The title director has been used in colonial administrations not only as a bureaucratic rank and for the members of a board of directors, but also specifically, as in this article, for the head of the colonial administration of a territory (e.g. protectorate) under indirect rule by a chartered company, functionally equivalent to a governor.
Contents
Elsewhere, the same function went by the -in principle higher- title director-general, as in Demerara-Essequibo (Dutch Guyana).
British colonies
Other colonial powers
Director, or rather its equivalent in the colonizer's language, was similarly used elsewhere:
References
Director (colonial) Wikipedia(Text) CC BY-SA