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Bermuda
Britain's oldest overseas territory, and a capital of global reinsurance
Bermuda sits alone in the western Atlantic, about 1,050 kilometers east of North Carolina, a fishhook of limestone islands with less land than Manhattan. It is the oldest of Britain's 14 Overseas Territories, settled by the English in 1612, and it runs most of its own affairs through an elected Parliament whose House of Assembly first met in 1620. It is also a heavyweight in global finance. Hundreds of insurance and reinsurance companies are registered or based in the capital, Hamilton, and a large share of the money that pays out after hurricanes, wildfires, and earthquakes around the world flows through the island's market, making a territory of some 64,000 people a quiet pillar of the world's risk business.
The territory is a chain of roughly 180 islands and islets curled around sheltered sounds, the limestone cap of an ancient volcanic seamount ringed by the northernmost coral reefs in the Atlantic. The Gulf Stream gives it a mild subtropical climate, and with no rivers or lakes, stepped white roofs channel rainwater into household tanks. About 64,000 people live on roughly 54 square kilometers, among the highest densities in the Americas. The United Kingdom appoints a governor and keeps responsibility for defense, foreign affairs, and internal security, while an elected premier and cabinet run domestic policy. The Progressive Labour Party won a further term in the February 2025 general election. The Bermudian dollar is pegged at par to the US dollar, which circulates freely alongside it.
Settlement began with a shipwreck, when the Virginia-bound Sea Venture ran onto the reefs in 1609, and the colony that followed relied on enslaved Africans and Indigenous Americans until emancipation in 1834. Tourism dominated the twentieth-century economy, but international business, led by insurance and reinsurance, has since become the main source of jobs and public revenue. In a 1995 referendum about 74 percent of those voting rejected independence, and the question has not returned to the ballot. Bermuda remains on the United Nations list of Non-Self-Governing Territories. Global tax reform has reshaped its business model: from 2025 a 15 percent corporate income tax applies to large multinational groups operating on the island, a significant shift for a jurisdiction long known for taxing corporate profits at zero.