With few exceptions, enforced colonialism has been extinguished on this planet; the remaining colonial outposts, such as Britain's Falkland Islands, American Samoa, or France's New Caledonia, are very happy to remain chicklets onder Momma's wing. The few exceptions seem to be when Momma is too close, Tibet is a prime example. Ask a Chinaman about Tibet, and he will tell you it is an autonomous province, getting all the benefits of being part of the Peoples' Republic, and still enjoying their own culture; ask a Tibetan, and you'll be told, 'I live under an army of occupation!
Australian Offshore Territories
Norfolk Island was put to good use in the very early days of the penal colony at Botany Bay. The island's Norfolk Pine was excellent for shipbuilding, and 'hard case' convicts were sent out there as a labour force. Conditions were as harsh there as at the MacQuarie Harbour penal station on Tasmania's west coast. The closing down of the penal settlement coincided with a appeal sent by Pitcairn Islanders to Queen Victoria for a new home (their numbers had outgrown Pitcairn's ability to support them.)
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British Offshore Territories
This military outpost near the southern tip of Spain has been under British control for over 300 years. The tiny peninsula has been a source of stress between Britain and Spain for most all its long occupation, but whenever over the last few decades the Brits have considered handing it back, the fiercely pro-British Gibraltarians scream blue murder! As in most all the remnants of the British Empire, they like being colonials.
St Helena's claim to fame is as Napoleon's prison home from 1815 until he died in 1821. 1930 km west of the coast of Angola, it is one of the world's more remote islands. First sighted by the Portuguese in 1502, the island was claimed by the English in 1673. About 7000 people of mixed European, Asian and African heritage live on the 122 sq.km island. The island is very mountainous and of volcanic origin, and only about 40 sq.km is suitable for crop farming. the islanders manage to run cattle and sheep on more scrubby terrain. The capital Jamestown is the only town on the island, and has a tiny harbour which is the only safe place to get on or off the island; and even the word 'safe' becomes relative if the wind happens to be blowing the wrong way!
Until Argentina invaded the Falklands in 1982, and the subsequent heroic logistics used by the British to reclaim the islands, it would be fair comment that few people had even heard of this remote British outpost in the South Atlantic.
Never reached by the diaspora of Native Americans from Bering Strait to Tierra del Fuego, the first European explorers found 12,170 sq km of totally uninhabited land. The first sighting was apparently by English Sealer Captain John Davis in the late 16th century, but the islands had to wait until 1690 before anyone bothered to go ashore for a look around. Spain laid claim to the islands in the late 18th century, and Argentina's claim was a matter of succession upon independence in the first half of the nineteenth; but neither had made in colonisation effort. France too, had a claim on the islands at one stage. At the time of the '82 war, the Falkland economy was in the doldrums, and the islanders were drawing substantial subsidies from the British Govt. Since '82 the economy has boomed, with licenses issued to foreign fishing fleets to operate in Falkland waters, oil exploration, expenditures of the British Armed Forces within the local economy, and expanding tourism.
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Chilean Offshore Territories
Easter Island is a 117 sq km dot on the map in the South Pacific, 3700 km off the coast of Chile, and has been a Chilean dependency since 1888. The name Easter Island is attributed to Dutch explorer Jakob Roggeveen who landed on the island in 1722. At least one other European is credited with the 'discovery' of the island at an earlier date, Englishman Edward Davis in 1686. The island name in Spanish is Isla de Pascua, and in the local version of Polynesian, Rapa Nui; but to most of the world it remains best known as Easter Island.
The major attraction for modern day tourists are the multitude of statues scattered across the island. Many were carved 'in situ' from the volcanic rock, but others were carved from rock moved considerable distances, a feat for primitive technology comparable to Britain's Stonehenge. That many statues have been toppled is believed to have been the result of a civil war in the late 16th century, probably brought on by total de-afforestation of the island, and a population that had grown to a point the island could no longer support. That peak population is believed to have been around 6000.
