the public and private beliefs of governors such as Robert Fitzroy, Sir George Grey, and Thomas Gore Browne as they struggled to survive in colonial cultures which both deified and vilified their personal qualities. It also describes the context in which British and colonial thinking behind the Treaty of Waitangi tooks place, and how political strategies and ceremonies designed for one colony were successfully imposed on another. Further to this, the author describes how colonial culture in New Zealand coped with its unique situation -- in particular where politics were largely a matter of avoiding racial clashes rather than reinforcing colonial authority." -- Inside front cover.