Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that answer the question.
Query: How big are the British Virgin Islands?
The British Virgin Islands comprise around 60 tropical Caribbean islands, ranging in size from the largest, Tortola, being long and wide, to tiny uninhabited islets, altogether about in extent. They are located in the Virgin Islands archipelago, a few miles east of the US Virgin Islands, and about from the Puerto Rican mainland. About east south-east lies Anguilla. The North Atlantic Ocean lies to the east of the islands, and the Caribbean Sea lies to the west. Most of the islands are volcanic in origin and have a hilly, rugged terrain. Anegada is geologically distinct from the rest of the group and is a flat island composed of limestone and coral.
Britain retains sovereignty over 14 territories outside the British Isles, which were renamed the British Overseas Territories in 2002. Three are uninhabited except for transient military or scientific personnel; the remaining eleven are self-governing to varying degrees and are reliant on the UK for foreign relations and defence. The British government has stated its willingness to assist any Overseas Territory that wishes to proceed to independence, where that is an option, and three territories have specifically voted to remain under British sovereignty (Bermuda in 1995, Gibraltar in 2002 and the Falkland Islands in 2013).
There are two sovereign states in the isles: Ireland and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Ireland, sometimes called "the Republic of Ireland", governs five sixths of the island of Ireland, with the remainder of the island forming Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is a part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, usually shortened to simply "the United Kingdom", which governs the remainder of the archipelago with the exception of the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. The Isle of Man and the two states of the Channel Islands, Jersey and Guernsey, are known as the Crown dependencies. They exercise constitutional rights of self-government and judicial independence; responsibility for international representation rests largely upon the UK (in consultation with the respective governments); and responsibility for defence is reserved by the UK. The United Kingdom is made up of four constituent parts: England, Scotland and Wales, forming Great Britain, and Northern Ireland in the north-east of the island of Ireland. Of these, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have "devolved" governments, meaning that each has its own parliament or assembly and is self-governing with respect to certain areas set down by law. For judicial purposes, Scotland, Northern Ireland and England and Wales (the latter being one entity) form separate legal jurisdiction, with there being no single law for the UK as a whole.
Within twenty years of the partition and independence in 1947 of British India (considered to be the most important colonial possession), most of the Empire's territories had achieved full independence. Today 14 former colonies (since 2002 known as British Overseas Territories) remain under British rule; the term "colonies" is no longer officially used to describe these.
Besides these thirteen colonies, Britain had another dozen in the New World. Those in the British West Indies, Newfoundland, the Province of Quebec, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Bermuda, and East and West Florida remained loyal to the crown throughout the war (although Spain reacquired Florida before the war was over, and later sold it to the United States). There was a certain degree of sympathy with the Patriot cause in several of the other colonies, but their geographical isolation and the dominance of British naval power precluded any effective participation. The British crown had only recently acquired those lands, and many of the issues facing the Thirteen Colonies did not apply to them, especially in the case of Quebec and Florida.
Brittany is the largest French peninsula. It is around and stretches towards the northwest and the Atlantic Ocean. It is bordered to the north by the English Channel, to the south by the Bay of Biscay and the waters located between the western coast and Ushant island form the Iroise Sea.
The Northern Isles (; ; ) are a pair of archipelagos off the north coast of mainland Scotland, comprising Orkney and Shetland. The climate is cool and temperate and much influenced by the surrounding seas. There are a total of 26 inhabited islands with landscapes of the fertile agricultural islands of Orkney contrasting with the more rugged Shetland islands to the north, where the economy is more dependent on fishing and the oil wealth of the surrounding seas. Both have a developing renewable energy industry. They also share a common Pictish and Norse history. Both island groups were absorbed into the Kingdom of Scotland in the 15th century and remained part of the country following the formation of the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707, and later the United Kingdom after 1801. The islands played a significant naval role during the world wars of the 20th century.
British America comprised the British Empire's colonial territories in North America, Bermuda, Central America, the Caribbean, and Guyana from 1607 to 1783. The American colonies were formally known as British America and the British West Indies before 1776, when the Thirteen Colonies declared their independence in the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) and formed the United States of America. After that, the term British North America was used to describe the remainder of Britain's continental North American possessions. That term was first used informally in 1783 by the end of the American Revolution, but it was uncommon before the Report on the Affairs of British North America (1839), called the Durham Report.
The Falkland Islands, off the south coast of Argentina, were simultaneously claimed for Louis XV of France, in 1764, and George III of the United Kingdom, in 1765, though the French colony was ceded to Charles III of Spain in 1767. By 1833, however, the islands were under full British control. The South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands were discovered by Captain James Cook for George III in January 1775, and from 1843 were governed by the British Crown-in-Council through the Falkland Islands, an arrangement that stood until the South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands were incorporated as a distinct British overseas territory in 1985. The monarch is represented in these regions by Nigel Phillips, who is both the Governor of the Falkland Islands and the Commissioner for South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands.
