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The Cayman Islands are an overseas territory of the United Kingdom in the western Caribbean Sea comprising the islands of Grand Cayman, Cayman Brac, and Little Cayman. It lies south of ► Cuba and west of ► Jamaica. It is the fifth largest financial centre and is also one of the leading tourist underwater diving destinations in the world.
Short name
Cayman Islands
Official name
Cayman Islands
Status
► British overseas territory, British (English) since 1670
This section holds a short summary of the history of the area of present-day the Cayman Islands, illustrated with maps, including historical maps of former countries and empires that included present-day the Cayman Islands.
Christopher Columbus discovers the unihabited Cayman islands in 1503 and names them Las Tortugas. In the seventeenth century variety of people settle on the islands, including pirates, refugees from the Spanish Inquisition, shipwrecked sailors, deserters from Oliver Cromwell's army in Jamaica, and slaves. The islands become an English posession in 1670 and become part of the colony of Jamaica. Permanent settlement began around 1661.
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In 1959 the Cayman islands are separated from Jamaica and become a separate colony and part of the West Indies Federation.
After the dissolution of the British West Indies in 1962, the Cayman Islands become a separate British colony. The colony has internal self-government since 1972.
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.