British Isles naming dispute "British-Irish Isles" and the Islands of the North Atlantic. In documents drawn up jointly between the British and Irish governments, the archipelago is referred to simply as "these islands". To some, the dispute is partly semantic, and the term is a value-free geographic one, while, to others, it is a value-laden political one. The Crown dependencies of the Channel Islands may also for geo-political reasons be included in the British Isles, despite not being geographically part of the archipelago. United Kingdom law uses the term British Islands to refer to the UK, Channel Islands, and Isle of Man as a
Politics in the British Isles history, culture and politics in the isles. The recent trend of using an "archipelago" perspective in scholarship of history, politics and identity was initiated by historian J. G. A. Pocock in the 1970s. He coined the term "Atlantic archipelago" as a replacement for "British Isles", and he pressed his fellow historians to reconsider two issues linked to the future of British history. First, he urged historians of the British Isles to move away from histories of the Three Kingdoms (Scotland, Ireland, England) as separate entities, and he called for studies implementing a bringing-together or conflation of these national narratives into