The Falkland Islands (; , ) is an archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean on the Patagonian Shelf. The principal islands are about east of South America's southern Patagonian coast, and about from the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, at a latitude of about 52°S. The archipelago, with an area of , comprises East Falkland, West Falkland and 776 smaller islands. As a British overseas territory, the Falklands have internal self-governance, and the United Kingdom takes responsibility for their defence and foreign affairs. The Falkland Islands' capital is Stanley on East Falkland.
The Channel Islands are grouped for administrative purposes into the Bailiwicks of Jersey and Guernsey. The islands are not part of the United Kingdom but are dependencies of the British Crown and in currency union with the UK. Both Jersey and Guernsey issue their own banknotes. These notes circulate freely between the two territories, so Jersey notes are commonly used in Guernsey, and vice versa. Private banknotes are no longer in circulation in the Channel Islands. These pounds are sterling pounds but the word "sterling" is omitted as with the English notes. These notes are legal tender in their jurisdictions but are not legal tender in the UK.
The islands were uninhabited when discovered by Europeans. France established a colony on the islands in 1764. In 1765, a British captain claimed the islands for Britain. In early 1770 a Spanish commander arrived from Argentina with five ships and 1400 soldiers forcing the British to leave Port Egmont. Britain and Spain almost went to war over the islands, but the British government decided that it should withdraw its presence from many overseas settlements in 1774. Spain, which had a garrison at Puerto Soledad on East Falklands, administered the garrison from Montevideo until 1811 when it was compelled to withdraw by pressures resulting from the Peninsular War. In 1833, the British returned to the Falkland Islands. Argentina invaded the islands on 2 April 1982. The British responded with an expeditionary force that forced the Argentines to surrender.
The British used colonial North America as a penal colony through a system of indentured servitude. Merchants would transport the convicts and auction them off (for example) to plantation owners upon arrival in the colonies. It is estimated that some 50,000 British convicts were sent to colonial America and the majority landed in the Chesapeake Colonies of Maryland and Virginia. Transported convicts represented perhaps one-quarter of all British emigrants during the 18th century. The colony of Georgia, for example, was first founded by James Edward Oglethorpe who originally intended to use prisoners taken largely from debtors' prison, creating a "Debtor's Colony," where the prisoners could learn trades and work off their debts. Even though this largely failed, the idea that the state began as a penal colony has persisted, both in popular history and local lore. The British would often ship Irish, Scots, and the Welsh to the Americas whenever rebellions took place in Ireland, Scotland or Wales but these were sent mostly to Maryland and Virginia, not Georgia.
After the independence of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in Africa in 1980 and British Honduras (now Belize) 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 in the Cayman Islands has consequently become the largest city in the Overseas Territories.
Britain approached the task of governing its New World territories in a less centralized manner, establishing about twenty distinct colonies in North America and the Caribbean from 1585 onward. Each British colony had its own governor and most would have representative assemblies. Most of the North American Thirteen Colonies that became the United States had strong self-government via popular assemblies that countered the authority of governors with their own assertions of rights via parliamentry and other English sources of authority. Only property owners could vote in British polities, but since so many free men in mainland British Colonial America owned land, a majority could vote and participate in popular politics. The British challenge to the authority of colonial assemblies, especially via taxation, was a major cause of the American Revolution in the 1770s.
The Falkland Islands have a land area of and a coastline estimated at . The archipelago consists of two main islands, West Falkland and East Falkland, and about 776 smaller islands. The islands are predominantly mountainous and hilly, with the major exception being the depressed plains of Lafonia (a peninsula forming the southern part of East Falkland). The Falklands consists of continental crust fragments resulting from the break-up of Gondwana and the opening of the South Atlantic that began 130 million years ago. The islands are located in the South Atlantic Ocean, on the Patagonian Shelf, about east of Patagonia in southern Argentina.
The Falkland Islands, a cluster of 780 islands off the eastern coast of Argentina, had no indigenous population when the British arrived to explore the islands in 1690. Continuous settlement dates only to 1833, when British forces removed 26 Argentinian soldiers from the islands and claimed the islands for the British. In 1845, the Capital city of Stanley, located on East Falkland, was established. Argentina also has a claim to the islands, and in 1982, Argentine forces invaded the Falkland Islands. The British moved to defend the British control of the Islands, with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher calling the Islanders "of British tradition and stock". In under three months, nearly a thousand people were killed, and over 2,000 were injured. British-Argentinian tension regarding claim to the Islands still exists, but as over 98% of Islanders voted to remain under British sovereignty in the last election, the identity of the island overall is overwhelmingly British. This history has implications for the linguistic features of Falkland Islands English, which is similar to British English but distinct in some vocabulary and phonology.
