1596: Territories that are Commonwealths Apr 28, 2019

As discussed yesterday, some US states are also commonwealths, and while this means little in those cases, the two are not synonymous when it comes to the commonwealths of Puerto Rico and the Mariana Islands. Unlike with the states, those territories were never British colonies, and so were not under British common law. Instead, here this recalls the definition of 'commonwealth' as in "for the wealth (i.e. wellbeing) of the community"; in other words it is a self-governing community but not an independant one. Because of the multitude of connotations however, using the term 'territories' is probably clearer.