Colonial Office in the context of "Dominion"

A Crown colony or royal colony was a colony governed by England, and then Great Britain or the United Kingdom within the English and later British Empire. There was usually a governor to represent the Crown, appointed by the British monarch on the advice of the UK Government, with or without the assistance of a local council. In some cases, this council was split into two: an executive council and a legislative council, and the executive council was similar to the Privy Council that advises the monarch. Members of executive councils were appointed by the governors, and British citizens resident in Crown colonies either had no representation in local government, or limited representation in a lower house. In several Crown colonies, this limited representation grew over time. As the House of Commons of the British Parliament has never included seats for any of the colonies, there was no direct representation in the sovereign government for British subjects or citizens residing in Crown colonies.

The administration of Crown colonies changed over time and in the 1800s some became, with a loosening of the power of royal governors, self-governing colonies, within which the sovereign state (the UK Government) delegated legislation for most local internal matters of governance to elected assemblies, with consent of the governor, overseen by the Colonial Office and the Board of Trade and Plantations. The Colonial Office gave way to the Dominion Office for some of these territories in 1925. Elected lower houses had their beginnings in the House of Burgesses of the Colony of Virginia in 1619 and the House of Assembly of the Parliament of Bermuda in 1620. While initially limited in government even with an elected lower house, over the centuries in some Crown colonies, more independent authority was given.

Sir Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles FRS FRAS (5 July 1781 – 5 July 1826) was a British colonial official who served as the governor of the Dutch East Indies between 1811 and 1816 and lieutenant-governor of Bencoolen between 1818 and 1824. Raffles was involved in the capture of the Indonesian island of Java from the Dutch during the Napoleonic Wars. It was returned under the Anglo–Dutch Treaty of 1824. He also wrote The History of Java in 1817, describing the history of the island from ancient times. The Rafflesia flowers were named after him.

Raffles also played a role in further establishing the British Empire's reach in East and Southeast Asia. He secured control over the strategically located Singapore from local rulers in 1819 to secure British access along the Strait of Singapore and the nearby seas in the region, particularly the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea. His actions were initially not endorsed by the British government and led to tensions between the British and the Dutch. The Anglo–Dutch Treaty of 1824 established their respective spheres of influence, the Dutch relinquishing their claims to Singapore while the British ceded Bencoolen to them. A transshipment port was subsequently established in Singapore for maritime trade between Europe and Asia.

Singapore was part of the Straits Settlements between 1826 and 1942, together with Penang and Malacca. Singapore was the capital and the seat of government of the Straits Settlements after it had been moved from George Town in 1832.

From 1830 to 1867, the Straits Settlements was a residency, or subdivision, of the Presidency of Bengal, in British India. In 1867, the Straits Settlements became a separate Crown colony, directly overseen by the Colonial Office in Whitehall in London. The period saw Singapore establish itself as an important trading port and developed into a major city with a rapid increase in population. The city remained as the capital and seat of government until British rule was suspended in February 1942, when the Imperial Japanese Army invaded Singapore during World War II. Following the war, it was officially replaced by the Colony of Singapore in 1946.

The Mandate for Mesopotamia (Arabic: الانتداب على بلاد ما بين النهرين, romanized: al-Intidāb ʿalā Bilād mā bayn an-Nahrayn) was a proposed League of Nations mandate to cover Ottoman Iraq (Mesopotamia). It would have been entrusted to the United Kingdom but was superseded by the Anglo-Iraqi Treaty, an agreement between Britain and Iraq with some similarities to the proposed mandate. On paper, the mandate lasted from 1920 to 1932.

The proposed mandate was awarded on 25 April 1920 at the San Remo Conference, in Italy, in accordance with the 1916 Sykes–Picot Agreement but was not yet documented or defined. It was to be a class A mandate under Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations. A draft mandate document was prepared by the British Colonial Office in June 1920 and submitted in draft form to the League of Nations in December 1920.

The 1921 Cairo Conference, described in the official minutes as Middle East Conference held in Cairo and Jerusalem, March 12 to 30, 1921, was a series of meetings by British officials for examining and discussing Middle Eastern problems, and to frame a common policy. The secret conference of British experts created the blueprint for British control in both Iraq and Transjordan. By offering nominal leadership of those two regions to the sons of the Sharif of the Mecca, Churchill felt that the spirit if not the actual letter of Britain's wartime promises to the Arabs were fulfilled.

Particular concerns of the conference were to resolve the conflicting policies defined in the McMahon letters (1915), the Sykes-Picot agreement (1916) and the Balfour Declaration (1917). Winston Churchill, the newly appointed Colonial Secretary, called all the British Military Leaders and civil administrators in the Middle East to a conference at the Semiramis hotel in Cairo to discuss these issues. It was an experimental conference organized by the Colonial Office, with the purpose to solve problems more efficiently, with improved communications, without protracted correspondence.

British Somaliland, officially the Somaliland Protectorate (Somali: Maxmiyadda Dhulka Soomaalida), was a protectorate of the United Kingdom in the territory of modern Somaliland. It was bordered by Italian Somalia, French Somali Coast, and the Ethiopian Empire (later part of Italian East Africa from 1936 to 1941).

The territory consisted of self ruled sultanates under British protectorate From 1884 to 1920 before coming under direct Colonial Office administration. Following the defeat of the Dervish forces in 1920, the protectorate was formally established as a Crown colony.