The "Elizabeth II" is a full-size representative 16th-century sailing ship that was designed and named after one of the seven ships used by Sir Walter Raleigh's fleet when he first brought colonists to Roanoke Island in 1587. The ship is a square-rigged bark with three masts, and 69 feet long, 17 feet wide and draws 8 feet of water. Guides dressed in period clothing portray the seamen and colonists who traveled to Roanoke with the fleet.
The Falkland Islands remained a self-governing British overseas territory, but shortly after the war the British Nationality (Falkland Islands) Act 1983 granted the Islanders British citizenship (replacing British Dependent Territories citizenship), strengthening the link between the Islanders and the UK. The economy also benefited indirectly from UK military investment and directly from development of fisheries. The future of the Falkland Islanders' link to the UK has been more certain as a result of the war, and the Islands' government remains committed to self-determination and British sovereignty. The only civilian deaths during the war were three women who were killed when a Royal Navy shell hit the house they were sheltering in during a bombardment of military targets inside Stanley itself.
In 1980, Southern Rhodesia, Britain's last African colony, became the independent nation of Zimbabwe. The New Hebrides achieved independence (as Vanuatu) in 1980, with Belize following suit in 1981. The passage of the British Nationality Act 1981, which reclassified the remaining Crown colonies as "British Dependent Territories" (renamed British Overseas Territories in 2002) meant that, aside from a scattering of islands and outposts, the process of decolonisation that had begun after the Second World War was largely complete. In 1982, Britain's resolve in defending its remaining overseas territories was tested when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands, acting on a long-standing claim that dated back to the Spanish Empire. Britain's ultimately successful military response to retake the islands during the ensuing Falklands War was viewed by many to have contributed to reversing the downward trend in Britain's status as a world power. The same year, the Canadian government severed its last legal link with Britain by patriating the Canadian constitution from Britain. The 1982 Canada Act passed by the British parliament ended the need for British involvement in changes to the Canadian constitution. Similarly, the Australia Act 1986 (effective 3 March 1986) severed the constitutional link between Britain and the Australian states, while New Zealand's Constitution Act 1986 (effective 1 January 1987) reformed the constitution of New Zealand to sever its constitutional link with Britain. In 1984, Brunei, Britain's last remaining Asian protectorate, gained its independence.
The U.S. state of Florida has a total of 4,510 islands that are ten acres or larger. This is the second-highest number of islands of any state of the United States; only Alaska has more.
British Virgin Islands (BVI) – British overseas territory located in the eastern portion of the Virgin Islands Archipelago in the Caribbean Sea. The Virgin Islands are part of the Leeward Islands of the Lesser Antilles. The United States Virgin Islands comprises the western portion of the archipelago. Technically the name of the Territory is simply the "Virgin Islands", but in practice since 1917 they have been almost universally referred to as the "British Virgin Islands" to distinguish the islands from the American Territory. To add to the regional confusion, the Puerto Rican islands of Culebra, Vieques and surrounding islands began referring to themselves as the "Spanish Virgin Islands" as part of a tourism drive in the early 2000s.
Necker Island is located at latitude 18.55 north and longitude 64.35 west in the eastern section of the British Virgin Islands. It is about north of Virgin Gorda and north-east of Prickly Pear Island and also Mosquito Island (sometimes spelled Moskito Island), which is also owned by Branson. The British Virgin Islands (BVI) are a group of islands about south-east of Miami, Florida, due east of San Juan, Puerto Rico, and about north-west of St. Barts.
British Virgin Islands Olympic Committee sent the nation's largest delegation to the Games since 1996. Four athletes, one man and three women, were selected to the British Virgin Islands team, participating only in both track and field and swimming. Tahesia Harrigan-Scott (women's 100 m) etched her name into the history books as the first ever female athlete for the British Virgin Islands to compete in three successive Olympic Games, while the rest of her teammates made their debut in Rio de Janeiro, including shot putter Eldred Henry, 16-year-old swimmer Elinah Phillip (women's 50 m freestyle), and Harrigan-Scott's fellow sprinter Ashley Kelly (women's 200 m), who subsequently acted as the nation's flag bearer in the opening ceremony. British Virgin Islands, however, has yet to win its first Olympic medal.
The British Virgin Islands consist of the main islands of Tortola, Virgin Gorda, Anegada and Jost Van Dyke, along with over fifty other smaller islands and cays. Approximately fifteen of the islands are inhabited. The largest island, Tortola, is approximately 20 km (approx. 12 mi) long and 5 km (approx. 3 mi) wide. The islands have a total population of about 22,000, of whom approximately 18,000 live on Tortola. Road Town, the capital, is situated on Tortola.Geography of the British Virgin Islands
Regions of the British Virgin Islands