Constructing Ionian identities: the Ionian Islands in British official ...

followed: an improved criminal code, an effective police system, modifications of
customs and trade regulations, the abolition of slavery and a more liberal foreign
policy. A new emigration policy was introduced in the 1830s, after Edward
Wakefield’s essay Letter from Sydney was published, to remedy poverty, low wages,
and unemployment at home and while strengthening the union between Britain and
her colonies. Wakefield’s scheme of selling colonial lands at a fixed price and
emphasis on the careful selection of emigrants was adopted by Lord Grey’s
government.
A spirit of reform also entered the Colonial Office when Lord Howick, the son
of the Prime Minister became Parliamentary Under-Secretary and “exercised …all
power and authority of a Secretary of State”. 8 Howick resigned in 1833 after the new
Colonial Secretary, E. G. Stanley, rejected his plan for emancipation in the West
Indies. Stanley, later the fourteenth Earl of Derby, came from a powerful Whig
family. 9 He favoured Catholic emancipation and gradual and limited parliamentary
reform both in England and Ireland.
This chapter examines the debates and tensions regarding constitutional reform
in the Septinsula during the administrations of Lord Nugent and Sir Howard
Douglas. It will analyse the shifts, fluctuations and contradictions in Nugent’s,
Douglas’s and the British officials’ language concerning colonial policy-making in
general and Ionian fitness for representative institutions in particular. Nugent’s
8 Quoted in Manning H., “Who ran the British Empire 1830-1850?” Journal of British Studies, 5/1
(1965-6), p. 93.
9 Hawkins A., “Edward George Geoffrey Smith Stanley (1799-1869)” Oxford Dictionary of National
Biography, (Oxford, 2004)
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