4
eed to be conscious of the effect any such precedent might ha on the territories outside the scope of the seminar. We shoul also then be left with the problem of what to do with Ascension Island and Tristan da Cunha.
SESSION 4: LESSONS TO BE LEARNED FROM OTHER COLONIAL POWERS
In the context of the earlier discussions with their emphasis on British concern to limit responsibilities for defence, internal security and aid, Dr Robinson outlined French, US and Dutch arrangements which had attempted to provide an alternative to independence.
The French
Five territories had been fully integrated with France as Overseas Departments. Three of them - Martinique, Guadeloupe and Reunion were well outside the population range we had been considering, but French Guiana and St Pierre et Miquelon were within it. These arrangements were the outcome of a long historic process, which had reached a fairly advanced stage even before the last war, in which such integrations had long been held out as the objective of French policy. It involved total responsibility for defence and security, full representation in the French Parliament, full citizenship and high expenditure determined by metropolitan standards. It thus appeared to have no attractions for us.
The United States
Apart from 'scheduled independence' in the Philippines, not typical, US arrangements had by and large been adaptations of those made in the westward expansion of the US but stopping short of statehood - except, and then only after a long interval, Alaska and Hawaii. This model involved full citizenship and federal responsibility, a non-voting Delegate in Congress, elected Governors and legislatures in the territories deriving their powers from the federal government not, like states, from the Constitution, and high federal expendi- ture. Such arrangements had been applied in Puerto Rico (with an attempt to give them a more formal status), Guam, the US Virgin Islands and most recently the Northern Marianas. They fell short of statehood towards which there had been, in respect of Puerto Rico and the USVI, for many years conflicting pressures both in the territories and at Washington. Again there seemed to be no attrac- tion for us in such arrangements.
The Dutch
The arrangements made in 1954 were the most innovatory of the three. These involved full internal self government for the Netherlands Antilles six territories, four of them very small, and geographic- ally divided between the Venezuelan coast and the Northern Antilles and for Surinam. Surinam and the Netherlands Antilles constituted with the Netherlands a "Kingdom" in which defence, foreign affairs, citizenship and nationality etc. were reserved for a government in which the two overseas components were represented by Commissioners
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