History of the British Isles coalition with the Northern Irish unionist party, the DUP in order to have a working majority in the House of Commons. History of the British Isles The British Isles have witnessed intermittent periods of competition and cooperation between the people that occupy the various parts of Great Britain, the Isle of Man, Ireland, the Bailiwick of Guernsey, the Bailiwick of Jersey and the smaller adjacent islands. Today, the British Isles contain two sovereign states: the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom. There are also three Crown dependencies: Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man. The United Kingdom comprises England,
British Isles naming dispute acronym IONA is a useful way of addressing the coming together of these two islands." This name is ambiguous, because of the other islands in the North Atlantic which have never been considered part of the British Isles. Some academics in the 1990s and early 2000s also used the term "Northwest European archipelago"; however, its use appears sporadically in historiography and rare outside it. The name "West European Isles" is one translation of the islands' name in the Gaelic languages of Irish and Manx, with equivalent terms for "British Isle". In Irish, (literally "Ireland and Great Britain") is the more