Modern Developments
However, in 1901 the Legislative Council was finally formally dissolved, and the islands were then officially administered through the Governor of the Leeward Islands, who appointed a commissioner and an executive council. The Territory was not remotely economically prosperous, and social services had deteriorated to vanishing point. Emigration was extremely high, particularly to St. Thomas and to the Dominican Republic. Both concern and assistance from Britain was in very short supply, not least because of the two World Wars which were fought during this period.
In 1947 another unlikely hero emerged. Theodolph H Faulkner was a fisherman from Anegada, who came to Tortola with his pregnant wife. He had a disagreement with the medical officer, and he went straight to the marketplace and for several nights criticised the government with mounting passion. His oratory struck a chord, and a movement started. Led by community leaders such as Isaac Fonseca and Carlton de Castro, a throng of over 1,500 British Virgin Islanders marched on the Commissioner's office and presented their grievances. The voices of the people were heard.
Read more about this topic: History Of The British Virgin Islands
Famous quotes containing the words modern and/or developments:
“Families have always been in flux and often in crisis; they have never lived up to nostalgic notions about “the way things used to be.” But that doesn’t mean the malaise and anxiety people feel about modern families are delusions, that everything would be fine if we would only realize that the past was not all it’s cracked up to be. . . . Even if things were not always right in families of the past, it seems clear that some things have newly gone wrong.”
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“The developments in the North were those loosely embraced in the term modernization and included urbanization, industrialization, and mechanization. While those changes went forward apace, the antebellum South changed comparatively little, clinging to its rural, agricultural, labor-intensive economy and its traditional folk culture.”
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