British Columbia (colony)
British Columbia was a British crown colony in western British North America that existed from 1858 to 1866 . Their area essentially corresponded to the present-day Canadian province of British Columbia , with the exception of Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands . The capital was New Westminster . In 1866, British Columbia was merged with the Vancouver Island Colony to form the United Colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia .
history
Emergence
The discoveries of James Cook and George Vancouver and the Nootka Convention with Spain in 1794 led to the development of a British legal area in the coastal area north of California . British influence grew with the overland trips of Alexander MacKenzie , Simon Fraser and David Thompson and the subsequent establishment of trading posts by the North West Company and the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC).
After the Oregon Compromise of 1846, which established the 49th parallel as the border between Canada and the United States , the HBC moved the headquarters of its western sphere of influence from Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River (now Vancouver (Washington) ) to the newly founded Victoria on Vancouver Island , which had been a crown colony since 1849. The mainland remained de facto under the administration of HBC, whose branch manager James Douglas was also governor of Vancouver Island. At the time, the non-native population on the mainland did not exceed 150, mostly HBC employees and their families.
In 1858, rumors spread that gold had been found on the Thompson River . Within a short space of time, ten to twenty thousand men streamed into the area around what is now Yale , triggering the Fraser Canyon gold rush . Governor Douglas, who had no legal authority whatsoever in New Caledonia (as the mainland was then called), stationed a gunboat on the lower reaches of the Fraser River to persuade the mostly US prospectors who wanted to travel upstream to pay royalties.
To ensure jurisdiction and to anticipate possible claims of the HBC on the mineral resources, the British Parliament declared New Caledonia on August 2, 1858 a colony of British Columbia. Colonial Secretary Edward Bulwer-Lytton appointed James Douglas as the first governor of the new colony - on the condition that he gave up his relations with the HBC. British Columbia had its own capital, New Westminster , but Douglas preferred to rule both colonies from Victoria.
Governor James Douglas
The influx of thousands of people into the new colony forced Douglas to quickly provide an infrastructure. Magistrates and police officers were hired enacted mining regulations and at Yale , Hope and Langley Fort measured locations for new settlements, the occupation of Crown land by squatters to prevent. In addition, roads were built into the main mining areas around Lillooet and Lytton . For the time being, the colony did not receive any representative legislative advice, as it was not foreseeable whether the settlement would be permanent after the end of the gold rush. This was entirely in the spirit of the autocratic Douglas, who often had arguments with the council meeting on Vancouver Island.
In fact, the gold rush ended after a short time and the exodus of miners, speculators and traders began as soon as the Royal Engineers had completed the survey of the new capital New Westminster. The prospectors stayed, however, made new gold discoveries further inland in the Cariboo region in 1860 and triggered a second gold rush. The supply turned out to be an acute problem, which is why new roads had to be built in order to be able to use covered wagons instead of pack horses as was previously the case. In 1862 the Cariboo gold rush attracted another 5,000 miners and Douglas pushed ahead with the construction of the Cariboo Road to Barkerville . That year part of the Stikine Territory also came to British Columbia.
During the second gold rush, the composition of the population began to change. More and more British colonists began arriving, opening shops and sawmills, or fishing and farming. This increased stability was accompanied by criticism of the governor who was not present in the colony and demands for democratic structures. The opposition leader was John Robson , editor of the British Columbian newspaper and later provincial prime minister. Douglas and the colonial administration ignored numerous petitions calling for a representative council until the governor was removed in 1864.
Governor Frederick Seymour
Douglas' successor was Frederick Seymour , who had previously served in Van Diemens Land , the British West Indies and British Honduras . His assumption of office in April 1864 marked the beginning of a new era for the colony: British Columbia stepped out of the shadow of Vancouver Island and was no longer dependent on a governor who wanted to avoid the division of power with an elected council. In contrast to Douglas, Seymour ruled from New Westminster.
Douglas' road construction project continued and posed numerous challenges for engineers, particularly in the narrow Fraser Canyon. The colonial authorities took out several loans to finance the road, accumulating £ 200,000 in debt. An uprising by the Homalco and Chilcotin ( Chilcotin War ), who opposed a competing private road construction project, tore an even bigger hole in the cash register. Seymour traveled through the Chilcotin Ranges to personally attend the arrest of the insurgents.
On the way back, Seymour made a detour over the Cariboo gold fields and through the Fraser Canyon. In doing so, he came to the conclusion that the colony had great potential for economic growth. On his return, however, he found that the mountain of debt continued to grow. Soon there were calls to merge the two colonies. Seymour initially resisted, but then had to give in to pressure from some members of his own government. By resolution of the British Parliament took place on August 6, 1866, the amalgamation to the United Colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia .
British Columbia Governors
- 1858–1864: James Douglas
- 1864-1866: Frederick Seymour
literature
- Jean Barman: The West beyond the West - A History of British Columbia. University of Toronto Press, Toronto 2007. ISBN 0-80209-495-3 .
- Daniel Francis: The Encyclopedia of British Columbia. Harbor Publishing, Pender Harbor 2000. ISBN 1-55017-200-X .
- Wolfgang W. Moelleken, arr .: The Low German of the Molotschna and Chortitzamennonites in British Columbia. Series: Phonai, 10. de Gruyter, Berlin 1972, repr. 2017