The British Virgin Islands is a British overseas territory, located in the Caribbean to the east of Puerto Rico. The islands make up part of the Virgin Islands archipelago (the remainder constituting the ► U.S. Virgin Islands and the Spanish Virgin Islands, part of ► Puerto Rico). The British Virgin Islands consist of the main islands of Tortola, Virgin Gorda, Anegada and Jost Van Dyke, along with over 50 other smaller islands and cays. Around 15 of the islands are inhabited. The largest island, Tortola, is approximately 12 miles (19 km) long and 3 miles (5 km) wide. The islands have a total population of about 22,000. Road Town, the capital, is situated on Tortola. The islands are also located near ► Saint Martin and ► Anguilla.
Short name
British Virgin Islands
Official name
British Virgin Islands
Status
► British overseas territory, British (English) since 1672
This section holds a short summary of the history of the area of present-day the British Virgin Islands, illustrated with maps, including historical maps of former countries and empires that included present-day the British Virgin Islands.
[[|border|251x400px]]
England seizes the Virgin Islands from Dutch pirates and establishes in 1666 the colony of Virgin Islands (later called the British Virgin Islands). In 1833 the British Virgin Islands become part of the Leeward Islands. When the Leeward Island join in 1958 the West Indies Federation, the British Virgin Islands become a separate British dependency. Since 1967 the Virgin Islands are a parliamentary democracy with an own chief minister.
Notes and references
General remarks:
The WIKIMEDIA COMMONS Atlas of the World is an organized and commented collection of geographical, political and historical maps available at Wikimedia Commons. The main page is therefore the portal to maps and cartography on Wikimedia. That page contains links to entries by country, continent and by topic as well as general notes and references.
Every entry has an introduction section in English. If other languages are native and/or official in an entity, introductions in other languages are added in separate sections. The text of the introduction(s) is based on the content of the Wikipedia encyclopedia. For sources of the introduction see therefore the Wikipedia entries linked to. The same goes for the texts in the history sections.
Historical maps are included in the continent, country and dependency entries.
The status of various entities is disputed. See the content for the entities concerned.
The maps of former countries that are more or less continued by a present-day country or had a territory included in only one or two countries are included in the atlas of the present-day country. For example the Ottoman Empire can be found in the Atlas of Turkey.