History
In the British Empire (most of which became the Commonwealth), High Commissioners were envoys of the Imperial government appointed to manage protectorates or groups of territories not fully under the sovereignty of the British Crown, while Crown colonies (British sovereign territories) were normally be administered by a Governor, and the most significant possessions, large confederations and the self-governing dominions were headed by a Governor-General.
For example, when Cyprus came under British administration in 1878 it remained nominally under the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire. The representative of the British government and head of the administration was titled High Commissioner until Cyprus became a Crown colony in 1925, when the incumbent High Commissioner became the first Governor.
A High Commissioner could also be charged with the last phase of decolonisation, as in the Crown colony of the Seychelles, where the last Governor served as the High Commissioner from 1975, when self-rule under the Crown was granted, until 1976, when the archipelago became an independent republic within the Commonwealth.
Read more about this topic: High Commissioner (Commonwealth)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“What you don’t understand is that it is possible to be an atheist, it is possible not to know if God exists or why He should, and yet to believe that man does not live in a state of nature but in history, and that history as we know it now began with Christ, it was founded by Him on the Gospels.”
—Boris Pasternak (1890–1960)
“The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man’s right to his body, or woman’s right to her soul.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“The thing that struck me forcefully was the feeling of great age about the place. Standing on that old parade ground, which is now a cricket field, I could feel the dead generations crowding me. Here was the oldest settlement of freedmen in the Western world, no doubt. Men who had thrown off the bands of slavery by their own courage and ingenuity. The courage and daring of the Maroons strike like a purple beam across the history of Jamaica.”
—Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)