Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey

Episode Date: September 20, 2022

Located between England and France are several islands which have a unique status in the international community.  They aren’t part of any country, nor are they a territory of a country.  They share the same monarch as the UK but are not part of the Commonwealth.  Learn about the Channel Islands, the Bailiwick of Jersey, and the Bailiwick of Guernsey, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Darcy Adams Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Thor Thomsen   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EverythingEverywhere Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/everything-everywhere-daily-podcast/ Everything Everywhere is an Airwave Media podcast." or "Everything Everywhere is part of the Airwave Media podcast network Please contact [e-mail] to advertise on Everything Everywhere. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Located between England and France are several islands which have a unique status in the international community. They aren't part of any country, nor are they a territory of a country. They share the same monarch as the United Kingdom, but are not part of the Commonwealth. Learn more about the Channel Islands, the bailiwick of Jersey and the bailiwick of Guernsey, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night and how it

shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the Thuline podcast from NPR. I previously did an episode on what seems like a really simple question, but is actually quite tricky. What is a country? If you look at a map of the world, you'll see most of the land divided up into different sections with lines around them that are differently colored. These well-defined countries do in fact cover most of the earth, and these cases are pretty cut and dry. That bit is Mongolia, this bit is Namibia, and that tiny bit is Luxembourg. While these countries do account for most of the world, they don't quite account for everything. There are places that are edge cases. They aren't full-fledged countries with a seat in the United Nations, but nor are they territories

of a country like Gibraltar, Guam, or Greenland. Such is the case with the Channel Islands. The Channel Islands are a collection of small islands located in the English Channel. They sit just north of Normandy and are far closer to the French coast than they are to England. If you looked at a map and didn't know any better, you would assume that they were part of France, but they're not. The Channel Islands consist of two separate jurisdictions, the bailiwick of Jersey and the Baileywick of Guernsey. If you've ever heard of the American state of New Jersey and ever wondered where old Jersey was, Well, it's off the coast of France. The name New Jersey came from a bailiff of Jersey who was given a grant of land by King Charles II.

Likewise, you may have heard of a breed of cow called a Guernsey. The Guernsey comes from the island that bears its name. Jersey is the southernmost of the two baileywicks, and Jersey is the only populated island in the ballywick with a population of about 106,000. The bailey wick of Guernsey is to the north. The main island of Guernsey is the largest with a population of 63,000. but there are a few other small populated islands as well. Alderney has a population of 2000, Sark has a population of 600, and Herm has a population of 60.

Politically, the Channel Islands are considered to be crown dependencies. The only other crown dependency is the Isle of Man, which will be the subject of another episode. As a crown dependency, they are not part of the United Kingdom. They have no representation in Parliament. However, they are also not territories of the United Kingdom, such as Gibraltar, the Falkland Islands, or St. Helena. They are also not sovereign countries. As such, they are not members of the European Union, the United Nations, or the Commonwealth of Nations, which consists of mostly former British colonies. The sovereign of both Jersey and Guernsey is the British monarch, who at the time of recording is Charles III. However, the monarch is recognized as the crown in Jersey or the crown in Guernsey,

not as the crown of the United Kingdom. That sounds suspiciously similar to how the king is the king of Canada or the king of Australia, separately from being the king of the United Kingdom. This sounds suspiciously familiar to how the monarch is the king of Canada or the king of Australia, separately from being the king of the United Kingdom. This would seem to make the Channel Islands more similar, to independent countries. Likewise, the crown is represented locally in each jurisdiction by a lieutenant governor, similar to how the crown is represented in other countries by a governor general.

However, Jersey and Guernsey each use the pound as their currency, or at least they issue their own pound note separate from the Bank of England or Scotland. They have their own passports that say British passports on the front, and are treated as UK passports for the purpose of travel. Jersey and Guernsey are represented by the United Kingdom to and the UK is also responsible for their defense. All these things make them sound like a British territory. So how did this odd political situation come about? How did these islands become a creature which, internationally, are considered neither fish nor fowl?

It all goes back over 1,000 years. Given their location right off the coast of Normandy, it should come as no surprise that they were once part of the Duchy of Normandy. In 1066, the Duke of Normandy, a guy that you might have heard of by the name of William the Conqueror, invaded and conquered England. The new king of England held the Channel Islands as part of his lands along with England and Normandy. For about 150 years, Normandy was held by the Kings of England. However, having land on the other side of the English Channel was never really a long-term tenable position. The French were never keen about the English holding on to territory in mainland France. The French king, Philip II, said about taking back Normandy from the English.

Over a 10-year period from 1204 to 1214, the French in English fought for control of Normandy, a war that the French eventually won. The English King John lost Normandy, but managed to retain control over the Channel Islands. His successor, Henry II, formerly ceded his claim to Normandy, but the Channel Islands remained part of Henry's claim, although, like Normandy, it was never part of England. The crowd eventually appointed a bailiff for both Jersey and Guernsey. The term bailiff had different meanings in the Middle Ages,

and in the case of the Channel Islands, a bailiff was basically the top civil servant on each island. As they were regions governed by a bailiff, they were known as Baylewicks, which is the term they are still known by today. Here I need to stress that Jersey and Guernsey are totally independent entities of each other. While they are often lumped together as the Channel Islands,

which I'm doing in this episode, they are legally totally different things. They don't share any laws, any infrastructure, or any institutions. The only thing that they share is a television station. The Channel Islands weren't really a major player in the history of either France or England. They were just sort of there,

and for the most part didn't really play a role in the affairs of either country. Their primary business was fishing and farming, and that was about it. They did, however, suffer from constant piracy and changes in trade policy between England and France. They were mostly the victims of the historical trends which swirled about them. When Henry VIII adopted Protestantism, both Jersey and Guernsey did as well.

