Where are the Channel Islands, and who owns them currently?”
The Channel Islands are a group of islands in the English Channel, off the French coast of Normandy. They include two separate bailiwicks: the Bailiwick of Guernsey and the Bailiwick of Jersey. They are British Crown dependencies, but neither is part of the United Kingdom. They have a total population of about 158,000. Their respective capitals, St. Peter Port and St. Helier, have populations of 16,488 and 28,310.
Britain is the mainland for some small nearby islands that are British but not part of the UK. The adjacent Isle of Man and Channel Islands are not actually parts of the UK. Although the people of these islands are British, the islands are self-governing “Crown dependencies.” The Channel Island of Jersey issues its own versions of the British passport and British currency. It has a distinct legal system and its natives speak a French patois. You might expect these islands to be an embarassment for a nation that often assumes the superiority of its ways. The social systems of some of the islands have been described as feudal. On the Isle of Man, which has a population of 80,058, the local government was having law-breakers beaten long after the British government had decided that such punishments were barbaric. Homosexuality was illegal until a European Court of Human Rights Ruling and pressure from Britain forced a change in the law. The Channel Islands were occupied by the Nazis in Wo
