An Historical Sketch of the Channel Islands
St.Peter Port
Until about 8,000 years ago the Channel Islands were all part of the continental land mass. Separation took place as sea levels rose as the last Ice Age retreated. As the ice melted, so came the animals and the men who hunted them making their way northwards from the Iberian peninsula. These were the great builders of dolmens and megaliths which exist all over the Islands, as in Brittany.
 Trepied Dolmen |
True history begins with the Romans who took over the Islands as they conquered Gaul. When they left in the 5th century, Celtic refugees from the Saxon invasions of Britain settled in large numbers in Brittany and many stopped off on the Islands. These became incorporated into the Duchy of Brittany, which extended eastwards and northwards as far as the present port of Cherbourg. |
| Then came the incursion of the Norsemen into northern Gaul, first as raiders then as settlers, just as was happening with the Danes in England. They established the Duchy of Normandy, raiding constantly into the lands of the Bretons who, in 933, decided to teach them a lesson by mounting a sea borne invasion at Arromanches, site of the Allied landings in 1944. It failed and the Breton lands on what is now the Cotentin Peninsula, plus the Channel Islands, became a part of Normandy. This was how the Channel Islands found themselves on the winning side when Duke William of Normandy conquered England under its Danish king in 1066. |  La Gran'Mere Du Chimquiere |
 St.Peter Port - Rooftops and St.Barnabas Church |
There followed 138 years of two different countries, Normandy and England, having the same heads of state under Duke William and his heirs. In 1204 King John of England, Duke John of Normandy, lost his dukedom to the French. They did not mount an immediate invasion of the Channel Islands, whose wily inhabitants now saw a new future for themselves. Delegations from both Islands sailed over to England to seek out their duke, professed undying loyalty to him, pleaded with him to protect them on condition that, (this in 1204), they could continue to run their own affairs by the only laws they understood, those of Normandy; furthermore, they insisted on the right to elect their own judges. |
They did not want English judges who knew nothing of the laws of Normandy. The King was probably furious but had little choice. Physical contact across the Western Channel was not easy; if he did not agree the Islands would fall to the French. so it was that the separate bailiwicks of Jersey and Guernsey were established, separate judiciaries from which separate legislatures slowly emerged and which were confirmed by a succession of royal charters. |
 Fort Grey |
 Castle Cornet |
To this day, on official occasions, the Queen is addressed as "Votre Majesté, Notre Duc", not, be it noted, "Duchesse" because, under the Salic Law of medieval Normandy, a woman could not become Head of State. So it is that the two bailiwicks have been self-governing ever since, not parts of the United Kingdom but known as "royal peculiars". |
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| This right to run their own affairs bred an entrepreneurial independence over the centuries. The eldest sons always inherited the farms which drove the younger ones to make a living in other ways, particularly as deep sea fisherman for cod off the coast of Eastern Canada. |
This gave rise to allied industries like ship-building and the knitting of long hose and seamen’s sweaters. These were exported all over Europe and to this day the only word in Spanish for a sweater is "un jersey".
St.Peter Port Marina
With this sometimes desperate need to stand on their own feet, the people of the Islands have found in each century some way of economic survival beyond the subsistence agriculture which was all their beautiful Island homes could offer.
| Thus developed trade with the New World from the 16th century onwards, privateering in the 18th century, later on specialised horticulture for early produce, tourism and now as international finance centres built on stable government and low taxation. | 
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The Channel Islands must be one of the few places in the world whose main preoccupation is to control population density by calculated policies of restricting economic growth.
