Main menu















Search
 Create account
 Log in
Personal tools


Contents
hide

(Top)


Practice


Examples
Toggle Examples subsection
o
The Caribbean

o
British America colonies before the American Revolution

o
East Indies

Similar practices outside of English rule
Toggle Similar practices outside of English rule subsection
o
Historical precedent

o
French examples


See also


References


Further reading

Proprietary colony
6 languages
 Article
 Talk
 Read
 Edit
 View history
Tools













From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Proprietary Governor)
 An engraving of Cecil Calvert, 2nd Baron Baltimore, who
was the first proprietor of the proprietary colony of Maryland.
A proprietary colony was a type of colonial administration in English America during
the 17th century, and in the East Indies up to the 1850s. In the English overseas
possessions, all land belonged to the Crown, which held ultimate authority over their
management. All English colonial territories were partitioned by the Crown via royal
charters into one of three types: proprietary, royal, or covenant. Under the proprietary
system, individuals or companies (often a joint-stock company) were granted
commercial charters by the Crown to establish overseas colonies. These proprietors
were then granted the authority to select the governors and other officials in the colony.

This type of indirect rule eventually fell out of favour as the sociopolitical situation in
England's American colonies gradually stabilised and administrative difficulties eased,
or due to the proprietary company's administrative or economic failure. Successive
English sovereigns sought to solidify their power and authority, and gradually converted
all proprietary colonies to Crown colonies, which were administered by colonial officials
appointed by the government in London. By the 18th century, most former proprietary
colonies had been converted into Crown colonies.

Practice[edit]
Proprietary colonies in America were governed by a lord proprietor, who, holding
authority by virtue of a royal charter, usually exercised that authority almost as an
independent sovereign.[1] These colonies were distinct from Crown colonies in that they
were commercial enterprises established under authority of the crown. Proprietary
governors had legal responsibilities over the colony as well as responsibilities to
shareholders to ensure the security of their investments.
The proprietary system was a mostly inefficient[definition needed] system, in that the proprietors
were, for the most part, like absentee landlords. [clarification needed] Many never even visited the
colonies they owned.[citation needed] By the early 18th century, nearly all of the proprietary
colonies had eithersurrendered their charters to the crown to become royal
colonies, [clarification needed] or else had significant limitations placed on them by the crown.[citation
needed]

Examples[edit]
The Caribbean[edit]
 Barbados
British America colonies before the American Revolution [edit]
See also: Colonial charters in the Thirteen Colonies
The provinces of Maryland, Carolina and several other colonies in the Americas were
initially established under the proprietary system.

King Charles II used the proprietary solution to reward allies and focus his own attention
on Britain itself. He offered his friends colonial charters which facilitated private
investment and colonial self-government. The charters made the proprietor the effective
ruler, albeit one ultimately responsible to English Law and the King. Charles II gave the
former Dutch colony New Netherlands to his younger brother The Duke of York, who
established the Province of New York.[2] He gave an area to William Penn who
established the Province of Pennsylvania.[3]

The British America colonies before the American Revolution consisted of 20 colonies
on the continent's mainland. After the conflict, thirteen of those became states of the
United States of America. By the time of the Revolution some had consolidated multiple
grants, while others, such as conflicting claims to what became the state
of Vermont and the western borders of numerous states, including New York and
Virginia, as well as the sovereignty of what became the state of Maine in 1820,
remained unresolved well after.

 Newfoundland Colony
 Province of Nova Scotia
 Province of New Brunswick
 Colony of St. John's Island (now Prince Edward Island)
 Province of Quebec
 Virginia Colony
 Province of Georgia
 Province of North Carolina
 Province of South Carolina
 Province of Pennsylvania
 Province of Massachusetts Bay
 Province of New Hampshire
 Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations
 Connecticut Colony
 Province of Maryland
 Province of New York
 Province of New Jersey
 Delaware Colony
East Indies[edit]
 East India Company

Similar practices outside of English rule[edit]

