British Overseas Territories

The British Overseas Territories are fourteen territories that maintain a constitutional or historically recognised connection with the United Kingdom and constitute part of its sovereign territory, yet lie outside the British Islands. These territories are remnants of the former British Empire, which remained under British sovereignty following decolonisation, albeit with varying constitutional statuses.
The permanently inhabited territories exercise varying degrees of internal self-governance, although the UK retains ultimate constitutional oversight, and authority over defence, foreign relations and internal security. While three of the territories are inhabited primarily by military or scientific personnel, the remainder host substantial civilian populations. All fourteen territories recognise the British monarch as head of state and oversight is primarily exercised by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. The total land area of all the BOTs make up, roughly the size of Fiji, which was itself a former British colony.

Population

Most of the territories retain permanent civilian populations, with the exceptions of the British Antarctic Territory, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, and the British Indian Ocean Territory. Permanent residency for the approximately 7,000 civilians living in the Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia is limited to citizens of Cyprus.
Collectively, the territories encompass a population of about 250,000 people. The two largest territories by population, the Cayman Islands and Bermuda, account for about half of the total BOT population. The Cayman Islands alone comprise 28% of the entire BOT population. At the other end of the scale, three territories have no civilian inhabitants – the Antarctic Territory, the British Indian Ocean Territory, and South Georgia. The Pitcairn Islands, settled by the survivors of the mutiny on the Bounty, is the smallest settled territory, with 49 inhabitants.

Geography

Collectively, the territories encompass a land area of about. The vast majority of this land area constitutes the almost uninhabited British Antarctic Territory. The smallest by land area is Gibraltar, which lies on the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula. The United Kingdom participates in the Antarctic Treaty System and, as part of a mutual agreement, the British Antarctic Territory is recognised by four of the six other sovereign nations making claims to Antarctic territory.

Present overseas territories

The 14 British Overseas Territories are:

