History is always close to hand in Jersey.It is because of its history that the Island has been able to develop as an international finance centre upon which Jersey's prosperity is largely based. Ancient privileges given to Islanders by successive monarchs over the centuries gave the Island the right to tax its own people. Jersey is not a recently created tax haven. It is a community that has been able to live for centuries on low tax rates, and it is this that has subsequently attracted outside business.
That is why the Island, which has few natural resources, has been able to prosper despite being in a fairly remote location in the Bay of Mont St. Michel.
Jersey has been an Island for approximately 8,000 years, although the earliest evidence of human activity in the Island dates to about 250,000 years ago when bands of hunters used the caves at La Cotte de St. Brelade as a base for hunting mammoth. Settled communities in the Neolithic period – builders of the ritual burial sites known as dolmens – replaced the nomadic bands of hunters. Even in those days, Jerseymen were trading with Brittany and the south coast of England.
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