The Oldest Legislature in the Western Hemisphere?

by Karl Kurtz

My ears perked up at an international conference on legislative strengthening when Dame Jennifer Smith, deputy speaker of the Bermuda House of Assembly and a former premier of that country, said, "Bermuda has the oldest legislature in the western hemisphere.  Our parliament dates from 1620." 

Knowing that the Virginia General Assembly claims to be the oldest in our part of the world, I quickly looked it up and found that Virginia's legislature dates from 1619.  Wikipedia calls Bermuda's parliament "amongst the world's oldest" but says that Virginia's legislature is the oldest in the the western hemisphere.

After the session, I introduced myself to Dame Smith and suggested to her that her statement would be more accurate if she said that Bermuda has the oldest national parliament in the west.  She immediately came back with, "I know about those people in Virginia.  We saved them from starving, and they should be grateful to us, not arguing over who has the oldest legislature!"

She was referring to the "starving time" of the Jamestown settlers in 1609-10, when some of the settlers from England were shipwrecked in Bermuda on the way to Virginia, spent the winter there to build new ships and later continued on to Jamestown, bringing much needed reinforcements and supplies to the starving settlement nearly a year late.

Dame Jennifer said that Bermuda and Virginia had recently held a joint commemoration of the 400 year old link between the two.

Comments

[Toby Dorsey]

I would guess the answer is Iceland, though I suppose there isn't consensus about which hemisphere it's actually in.