However, because they were Protestant and not part of France, they attracted many of the Calvinist Protestants from France. During the French Revolution, the island once again saw an influx of refugees, but this time it was mostly aristocrats who were fleeing Madame Gillotine. The biggest historical event which happened to the Channel Islands occurred during the Second World War. How the Channel Islands experienced the war was radically different than how the rest of the UK experienced the war. When the Germans invaded France, the British expeditionary forces were routed and almost extinguished but for the miraculous evacuation from Dunkirk.

The people in the Channel Islands couldn't have known that right after France was invaded, the British government decided that the islands weren't of strategic importance and they weren't going to expend. men and ships to defend them. When Charles de Gaulle fled France, he did so by flying to the island of Jersey on June 17, 1940. On June 20th, all of the remaining British troops on the island were evacuated. The British eventually realized that an evacuation of the civilian population of the island would be necessary, but by the time they realized it, it was too late. Guernsey did manage to evacuate 80% of their children from the island and another 12,000 adults. Jersey, however, only managed to evacuate about 12% of its population. The Germans entered the island on June 30th, but they didn't

know that all the military personnel had been removed from the island 10 days earlier, as the information had been suppressed by the British government. Because the British didn't make the information public, the Germans went ahead assuming that the islands were fortified, and 44 civilians were killed in the invasion. The Germans quickly set up defensive fortifications on the island, and incorporated the islands into Vichy, France. The Germans, were rather lenient at first, allowing the existing institutions to function, with the obvious caveat that they could veto anything or issue their own orders. They changed the time zone of the islands, as well as made everyone drive on the right. Over the course of the war, life became

harder and harder on the islands. Supplies dwindled, and most islanders lost their jobs. While there was an interest in a resistance movement, little was done, as repercussions on the population would outweigh any strategic benefit. The Germans actually brought in Soviet force, labor to build fortifications on the island as part of the German Atlantic Wall. While the British didn't see any strategic value to the islands, Hitler saw a great deal of symbolic value, as they were the only part of the British islands that were occupied by the Nazis during the war. For this reason, the island was some of the most heavily fortified sections of the Atlantic Wall. When the invasion of Normandy took place in June of 1944,

the people on the islands assumed that liberation was just around the corner, as the allies were now only a few miles away in France. However, an invasion of the Channel Islands never happened. The Allies kept moving forward on the continent and completely ignored the islands. The winter of 1944 and 1945 was the worst of the war, and famine would have broken out for both civilians and the German occupiers had it not been for Red Cross ships that brought in supplies.

The German occupation of the Channel Islands ended on May 9, 1945. One day after VE Day, when the German High Command surrendered. Some of the smaller islands took another week for the Germans to surrender. Today, both Jersey and Guernsey have economies that rely heavily on tourism and offshore banking. They're popular banking destinations for Europeans because they use the pound. They're not subject to British laws, yet still have a tightly regulated banking industry, unlike offshore havens in other countries.

There has been some talk in Jersey of declaring independence, but it isn't something that will probably be done anytime soon, unless there was to be some sort of major incident. There actually isn't anything stopping them from declaring independence as they aren't actually part of the United Kingdom, but it might make relations with them more difficult, and they would have to increase their expenditures. Both Jersey and Guernsey have taken a more active role

in their international relations in recent years, and they now both have unofficial consulates in France. One ambitious idea which has been floated is to connect Jersey to the French mainland via a tunnel, and then potentially connect Jersey and, and Guernsey with a tunnel. If both tunnels were built, it would be on a par with the length of the channel tunnel, which cost 21.8 billion inflation-adjusted pounds. Currently, the most common way to visit Jersey and Guernsey is via ferry. There are ports in England in Poole and Portsmouth,

and in France in Cherbourg and St. Mallow. I took the ferry from Portsmouth back in 2014, and it was the worst boat experience of my life. We had extremely rough seas, and about half of the passengers were vomiting on the way over. I felt really sorry for the crew that had to clean the ship. And you can fly there as well. It's a one-hour flight from London. That being said, both Jersey and Guernsey are like visiting a small town in England, but with their own unique quirks. They issue their own pound notes, which are always fun to try and spend if you go back to the UK. And it's also a very interesting way to travel between England and France, if you are so inclined. Jersey and Guernsey are two of the oddest places on earth, at least from a legal standpoint. They are

aren't countries, and they aren't territories of other countries either. They are culturally English, yet geographically, much closer to France. If you're interested in visiting small countries and odd places, then you should consider visiting Jersey and Guernsey, because they are destinations that would be well within your bailiwick. Everything Everywhere Daily is an Airwave Media podcast. The executive producer is Darcy Adams. The associate producers are Thorne Thompson and Peter Bennett. I just wanted to extend a big thank you to everyone who is supporting the show over at Patreon.

I have show merchandise available there, including hoodies, t-shirts, and stickers. Plus, it really just helps me get this show out every single day, including, of course, weekends and holidays. Remember, if you leave a review or send me a boostagram, you too can have it read on the show.