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

elationship with a “quarrelsome” Assembly was pressured by declining prosperity
and growing social disorder, including racial animosity, which led to labour and
financial quarrels in the Island. The governor’s attempt to suspend the Constitution
in 1839 led to the resignation of the government. 138 In 1848-1849, Sir Charles Grey
and Lord Grey considered granting Jamaica responsible government to reduce
political collisions but hesitated doing so where politics were “poisoned by colour,
class, indebtedness and the damnosa hereditas of slavery”. 139 Its Act of 1854,
however, gave it a very limited form of representative government. 140
There were major differences between Jamaica and the Ionian Islands. Jamaica
had a strictly limited franchise which enabled the maintenance of white rule,
contrary to the Ionian Islands’ extended franchise. Another concerned the issue of
race. In Jamaica, the British were ruling over a majority black population while in
the Septinsula they were ruling fellow white Europeans. Yet Gladstone saw
interesting parallels between Jamaica and the Ionian Islands in the British failure to
deal satisfactorily with constitutional questions. When Gladstone was Prime Minister
with a large liberal majority (1880-1885), he asked his friend Arthur Gordon in 1881
to accept the governorship of Jamaica, which had been a Crown colony since 1866.
Gladstone hoped Gordon would successfully handle Jamaica by “getting rid of …
the despotic principle by which it is now governed”, reminding Gordon “the
138 Gladstone to Lytton, Confidential, 18 January 1859, CO 136/165. See also Ward J. M., Colonial
Self-Government, p. 312.
139 Ward J. M., Colonial Self-Government, pp. 312.
140 For details on the 1854 Reform Act, see Ward J. M., Colonial Self-Government, pp. 312-13. See
also Sires, R. V. “Constitutional Change in Jamaica, 1834-60”, Journal of Comparative Legislation
and International Law, Third Series, 22, (4), (1940), pp. 178-90.
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