The introductions of the country, dependency and region entries are in the native languages and in English. The other introductions are in English.
In 1826 a British settlement is founded at Cocos Island, since 1831 the islands are controlled by the family of Clunies-Ross. The Cocos Islands are considered a Dutch possession, but in 1857 Britain formally annexes the islands. The islands become part of Ceylon in 1878, the Straits Settlements in 1886, Ceylon in 1942, Singapore in 1946 and Australia in 1955. All that time the islands are ruled by the Clunies-Ross familie. After heavy protest in the decolonization committee of the United Nations, John Cecil Clunies-Ross relinquishes his authority in 1978 and Cocos Islands are from that moment on ruled as part of Australia.
Cocos (Keeling) Islands is an external territory of Australia. There are two atolls and twenty-seven coral islands in the group. The islands are located in the Indian Ocean at 12°07′S 96°54′E, south of ► Indonesia and about one-half of the way from ► Australia to ► Sri Lanka.
Map of the South Keeling Islands from the Scottish Geographical Magazine, 1889
Notes and references
General remarks:
The WIKIMEDIA COMMONS Atlas of the World is an organized and commented collection of geographical, political and historical maps available at Wikimedia Commons. The main page is therefore the portal to maps and cartography on Wikimedia. That page contains links to entries by country, continent and by topic as well as general notes and references.
Every entry has an introduction section in English. If other languages are native and/or official in an entity, introductions in other languages are added in separate sections. The text of the introduction(s) is based on the content of the Wikipedia encyclopedia. For sources of the introduction see therefore the Wikipedia entries linked to. The same goes for the texts in the history sections.
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The status of various entities is disputed. See the content for the entities concerned.
The maps of former countries that are more or less continued by a present-day country or had a territory included in only one or two countries are included in the atlas of the present-day country. For example the Ottoman Empire can be found in the Atlas of Turkey.