Historical precedent[edit]
In medieval times, it was customary in Continental Europe for a sovereign to grant
almost regal powers of government to the feudal lords of his border districts to prevent
foreign invasion. Those districts or manors were often called palatinates or counties
palatine because the lord wielded the power of the king in his palace. His power was
regal in kind but inferior in degree to that of the king. [4]

That type of arrangement had caused many problems in Norman times for certain
English border counties. Those territories were known as counties palatine and lasted at
least in part to 1830 for good reason: remoteness, poor communications, governance
carried out under difficult circumstances. The monarch and the government retained
their usual right to separate head and body, figuratively or literally, at any time. (See
also the hereditary title marquess.)[5]

French examples[edit]
In 1603, Henry IV, the King of France, granted Pierre Du Gua de Monts the exclusive
right to colonize lands in North America st a latitude between 40° and 60° North. The
King also gave Dugua a monopoly in the fur trade for those territories and named him
Lieutenant General for Acadia and New France. In return, Dugua promised to bring 60
new colonists each year to what would be called Acadie. In 1607, the monopoly was
revoked, and the colony failed, but in 1608, he sponsored Samuel de Champlain to
open a colony at Quebec.[6]

The Îles Glorieuses (Glorioso Islands) were on 2 March 1880 settled and named by the
Frenchman Hippolyte Caltaux (b. 1847–d. 1907), who was their proprietor from until
1891. It was only on 23 August 1892 that they were claimed for the French Third
Republic, as part of the Indian Ocean colony of French Madagascar. Caltaux again
became their proprietor from 1901 to his death. On 26 June 1960, the islands became a
regular French possession, administered by the High Commissioner for Réunion. On 3
January 2005, they were transferred to the administrators of the French Southern and
Antarctic Lands.

See also[edit]
  English colonial empire
 Proprietary governor
 Proprietary House
 Colonial government in the Thirteen Colonies
 Crown colony
 Commonwealth
 Lord proprietor
 Donatário
 Quia Emptores

References[edit]
1. ^ Elson, Henry William, History of the United States of America, The Macmillan Company, New York,
1904. Chapter IV
2. ^ David S. Lovejoy, "Equality and Empire The New York Charter of Liberties, 1683," William and Mary
Quarterly (1964) 21#4 pp. 493-515 in JSTOR.
3. ^ Joseph E. Illick, "The Pennsylvania Grant: A Re-Evaluation," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and
Biography (1962) 85#4 pp. 375-396 in JSTOR
4. ^ Osgood, H. L. American Historical Review, July, 1897, p. 644
5. ^ Martinez (2008)
6. ^ Roper (2007)

Further reading[edit]
 Martinez, Albert J. "The Palatinate Clause of the Maryland Charter, 1632-1776:
From Independent Jurisdiction to Independence." American Journal of Legal
History (2008): 305–325. in JSTOR
 Mereness, Newton Dennison. Maryland as a proprietary province (1901) online
 Osgood, Herbert L. “The Proprietary Province as a Form of Colonial Government.”
Part I. American Historical Review 2 (July 1896): 644–64; Part 495. vol 3 (October
1897): 31–55; Part III. vol 3 (January 1898): 244–65. part 1 online free at
JSTOR, part 3 the standard survey
 Osgood, Herbert Levi. The American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century: The
Proprietary Province in Its Earliest Form, the Corporate Colonies of New
England (1930)
 Osgood, Herbert Levi. The Proprietary Province in Its Later Forms (Columbia
University Press, 1930)
 Roper, Louis H., and Bertrand Van Ruymbeke, eds. Constructing Early Modern
Empires: Proprietary Ventures in the Atlantic World, 1500-1750 (Brill, 2007)
Categories:
 Constitutional state types
 English colonization of the Americas
 Colonial government in America
 Colonial land law
 History of colonialism
 Governance of the British Empire
 This page was last edited on 21 December 2023, at 17:14 (UTC).
 Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 4.0; additional terms may apply. By
using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of
the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.
 Privacy policy

 About Wikipedia

 Disclaimers

 Contact Wikipedia

 Code of Conduct

 Developers

 Statistics

 Cookie statement

 Mobile view

 Toggle limited content width