The uses of dependency

At its peak, in 1921, the British Empire spanned a quarter of the world's population and land: 460 million people and 37 million square kilometres. Those days, happily, are long gone. As well as the looser structure of the Commonwealth, however, an intriguing legacy of Empire remains in the form of 14 British overseas territories—Anguilla, the British Antarctic Territory, Bermuda, the British Indian Ocean Territory, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, the Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, Montserrat, St Helena and its dependencies, the Turk and Caicos Islands, Pitcairn Island, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, and the two Sovereign Base Areas on Cyprus.

Although not part of the United Kingdom, these areas remain under its direct sovereignty, a fact that struck me with particular force during a recent visit to one of the two British bases on Cyprus. Complete with cricket and rugby pitches, cat sanctuary and colonnaded mess, here indeed was a home away from home: but also perhaps the west's most significant military listening station in the Middle East, not to mention one of its most valued airstrips for intelligence and training. Clearly, the dependencies are much more than a far-flung few red telephone boxes, but I'd never considered just how useful these 14 chunks of the world might be.

And they aren't all small chunks, either physically or economically. The British Antarctic Territory (population c. 200) is around seven times larger than the UK, and would on its own count among the world's 30 largest countries. Bermuda's per-capita income is the world's largest, while its economy is larger than Guyana's. Combined, the territories have a GDP of around ten billion dollars—slightly more than Brunei.

Perhaps most importantly in an age of increasing energy and climate insecurity, however, the territories offer both civilian and military access to some of the world's as-yet-undeveloped resources. As the Guardian noted in September, Britain is preparing territorial claims on tens of thousands of square miles of the Atlantic Ocean floor around the Falklands, Ascension Island and Rockall in the hope of annexing their potentially lucrative gas, mineral and oil fields. And who knows how useful it may yet prove to have planes ready to fly from the midst of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans. If Russia's recent actions in the Arctic are anything to go by, even the crumbs of empire will have a part to play in the 21st century.