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The Island of Jersey has been an autonomously governed British dependency since the Norman Conquest of 1066. Presently full up to the brim with about 85,000 people, it's the largest of the four main Channel Islands. The others being Guernsey, Alderney and Sark. It sits seventy miles off the South coast of England and approximately fifteen miles to the West of France in the Gulf of St Malo. The Island itself is nine miles by five, with a 'swimming' circumference of approximately forty-one miles, and the waters are warmed by the final drift of the Gulf Stream.

The Islands were annexed to the Duchy of Normandy in 933. In 1066 the Duke William the Conqueror invaded and conquered England, becoming the English monarch. Since 1204, the loss of the rest of the monarch's lands in mainland Normandy has meant that the Channel Islands have been governed as separate possessions of the Crown.

The Islands acquired commercial and political interests in the North American colonies. Islanders became involved with the Newfoundland fisheries in the 17th century. In recognition for all the help given to him during his exile in Jersey in the 1640s, Charles II gave George Carteret, Bailiff and governor, a large grant of land in the American colonies, which he promptly named New Jersey, now part of the United States of America. Edmund Andros of Guernsey was an early colonial governor in North America, and head of the short-lived Dominion of New England.

During the Second World War, the Islands were the only part of the British Empire occupied by Germany (excepting that part of Egypt occupied by the Afrika Korps at the time of the Second Battle of El Alamein). The Nazi occupation 1940–1945 was harsh, with some island residents being taken for slave labour on the Continent; native Jews sent to concentration camps; partisan resistance and retribution; accusations of collaboration; and slave labour (primarily Russians and eastern Europeans) being brought to the islands to build fortifications. The Royal Navy blockaded the islands from time to time, particularly following the liberation of mainland Normandy in 1944. Intense negotiations resulted in some Red Cross humanitarian aid, but there was considerable hunger and privation during the five years of German occupation.