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

eady to control their own affairs. The free-born British, on the other hand, possessed
an inherited genius for political order, justice, and commerce that allowed Britain to
become a first rate commercial and imperial power, and thus a mentor, and custodian
for less developed territories such as the Ionian Islands. While similar language was
repeatedly used by officials to specify Ionian unfitness for government, these same
detractors ignored the large proportion of the British population who lived in rural
and urban poverty and backwardness and other examples that argued against British
superiority. 3 For some governors, such as Maitland and Douglas, the failings of
Ionian culture and civilisation justified authoritarian forms of rule for them.
Yet there were also widespread belief among some colonial officials and MPs
of the nobility of the Ionian character. Some placed emphasis on their classical
heritage and held romantic notions about the Islands’ literary and historical past.
Ionians were respectable, sincere, possessed moral virtue, property, capital, skill and
independence of mind. British radical MPs, such as Hume, Bright, and Fitzroy were
critical of British policies and forms of rule in the Ionian Islands, advocating
responsible government and even the abandonment of the Protectorate. Such beliefs
were based on their own Philhellenic leanings, their conviction as to the civilised
nature of Ionian character, and concerns over public expenditure and the burden of
the Protectorate on the British economy. Governors such as Nugent, Seaton and
Gladstone believed the Ionians were enlightened and cosmopolitan and, as a result,
3 Sections of the working classes were seen as respectable and valuable part of the wider British
political nation, especially after the 1867 Reform act. McClelland K., “England’s greatness, the
working man” in Hall C., McClelland K., Rendall J., Defining the Victorian Nation: Class, Race,
Gender and the Reform Act of 1867, (Cambridge, 2000).
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