Origins of the Dispute 

While some non-Brits often get confused about the difference between the UK, Britain, England, Scotland, Wales, the British Isles, Northern Ireland, and the Republic of Ireland. There’s also something called the Crown Dependencies and the British overseas territories. The overseas territories are areas, many of them with colonial era ties to the UK, that are under the sovereignty of the United Kingdom, but are not constitutionally part of the UK itself. Potentially the most controversial of these is the Falkland Islands, a small set of islands with a land area of only around 12,000 km squared in the South Atlantic, around 480 km from Argentina. What makes the Falkland Islands so controversial is that while the UK still maintains sovereignty over them, Argentina disputes this and even went to war with the British in 1982 to gain control of them.

Even to this day, the Argentinians still formally claim control over the Falkland Islands and in the last couple of weeks, Chile’s new president, Jose Antonio Kast, has also thrown his weight behind Argentina’s claims, reviving the debate once again If we look at the history of the island, Port Louie, the first ever settlement on the island, was built by a French navigator in 1764, while the second one, Port Egmont, was founded by the British. However, within just a few years, the British and French began to abandon these settlements. The French left in 1767 after selling their settlement to the Spanish. The British left in 1774 for cost-cutting reasons, but crucially didn’t renounce their claim to the island, and the Spanish left in 1811 to focus on the emerging South American wars of independence. In 1820, the Argentinian government, which had declared its independence from Spain only 4 years earlier, claimed sovereignty over the Falklands, and in 1832, it sent a military expedition to establish its own settlement there in order to solidify its claim.

However, this effort descended into chaos with the Argentine major who led the mission killed by his soldiers after arriving, and the garrison was then expelled by the British 4 months later. A British........

© Paradigm Shift