As all too often happened when Europeans came into contact with 'natives', there was decimation. The Spanish had claimed it in 1770, and promptly used the island as a source of slaves. What slave raiding did to start the depopulation, the European diseases, particularly smallpox finished. In 1877, the population was barely more than 100; the population slowly recovered (today almost 3000) though about a quarter of those are immigrants or govt officials from Chile. Since the construction of an airstrip in 1967, commercial air services have brought in thousands of tourists, and tourism has become the mainstay of the local economy.
The Easter Islanders, in near total isolation, built a complex civilisation, reaching a peak shortly before their civil wars, which in turn preceded European contact by only a century or so. The statues are one indication that there was a surplus of labour for pure subsistence survival, and they also developed a written language, a writing that has yet to be deciphered.
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Danish Offshore Territories
The first Europeans to sight Greenland was a Norseman by the name of Gunnbjørn and his crew. On a voyage in 900 AD, from Norway to Iceland they got blown way off course by a storm. When the storm eased and visibility improved, they saw huge cliffs to the west and as they already knew, there was ice in the sea all around them. Realising that it was new land he had found beyond Iceland, he was eager to tell of it, and six days later on arriving in Iceland after their diversion, the news was greeted with excitement; but tempered by warnings of ice and storms, and fogs when the storms cleared it was to be over 80 years before anyone set off to have a looksee.
In 982 AD Eirik Thorvaldsson (Eric the Red) was sentenced to three years exile after killing two men in the same family, which broke an Icelandic law intended to prevent feuding. Along with friends who agreed to accompany him, and servants, he sailed S.W. and sighted the east coast of Greenland probably close by where Gunnbjørn had made his sighting. Moving away from the coast to get clear of the sea ice, they then continued further south before turning west again. The westerly turn happened to coincide with Cape Farewell, the southern tip of Greenland, and rounding the cape they found themselves in ice free waters, and made a first landfall on a small island at the entrance to a fjord,
they named them Eiriksey and Eirikfjord. Exploring, they decided that this was a good enough place to build a settlement, with excellent grazing for the animals they had brought with them, good shelter in the fjord from storms, and good hunting and fishing.
In 985 AD, with Eirik's period of exile over, they returned to Iceland and with the news of these rich lands to the south west Eirik raised a following of 25 shiploads of colonists who left Iceland in the following year, 986. By calling it Greenland, Eirik qualified as the world's first real estate salesman. Only 14 ships made it to Eiriksfjord, 3 turned back and eight sank. Two separate colonies were eventually established and both flourished for some centuries, and with climatic conditions probably a little warmer than they are today, a peak combined population estimated at around 11,000 was reached in the early 13th century. At about this time, what has become to be referred to as the mini ice age began to set in, and the bleaker conditions eventually caused the abandonment of the Eastern Colony, with some peoples returning to Iceland and others joining the Western Colony. The Western Colony's last contact with Iceland was in the early 15th century, and archaelogical evidence indicates that they survived into the beginning of the 16th. To date, the cause of their final demise has not been
determined. The mini ice age may have ruined crop harvests and caused there to be too little feed for the sheep, they may have been decimated as a result of a plague carrying ship arriving from Europe, they could have been slaughtered by Inuit returning to the area (there were no Inuit in S.W.Greenland when the Norsemen first arrived, archaelogical evidence indicates four waves of Inuit migration into Greenland spaced across three millennia) but that seems unlikely unless their numbers were already badly savaged, and it has been suggested that they could have merged with the Inuit population, but that would show in the appearance of current peoples.
Greenland's icecap is the second largest in the world after Antarctica, but on the total 2,175,600 sq km of the island, there is 370,000 sq km of ice free land around the coast. Some is almost totally barren, other areas support wild herds of Reindeer or Bison, and in the south west, a comparitively mild climate courtesy of a weak branch of the gulf stream keeps the coast virtually ice free, and ashore limited sheep and crop farming is possible in today's climate.
In 1576 Frobisher rediscovered south west Greenland and claimed it for England. The claim persisted for a time, and further explorations took place, but the claim was allowed to fizzle out.
