n addition to colonies of these three classes were lesser outposts scattered around the world, sometimes little more than coaling stations. They were of strategic importance, but figured little in the question of imperial governance.
The white Dominions were characterized by populations that were predominantly of British descent, thus in some broad moral sense still "Englishmen." The development of their political institutions and relations with the mother country were shaped primarily by the awkward experience with the original British overseas colonies that went their own way after the American War of Independence. The American colonists had begun by demanding the "rights of Englishmen," and the lesson learned was that these rights -- a say in their own government and affairs, rather than direct rule from Whitehall -- had to be granted to the Canadian dominions that remained loyal, and the similar dominions established in Australia and New Zealand.
The form of government that thus developed was modeled on the British parliamentary system. Formal executive authority was vested in a Governor-General sent out from Whitehall, but he presided over a locally elected parliament with its own cabinet of ministers. It should be remembered that Queen Victoria was far from the rois faineants that her Windsor descendents have become; her formal powers were limited, but her influence was enormous. Governors-General in the 19th century enjoyed similar broad if ill-defined powers in the white Dominions.
A subgroup of white Dominions were those, primarily Quebec and Cape Colony, which had large populations of European -- but not British -- descent. These posed their own special problems, since they shared what would now be called a Western background, but not British traditions of law and government. Nevertheless, these populations were regarded as peers, if not quite of the same rank, and in principle as capable of British-sty...