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It's curious how many British overseas territories got left over from the British Empire, simply because they are too small, or never wanted independence, or bo
by libraryofbabel 6y ago
It's curious how many British overseas territories got left over from the British Empire, simply because they are too small, or never wanted independence, or both. Among others: St Helena in the middle of the South Atlantic (where Napoleon was imprisoned and died), part of Cyprus, the immensely controversial Gibraltar, various Caribbean islands, the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, and the very remote Pitcairn Island in the South Pacific.
At its height the British Empire covered a quarter of the land on Earth and claimed dominion over a fifth of humanity; the saying was that the sun never set on the British Empire. Turns out, thanks to these various islands, it still doesn't: https://what-if.xkcd.com/48/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/48/
- pmyteh 6y agoAbsolutely! Though in two of those cases we held on to the territory against the wishes of the inhabitants because we wanted to keep strategically placed military bases: the Cyprus Sovereign Base Areas and the Chagos archipelago (now the BIOT). The latter was particularly egregious, as we deported all the inhabitants and have subsequently treated them terribly.
- pjc50 6y agoGibraltar is the least controversial, surely: it's been British since the Treaty of Utrecht, at the point where the map of Europe started to resemble the modern one. The population is British and wishes to remain so. There wasn't an indigenous population removed at gunpoint. Even Cyprus is more controversial. The fact that Spain would like it has no standing under international law.
- rikroots 6y agoAlso Bermuda, now the most populous of the British Overseas Territories - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bermuda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bermuda