The introductions of the country, dependency and region entries are in the native languages and in English. The other introductions are in English.
This section holds a short summary of the history of the area of present-day Guantanamo Bay, illustrated with maps, including historical maps of former countries and empires that included present-day Guantanamo Bay.
When Cuba becomes independent from Spain the United States of America leases Guantánamo Bay to establish a naval base. Guantánamo Bay doesn't have a separate administration. No maps are available.
Guantánamo Bay Naval Base at the southeastern end of ► Cuba (19°54′N 75°9′W) has been used by the United States Navy for more than a century. The United States controls the land on both sides of the southern part of Guantánamo Bay under a lease set up in the wake of the 1898 Spanish-American War. The Cuban government denounces the lease on grounds that article 52 of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties voids treaties procured by force or its threatened use. Since 2001, the naval base has contained a military prison, the Guantanamo Bay detainment camp, for persons alleged to be militant combatants captured in Afghanistan and later in Iraq. Prior to 11 July 2006, the U.S. maintained that these detainees are not protected under the Geneva Convention.
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.
Historical maps are included in the continent, country and dependency entries.
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.
