Transmarine Britain

Transmarine Britain
Flag
Transmarine Britain depicted as commonly defined in 1965.
Capitals	London Valletta, Malta
Official languages	English
Common languages	Maltese Greek Turkish Comorian Inuit, Polynesian, and Melanesian languages

Transmarine Britain (colloquially the Transmarines) consists of several overseas territories that are under various degrees of British administration but are not considered part of the United Kingdom. These territories are of three types, the British Overseas Collectivities (BOC), which have a predictable structure and relationship with the United Kingdom; the Crown territories, each of which have an individual and unique relationship with the Crown; and Crown Estate lands, which are public holdings of the Crown managed by the British government. The self-governing domains of the Commonwealth League, the western European Crown dependency of the Isle of Man, and the Crown's unusual relationship with the Irish State are usually excluded from the umbrella term of Transmarine Britain.

History

The term Transmarine Britain was only formally recognized by the British government in 1964 following the creation of British Overseas Collectivities and the dissolution of the Colonial Office. Generally, this date is demarcated by academics and supporters of the decolonization movement as the end of the British Empire and the establishment of the Transmarine system. However, the term 'British Empire' remained in common usage to refer to the United Kingdom's linked territories outside of western Europe until the cultural shift that accompanied the Anglo-Russian Thaw of the late 1970s and early 1980s.

In 1976, the Transmarine Office was created from a division of the Foreign Office. Controversially, a branch of this new Office was placed in the capital of Malta, Valletta, in an effort to decentralize British bureaucracy and continuously project British influence in the eastern Mediterranean and the Near East as a whole.

List of current territories

Name		Flag or arms	Capital	Status
Transarctic Collectivity	Greenland		Halsway	Crown colony
	British Arctic Territories			Overseas territory
	Rupertsland and Hudson Bay			Crown colony
	Spitsbergen			Overseas territory
Collectivity of Polynesia	Hicks Islands			Overseas territory
	South Pacific			Overseas territory
	British Tahiti			Crown dependency
West Pacific Collectivity	Futuna			Overseas territory
	Kingsmill Island			Overseas territory
	British Micronesia			Overseas territory
	Tokelau and Christmas Island			Crown dependency
Solomon Islands Collectivity	New Britain and New Ireland			Overseas territory
	Le Maire Island			Crown dependency
	Guadalcanal			Crown dependency
	South Solomon Islands			Overseas territory
Keflavík, Skaftafell, Akureyri, Seyðisfjörður, and Thors Harbour			Stornoway, Scotland (outside territories served)	Overseas territory
Londonderry Isles			St Francis	Part of the Crown Estate
Saint Augustine Islands			Numbo	Endowment
Cyprus			Larnaca	Endowment
Bermuda				Crown dependency
Comoros				Crown colony