British Protected States

A British Protectorate is a territory which is not formally annexed but in which, by treaty, grant or other lawful means, the British Crown has ultimate power and jurisdiction. A protectorate differs from a "protected state". A protected state is a territory under a ruler which enjoys Her Britannic Majesty's protection, over whose foreign affairs she exercises control, but in respect of whose internal affairs she does not exercise jurisdiction.

Currently, as of 2018, there are no official British protectorates.

Some British colonies were ruled directly by the Colonial Office in London, while others were ruled indirectly through local rulers who were supervised behind the scenes by British advisors. In 1890 Zanzibar became a protectorate (not a colony) of Britain. Prime Minister Salisbury explained his position as follows:

The condition of a protected dependency is more acceptable to the half-civilised races, and more suitable for them than direct dominion. It is cheaper, simpler, less wounding to their self-esteem, gives them more career as public officials, and spares of unnecessary contact with white men.

The princely states of India were ruled indirectly. So too was much of the West African holdings.

When King George III issued his Royal Proclamation of 1763 he established the framework for the negotiation of treaties with the aboriginal inhabitants of large sections of North America, and legally defined an area of the North American interior as a vast "Indian reserve". King George reserved the western lands to the "several nations or tribes of Indians" that were under his "protection" as their exclusive "hunting grounds". As sovereign of this territory, however, the king claimed ultimate "Dominion" over the entire region. These nations or tribes would be considered protectorates by treaty. The treaty-making procedures that evolved in the Crown colony of Upper Canada were later exported to the territories purchased in 1870 by the new Dominion from the Hudson's Bay Company. A basis of land tenure was established throughout most of the prairie provinces and Northern Ontario, where seven numbered treaties were negotiated in the 1870s, on the principles outlined in the Royal Proclamation of 1763. In other large areas of the country where the treaty-making provisions of the Royal Proclamation have never been implemented, aboriginal land rights are legally enforceable.

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