Cayman Islands

The Cayman Islands are a British Overseas Territory comprising the three islands of Grand Cayman, Cayman Brac and Little Cayman, located south of Cuba and north-east of Honduras, between Jamaica and Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula. Their colonial history shown on the map begins with the capture of Jamaica from Spain in 1655: England took formal control of the Cayman Islands, along with Jamaica, as a result of the Treaty of Madrid of 1670 — the start of the entity's span. That same year a Spanish attack under the Portuguese privateer Manuel Ribeiro Pardal struck a turtle-fishing settlement on Little Cayman, and after several unsuccessful attempts at settlement in what had become a haven for pirates, permanent colonists gradually took hold on the islands. For most of their early history the Caymans were administered as a dependency of Jamaica, their inhabitants living by turtling, fishing and seafaring; George Town, on Grand Cayman, grew as the capital and principal harbour. Through the 1500–1945 window shown on the map the islands remained continuously British. The Cayman Islands stayed a dependency of Jamaica until Jamaica's moves toward independence, and today they are a self-governing British Overseas Territory, its capital still George Town.