(Danish Virgin Islands)
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French Offshore Territories
Located just 21 km off the south coast of Canada's Newfoundland, and totalling only 245 sq km St P.&M is the only remnant of the once extensive French North American Territories that had extended from the Gulf of St Lawrence down thru the centre of the continent to Louisiana on the Gulf of Mexico. The french first claimed and settled the islands in 1635 and used it primarily as a base for fishing the rich harvests of the Grand Banks. As a result of the various Anglo-French wars throughout the 18th century and thru to the conclusion of the Napoleonic Wars in 1814, the islands cxhanged hands between the two nations a number of times. At the peace negotiations in 1814, the British allowed the French to keep the islands in perpetuity on condition that they never be fortified. The islands are bleak and rocky, and virtually no farming is possible. The population did support itself from fishing and resultant exports, but with the fishing grounds in deep decline, the islanders became heavily dependent on French govt subsidies. Tourism has become a growth industry in the past thirty years, well assisted by becoming a duty free port.
Two little dots on the map between southern Madagascar and the coast of Mozambique, of little value to anybody, but the French hate to give up anything,once they get their hand on it!
Like India et L'Europa, only colder!
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Indian Offshore Territories
Known as the last cannibal islands.
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Japanese Offshore Territories
Japan
Neth Offshore Territories
(Indonesia)
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N.Z. Offshore Territories
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Norwegian Offshore Territories
Incorrectly known as Spitsbergen by English speakers, the islands -plural- should be referred to as Svalbard, The southern island of the group is Spitzbergen. Spitzbergen is the only island that supports a population other than scientists; the population is mostly involved in coal mining, though tourism has become a very important employer over the last 20 years. Until the demise of the Soviet Union, there were more Russian coal miners on Spitzbergen Island than Norwegians, living apartheid in their own mining towns. Now few Russians remain, despite the mines still being viable. Apparently, the Russians are having problems maimtaining the supply vessels.
A dot on the map in the very southern Atlantic Ocean. The island doesn't even support a scientific base, and has only been landed upon maybe six times since its discovery!
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Portuguese Offshore Territories
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Spanish Offshore Territories
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U.S. Offshore Territories
Alaska, like Hawaii, is a full member state of the USA, both achieved statehood in 1949, becoming the 49th and 50th states of the union. Alaska is the the biggest state in the union (much to the annoyance of Texans!) and until recently operated on six time zones, more than the entire contiguous USA! Now they only have three time zones. The states post-Colombian history begins not with the westward push of the Americans from the newly independent Thirteen Colonies, but with the eastward push of the Russians.
Hawaii, like Alaska is a full member state of the
United States of America. But not only the geography (4000km of ocean!) leads me to separate Hawaii from notes on the contiguous USA. The Hawaiian State Flag sports the British Union Jack in the top left corner, an acknowledgement of the the islands' history.
An uninhabited dot on the map between Haiti and Cuba, the U.S. claimed it after American geologist .. landed there in 1857, and discovered an estimated one million tonnes of guano, a phosphate rich fertiliser of bird droppings. Due to almost unbroken 100 metre cliffs around the island, the resource has never been exploited. Haiti disputes the U.S. claim to the island.
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Antartica is the southern polar continent, and the cold, driest, windiest continent on the planet. In terms of precipitation, it makes even Australia look damp!
The human species originated in Africa, and over tens of thousands of years, spread across the world to adapt to, and inhabit every continent and most islands of any size (and a lot of little ones too) by 5000 years ago___ except Antarctica. Pre-technology Inuit peoples of the arctic littoral might have survived (even thrived) on the Antarctic Peninsula, had they found themselves transported there; but not even with their skills could they have survived anywhere but the peninsula.
95% of the continent is covered in glacial ice, which despite the low precipitation has, over millions of years, built up to a depth of 3000m in places. From the coast, the ice surface generally slopes up steeply with most of the interior at or near the the 3000m level. The accumulation has given the interior the appearance of virtually featureless flat plateau broken only by
occasional nunataks (an Inuit word describing a rocky peak that extends above the icecap). Seismic mapping shows that below the ice, hills and valleys, mountains and plains exist the same as other continents. Some of this land is depressed below sea level by the sheer weight of the ice. According to scientific estimations, if that weight were to disappear, some of the land would rise by up to 600m.
Welcome to the
South Pole!
