Claim: A crown colony is a territory.

A crown colony , also known in the 17th century as royal colony and since 2002 known as a British Overseas Territory , was a type of colonial administration of the overseas territories of the British Empire .   Crown , or royal , colonies were ruled by a governor appointed by the monarch . By the middle of the 19th century , the sovereign appointed royal governors on the advice of the Secretary of State for the Colonies . Under the name of `` royal colony '' , the first of what would later become known as Crown colonies was the English Colony of Virginia in the present-day United States , after the Crown , in 1624 , revoked the royal charter it had granted to the Virginia Company , taking over direct administration .   Until the mid-19th century , the term `` crown colony '' was primarily used to refer to those colonies that had been acquired through wars , such as Trinidad and Tobago and British Guiana , but after that time it was more broadly applied to any colony other than the Presidencies and provinces of British India and the colonies of settlement , such as The Canadas , Newfoundland , British Columbia , New South Wales , Queensland , South Australia , Tasmania , Victoria , Western Australia , and New Zealand , later to become the Dominions .   The term continued to be used until 1981 , when the British Nationality Act 1981 reclassified the remaining British colonies as `` British Dependent Territories '' . By this time , the term `` crown colony '' referred specifically to those colonies ruled directly by a Governor appointed by the Monarch -LRB- as was the case in Hong Kong before the 1997 handover to the People 's Republic of China -RRB- , with or without the assistance of some form of council appointed by the Governor . The term was not used to apply to those colonies which were substantially autonomous , usually described as `` self-governed colonies '' -LRB- at that time , primarily Bermuda , which had become a crown colony , according to an older definition of the term , when the Crown revoked the Royal Charter it had given to the Somers Isles Company , successor to the Virginia Company , in 1684 . This meant that the Crown , from then onwards , appointed the Governor of Bermuda , previously appointed by the Company . Bermuda had already been internally self-governed for sixty-four years , however , and by the Twentieth Century the definition of `` crown colony '' had narrowed to include only those territories without internal self-government . The House of Assembly of Bermuda had existed continuously since its first session in 1620 , including through the Commonwealth of England , when for some years the Mother Country itself had no parliament . From 2002 , all remaining British colonies , whether Crown Colonies or self-governed , have been known as British Overseas Territories .