Government Resident

A Resident, or in full Resident Minister, is a government official required to take up permanent residence in another country. A representative of his government, he officially has diplomatic functions which are often seen as a form of indirect rule.

This full style occurred commonly as a diplomatic rank for the head of a mission ranking just below envoy, usually reflecting the relatively low status of the states of origin and/or residency, or else difficult relations.

On occasion, the Resident Minister's role could become extremely important, as when in 1806 the Bourbon king Ferdinand IV fled his Kingdom of Naples, and Lord William Bentinck, the British Resident, authored (1812) a new and relatively liberal constitution.

Residents could also be posted with shadowy governments. For instance, the British sent Residents to the Mameluk Beys who ruled Baghdad province as an autonomous state (1704-1831) in the north of present-day Iraq, until the Ottoman sultans regained control over it (1831) and its Wali (governor).

Even after the Congress of Vienna restored the Grand Duchy of Tuscany in 1815, the British posted a "mere" Resident to Florence.

As international relations developed, it became customary to give the highest title of diplomatic rank - ambassador - to the head of all permanent missions in any country, except as a temporary expression of down-graded relations or where representation was merely an interim arrangement.

Some official representatives of European colonial powers, while in theory diplomats, in practice exercised a degree of indirect rule. Some such Residents were former military officers, rather than career diplomats, who resided in smaller self-governing protectorates and tributary states and acted as political advisors to the rulers. A trusted Resident could even become the de facto prime minister to a native ruler. In other respects they acted as an ambassador of their own government, but at a lower level, since even large and rich native states were usually seen as inferior to Western nations. Instead of being a representative to a single ruler, a Resident could be posted to more than one native state, or to a grouping of states which the European power decided for its convenience. This could create an artificial geographical unit, as in Residency X in some parts of the British Indian Empire.

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