British Indian Ocean Territory

This is the latest of my challenge entries, the random country picked using The Random Country Generator.

Now, British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) doesn’t exactly sound like much of a catchy name for a place does it? Well, it does actually have a much more normal name (The Chagos Islands) but for some reason the BIOT name is the one which is more commonly used! I suppose that ‘proper’ name has most likely just been replaced due to history of the island (more on that later). Very strangely, much like Singapore and the Faroe Islands (the two other random countries I have done so far) this country is ALSO a collection of islands rather than a single land mass. I wonder how long it will be until I get one which isn’t a collection of islands.
    As I’m sure you can guess from the BIOT name, this country was ‘captured’ by the United Kingdom (and France) during the British Empire years. It’s quite sad really, the government has been slowly turning it into a place used solely for military reasons. At the moment the overall population of the islands is only at four thousand. Since the sixties, thousands of people have been evicted. In fact, there are no longer any native inhabitants, everybody who lives there came from France or Britain (or somewhere else entirely). On the upside though, some natural areas there are almost entirely untouched by humanity and, as such, steps have been taken to preserve them. This could mean that there are exciting undiscovered species waiting to be found there.
    That’s about all I can say really. Since it’s such a small place, and so few people live there now, there’s not really any remaining culture to talk about. Nonetheless, I hope you have enjoyed learning about the British Indian Ocean Territory!

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