Gilbert and Ellice Islands around $250 million for revenue they had not received and for environmental destruction caused by phosphate mining practices similar to those on Nauru. The British authorities had relocated most of the population to Rabi Island, Fiji after 1945, but by the 1970s many were returning to Banaba. The British rejected the Banaban independence proposal, and the island remained under the jurisdiction of Kiribati. The Gilbert and Ellice Islands used their own postage stamps from 1911. Gilbert and Ellice Islands The Gilbert and Ellice Islands were a British protectorate from 1892 and colony from 1916 until 1 January 1976, when the
Turks and Caicos Islands the Dominican Republic) and the other Antilles archipelago islands. Cockburn Town, the capital since 1766, is situated on Grand Turk Island about east-southeast of Miami, United States. The islands have a total land area of . The first recorded European sighting of the islands now known as the Turks and Caicos occurred in 1512. In the subsequent centuries, the islands were claimed by several European powers with the British Empire eventually gaining control. For many years the islands were governed indirectly through Bermuda, the Bahamas, and Jamaica. When the Bahamas gained independence in 1973, the islands received their own governor,