Britain, Argentina, & The Falkland Islands: 200 Years Of Rival Claims

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The Falkland Islands - 200 Years of Rival Claims.

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The Falkland Islands. Three hundred miles from Argentina. Eight thousand from Britain. And one of the most bitterly contested sovereignty disputes of the modern age.

Most people's entry point is 1982 — Argentine forces landing, Margaret Thatcher sending the Task Force south, six weeks of war in the South Atlantic. That's where the popular story begins and, for many, ends.

But the actual dispute — the competing claims that Britain and Argentina have been making for nearly two centuries — starts much earlier than that.

This is the real Falkland Islands history.

It starts with the question of who got there first.

The answer, inconveniently for both sides, is neither of them.

The Dutch sighted the islands in 1600.
French sailors from St Malo gave them a name — the Illes Malouines, which the Spanish rendered as Malvinas.
Captain John Strong of the Royal Navy made the first recorded landing in 1690.

But nobody planted a flag and stayed — not until 1764, when Louis Antoine de Bougainville established the first settlement for France.

The British arrived the following year, apparently unaware the French were already there.

Spain, citing a 1494 Papal division of the non-Christian world, pressured France to hand over its colony — and eventually moved against Britain too, forcing a British surrender at Port Egmont in 1770. War threatened. Spain backed down.

But when Britain quietly withdrew in 1774, it nailed a lead plaque to the fort wall asserting the "sole right and property" of King George III. That plaque — and what it signifies — is still being argued about today.

For the next forty years, Spain administered the islands from Buenos Aires.

When Argentina declared independence, it claimed to inherit Spanish colonial sovereignty across South America — including the Falklands, the Malvinas.

In 1829, Buenos Aires appointed Luis Vernet as Civil and Military Commandant.
Britain protested immediately.

Vernet's seizure of American sealing ships in 1831 provoked a retaliatory raid by USS Lexington that left the islands effectively ungoverned.

Britain moved.On the 2nd of January 1833, HMS Clio arrived.
Captain Onslow asked the Argentine commander to lower his flag and depart.

Not a shot was fired. Argentina has protested that moment ever since — and in nearly two centuries, has never stopped.

The dispute comes down to two irreconcilable readings of 19th century colonial history.

Argentina argues that Britain abandoned the islands in 1774 and returned sixty years later to seize territory that had lawfully passed to a new nation.

Britain argues it never surrendered sovereignty — the plaque was a bookmark, not a goodbye — and that it challenged Buenos Aires the moment it tried to appoint a governor.

Then there is the matter of the islanders themselves, who voted in 2013 with a 99.8% majority on a 92% turnout to remain British.
Self-determination, London says, settles it. Buenos Aires disagrees.

As with so much of British Empire history, the answer depends entirely on who you ask.

Chapters:
0:00 200-Year Dispute
0:34 Falkland Islands / Malvinas
1:44 The French
3:01 British Claim
3:57 Spanish Claim
6:25 British Expelled But Return
9:28 Argentinian Claim
11:36 Jewett & Vernet
14:12 USA Get Involved
15:17 1833
17:07 British Territory
18:07 Prisoners of History

#falklandswar #falklandislands #falklands #islasmalvinas #britishempire #britishhistory

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