The Chagos Archipelago lies roughly in the middle of the Indian Ocean, halfway between Africa and Indonesia, and 1,500 kilometres (930 mi) south of India, near the ► Seychelles and the ► Maldives. It is governed as the British Indian Ocean Territory, but Britain's ownership is disputed by its former inhabitants and by ► Mauritius. The territory comprises the six atolls of the Chagos Archipelago with over 1,000 individual islands. The largest island is Diego Garcia, the site of a joint military facility of the United Kingdom and the ► United States. The native Ilois now live in ► Mauritius, which claims the islands as a sovereign territory.
Short name
Chagos Archipelago
Official name
British Indian Ocean Territory
Status
British overseas territory, British since 1815
Location
Indian Ocean
Capital
Diego Garcia
Population
3,500 (native), none of which are resident inhabitants
This section holds a short summary of the history of the area of present-day the British Indian Ocean Territory, illustrated with maps, including historical maps of former countries and empires that included present-day the British Indian Ocean Territory.
The United Kingdom established the British Indian Ocean Territory in 1965 out of the Chagos Islands, part of Mauritius, and parts of the Seychelles. The former parts of the Seychelles are returned to Seychelles in 1976. The territory doesn't have self-government.
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.
