Say what you will. I find it a bit insane that a country can just own an island like that which is nowhere even near their mainland. If you just look at the map it’s quite obvious to who that land belongs to.
Something like Hawai is a more difficult case since it’s in the middle of ocean. Maybe it should just be a sovereign nation.
EDIT: Though since most people living there are native born Falkland islanders that speak English and voted to stay as a part of the UK then it’s perhaps something we should leave be as it is. Kind of similar case as with Israel to be honest.
By similar to Israel I mean that non-optimal decisions were made in the past but it’s done now and trying to undo it would just cause further pointless harm to people.
If you just look at the map it’s quite obvious to who that land belongs to.
Denmark isn’t going to be happy about having to give Greenland to Canada but I guess it is what it is.
If we’re going by proximity, there’s some Caribbean nations that are even closer to the US than the Falklands are to Argentina, would you argue that we should annex Cuba or the Bahamas?
And from what I understand, the people of the Falklands overwhelming want to be a British territory. I think that’s probably the more important consideration.
It is wild that it came to be the way it is. It certainly doesn’t make sense to me in the world before modern air travel, the internet, etc. that they’d be ruled by a country so far away, but in this modern era where just about anywhere in the world is only about a day’s travel time, or available on-demand 24/7 by phone or computer, it makes every bit as much sense to me that they be a UK territory as it does that Alaska is a US state.
Hawaii is actually a pretty interesting comparison to make, because most Hawaiians did not want to become a US territory at the time, but that’s really begging a whole 'nother discussion with lots of complex talking points about imperialism/colonialism, indigenous rights, etc. but I’m frankly just not going to go into that right now. Suffice it to say that it’s similar in the sense of it being a small island territory located far from the colonial power that laid claim to it, but the attitudes of the people living there were very different.
I’m no historian or anything of the sort, so take my thoughts on this for what it’s worth (and I am certainly biased being an American, don’t exactly get a whole lot of Argentinian history books to study, and most of the Spanish I know is food-related, so if someone wants to enlighten me more on the Argentinian side of things, I welcome the education.) But in general my understanding is that the British were the first people to land there, didn’t really do much with it at that time, and pretty much just said “finders keepers”
Maybe worth noting, there were no indigenous inhabitants there, so that’s probably about as ethical as colonization can get.
Then France showed up and set up shop since the British weren’t doing anything with it. Britain came back and also set up shop, and it’s not totally clear if either of them even knew the other was there. France eventually decided to fuck off, and let Spain have their bit of the Falklands.
Spain and Britain coexisted for a while, had some scuffles, but more or less worked things out. Eventually Britain pulled out to focus on other things but still considered their “finders keepors” claim to be valid.
Spain eventually pulled out as well, so for a little while no one was really doing much of anything with it officially.
Argentina (technically Buenos Aires at the time if we want to split hairs, I’m going to just use Argentina and Britain to keep the sides easy to follow) comes along, and decides it’s theirs, and this is pretty much the root of the dispute. While Britain still held their claim of “finders keepers” Argentina countered with “losers weepers”
Argentina gave some German dude permission to set up a colony for them there to fish and hunt feral cows. Eventually he gets into a fight with an American navy captain over fishing and hunting rights, Captain America kicks their ass a bit and declares the colonial government disolved, and pretty much continues on his merry way. Argentina tries to get things there started back up again but never quite gets their shit back together in the Falklands. A little while later the Brits come back around, still claiming finders keepers, and take charge of everything again, and this time the colonies stick and continue to grow. Argentina spends the next hundred years or so muttering “this is bullshit” to themselves.
Around the 1960s, Britain starts talking about decolonizing, and Argentina gets excited thinking they’re going to finally get the Falklands. Britain even quietly floats the idea of giving them the islands, figuring the Islanders would just kind of accept that decision if it was made, and running these islands from halfway around the world was getting kind of expensive. Turns out though that pretty much everyone on the Falklands is pretty damn happy to be British subjects and don’t really want to be part of Argentina, which made things a bit complicated.
Argentina gets kind of impatient with all of this, and eventually decided “fuck it, we’ll just take them ourselves,” Britain cannot abide Argentina’s inability to wait patiently in the queue and was starting to really wrap their heads around the idea that the Falklands would rather stay part of Britain and so we get the Falklands war.
Britain wins, Argentina goes back to muttering to themselves, and that pretty much brings us up to the present day.
Great comment! Accurate and entertaining to read. Well done! Was giving up hope, after reading so many bad factual takes on the ownership situation on this topic.
I’ve been posting the wiki link about the conflict all over this topic. If people ended up not reading that link, I would hope that they read your comment at least.
While Britain still held their claim of “finders keepers” Argentina countered with “losers weepers”
One minor quibble, and to be fair, Argentina is claiming based on the fact that Spain owned the islands, and when Argentina won their independence from Spain, they also got the islands.
People lived on Hawaii since time immemorial. They had a proper Kingdom and everything with the US meddling with putsches and coups, then they had a Republic, then the US annexed the whole thing, very much not with consent of the Hawaiians. That was 1898, statehood was granted in 1959. The Falklands were uninhabited, settled first by the French in 1764. They also enjoy autonomy in everything but foreign relations and defence and if they wanted to they would readily be granted independence, the situation couldn’t be more different. Practically speaking the relation of the Falklands to the UK is much more similar than that of Greenland to Denmark than that of, say, Indiana to the US federal government, which is the exact relationship Hawaii has with the federal government.
Also it’s not by far the largest European overseas territory, that’d be French Guyana. Who btw overwhelmingly voted against becoming an overseas collectivity, they kept their status as “just another department” with no more autonomy than the departments in Europe. European colonialism died pretty much exactly with Algerian independence, what’s left are a flurry of overseas territories which we couldn’t get rid of if we wanted because they want to stay, politically, part of Europe.
There are a thousand kilometres of open ocean between Argentina and the Falklands.
If you look at the map on the above link, that distance is not straight East to West, its to the center of Argentina, SE to NW. I checked a couple of web sites, and they all measure a longer, diagonal distance, that gives a false impression of longer distances.
If you use the Google Maps measuring tool, and you measure from the West coast of the islands to the East coast of Argentina, going directly East to West, you get this answer …
Total distance: 338.20 mi (544.28 km)
The Malvinas are allot closer than Hawaii is to the US.
find it a bit insane that a country can just own an island like that which is nowhere even near their mainland. If you just look at the map it’s quite obvious to who that land belongs to.
The UN agrees with you, and asked Great Britain to give the islands back to Argentina.
Not quite.
The Special Committee on Decolonization concluded its 2021 substantive session today, approving 18 draft resolutions, including one requesting that the Governments of Argentina and the United Kingdom resume negotiations as soon as possible to reach a peaceful resolution of their sovereignty dispute over the Falkland Islands (Malvinas)*.
