British Virgin Islands
British overseas territory in the Caribbean
The British Virgin Islands (BVI), officially the Virgin Islands, is a British Overseas Territory in the Caribbean, to the east of Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands and north-west of Anguilla. The islands are geographically part of the Virgin Islands archipelago and are located in the Leeward Islands of the Lesser Antilles and part of the West Indies.
The British Virgin Islands consist of the main islands of Tortola, Virgin Gorda, Anegada and Jost Van Dyke, along with more than 50 other smaller islands and cays. About 16 of the islands are inhabited. The capital, Road Town, is on Tortola, the largest island, which is about 20 km (12 mi) long and 5 km (3 mi) wide. The islands had a population of 28,054 at the 2010 Census, of whom 23,491 lived on Tortola; current estimates put the population at 35,802 (July 2018).
The economy of the territory is overwhelmingly dominated by tourism and financial services, with the territory using the United States dollar. In terms of financial services, the territory is known as a leading hub for tax evasion and concealment of assets.
British Virgin Islanders are British Overseas Territories citizens and, since 2002, also British citizens.
Etymology
The islands were named "Santa Úrsula y las Once Mil Vírgenes" by Christopher Columbus in 1493 after the legend of Saint Ursula and the 11,000 virgins.
“British Virgin Islands” enters the record as british overseas territory in the Caribbean. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what British, Virgin and Islands can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“British Virgin Islands” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, British, Virgin and Islands provides the most credible route into that argument.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q25305. The first chronological checks are 2010, 2018, 2002 and 1493.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “British Virgin Islands” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.