Map

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History

Early colonies, in the sense of English subjects residing in lands hitherto outside the control of the English government, were generally known as plantations. The first, unofficial, colony was Newfoundland Colony, where English fishermen routinely set up seasonal camps in the 16th century. It is now a province of Canada known as Newfoundland and Labrador.
After failed attempts, including the Roanoke Colony, the permanent English colonisation of North America began officially in 1607 with the settlement of Jamestown, the first successful permanent colony in Virginia. Its offshoot, Bermuda, was settled inadvertently after the wrecking of the Virginia Company's flagship there in 1609, with the company's charter extended to officially include the archipelago in 1612. St. George's town, founded in Bermuda in that year, remains the oldest continuously inhabited British settlement in the New World. Bermuda and Bermudians have played important, sometimes pivotal, but generally underestimated or unacknowledged roles in the shaping of the English and British transatlantic empires. These include maritime commerce, settlement of the continent and of the West Indies, and the projection of naval power via the colony's privateers, among other areas.
The growth of the British Empire in the 19th century, to its territorial peak in the 1920s, saw Britain acquire nearly one quarter of the world's land mass, including territories with large indigenous populations in Asia and Africa. From the middle of the 19th century to the early 20th century, the larger settler colonies – in Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa – first became self-governing colonies and then achieved independence in all matters except foreign policy, defence and trade. Separate self-governing colonies federated to become Canada, Australia, South Africa and Rhodesia. These and other large self-governing colonies had by the 1920s become known as dominions. The dominions achieved almost full independence with the Statute of Westminster.
Through a process of decolonisation following the Second World War, most of the British colonies in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean chose independence. Some colonies became Commonwealth realms, retaining the monarch as their own head of state. Most former colonies and protectorates became member states of the Commonwealth of Nations, a non-political, voluntary association of equal members, comprising a population of around 2.2 billion people.
After the independence of Southern Rhodesia in Africa in 1980 and British Honduras in Central America in 1981, the last major colony that remained was Hong Kong, with a population of over 5 million. With 1997 approaching, the United Kingdom and China negotiated the Sino-British Joint Declaration, which led to the whole of Hong Kong becoming a special administrative region of China in 1997, subject to various conditions intended to guarantee the preservation of Hong Kong's capitalist economy and its way of life under British rule for at least 50 years after the handover. George Town, Cayman Islands, has consequently become the largest city among the dependent territories, partly because of the constant and healthy flow of immigration to the city and the territory as a whole, which saw its population jump 26% from 2010 to 2021, the fastest population growth of any of the territories.
Before 1 January 1983, the territories were officially referred to as the Crown Colonies. At that time, they were renamed British Dependent Territories. In 2002, the British Parliament passed the British Overseas Territories Act 2002, which introduced the current name of British Overseas Territories. This reclassified the UK's dependent territories as overseas territories and, except for those people solely connected with the Sovereign Base Areas on Cyprus, restored full British citizenship to their inhabitants.
During the European Union membership of the United Kingdom, the main body of EU law did not apply and, although certain slices of EU law were applied to the overseas territories as part of the EU's Association of Overseas Countries and Territories, they were not commonly enforceable in local courts. The OCT Association also provided overseas territories with structural funding for regeneration projects. Gibraltar was the only overseas territory that was part of the EU, although it was not part of the European Customs Union, the European Tax Policy, the European Statistics Zone or the Common Agriculture Policy. Gibraltar was not a member of the EU in its own right; it received representation in the European Parliament through its being part of the South West England constituency. Overseas citizens held concurrent European Union citizenship, giving them rights of free movement across all EU member states. The Sovereign Base Areas in Cyprus were never part of the EU, but they are the only British Overseas Territory to use the Euro as official currency, having previously had the Cypriot pound as their currency until 1 January 2008.
On 15 May 2023, the sixteen heraldic shields of the British Overseas Territories and the three coat of arms of the Crown Dependencies were "immortalised" in two new stained-glass windows, unveiled in the Speaker's House at the New Palace of Westminster. Speaker of the House of Commons, Sir Lindsay Hoyle said "The two windows represent part of our United Kingdom family".
Following the Chagos Archipelago handover agreement, the UK government is also due to introduce legislation to implement the agreement, including amending the British Nationality Act 1981 to reflect that the British Indian Ocean Territory is no longer an overseas territory following Parliament's ratification of the treaty.

Government

Head of state

The head of state in the overseas territories is the British monarch, currently. The monarch appoints a representative in each territory to exercise the executive power of the monarch. In territories with a permanent population, a governor is appointed by the monarch on the advice of the British government. Currently, all but two governors are either career diplomats or have worked in other civil service departments. The remaining two governors are former members of the British armed forces. In territories without a permanent population, a commissioner is usually appointed to represent the monarch. Exceptionally, in the overseas territories of Saint Helena, Ascension, Tristan da Cunha and the Pitcairn Islands, an administrator is appointed to be the governor's representative. In the territory of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, there is an administrator in each of the two distant parts of the territory, namely Ascension Island and Tristan da Cunha. The administrator of the Pitcairn Islands resides on Pitcairn, with the governor based in New Zealand.
Following the Lords' decision in Ex parte Quark, 2005, it is held that the King, in exercising his authority over British Overseas Territories, does not act on the advice of the government of the UK, but in his role as King of each territory, except fulfilling the UK's international responsibilities for its territories. The reserve powers of the Crown for each territory are no longer considered to be exercisable on the advice of the UK government. To comply with the court's decision, the territorial governors now act on the advice of each territory's executive, and the UK government can no longer disallow legislation passed by territorial legislatures. The role of the governor is to act as the de facto head of state, and they are usually responsible for appointing the head of government, and senior political positions in the territory. The governor is also responsible for liaising with the UK government and carrying out any ceremonial duties. A commissioner has the same powers as a governor, but also acts as the head of government.