Saint Helena

Saint Helena is a volcanic island in the South Atlantic, its colonial history shown on the map beginning with the English: in 1657 the English East India Company was granted a charter to govern Saint Helena by Oliver Cromwell, and the following year the Company decided to fortify the island and colonise it with planters. The first governor, Captain John Dutton, arrived in 1659 — the date from which St Helena claims to be Britain's second oldest remaining colony, after Bermuda. A fort was completed and houses built, and after the Restoration of the British monarchy in 1660 the Company's hold continued: for the next two centuries the island served as a way-station for East Indiamen on the run to India, provisioned at its capital Jamestown on the leeward coast. Its remoteness made it a place of confinement: Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled to Saint Helena by the British in 1815 and died there in 1821. The island passed from Company rule to the Crown in 1833, becoming a Crown colony. Through the 1500–1945 window shown on the map Saint Helena stayed continuously in British hands; today it is part of the British Overseas Territory of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha.