Channel Islands
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Channel Islands. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a group of small islands in the English Channel ten miles off the coast of France. Area, 75 square miles. Population, 95,841. The principal islands are Alderney, Jersey, and Guernsey. They are famous for the fine dairy cattle bearing their names. The group was a part of French Normandy. It came into possession of England with William the Norman at the time of the Norman conquest. England afterward lost the mainland of Normandy, but has retained these islands. The people still speak French, but are for the most part able to speak English. The islands have been permitted wisely to retain their old local forms of government and appear to have cared little who ruled the outside world. The Channel Islands are not bound by acts of Parliament unless specially named in them. The inhabitants are a hardy race of sailors and fishermen, with simple virtues such as are ascribed to the French settlers of Acadia in Longfellow's Evangeline. See British Isles
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a group of islands in the English Channel, off the W. coast of department La Manche, in France. They belong to Great Britain, and consist of Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney, and Sark, with some dependent islets. They are almost exempt from taxation, and their inhabitants enjoy besides all the privileges of British subjects. The government is in the hands of bodies called the "states," some members of which are named by the crown, while others are chosen by the people, and others sit ex officio. The islands have been fortified at great expense. They form the only remains of the Norman provinces once subject to England. Area 75 square miles; pop. almost 100,000.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's told readers in 1910 that "the people still speak French," and Collier's in 1921 that the islands were "almost exempt from taxation" — one of those has held up. Norman French survives only as the endangered dialects Jèrriais and Guernésiais, spoken by a few thousand elderly islanders, while low taxation grew into an offshore finance industry that now dominates the economy; the population is roughly 170,000, well above the "almost 100,000" Collier's reported. Neither entry could foresee the German occupation of 1940–45, when the Channel Islands became the only British soil held by Hitler's forces, or Sark's vote in 2008 to end the last feudal parliament in Europe. Jersey and Guernsey remain Crown Dependencies outside the United Kingdom, still not bound by Acts of Parliament unless named — that much of the 1910 account stands exactly.
Written for this edition, 2026.