Science, People & Politics

With World War over, and amid global anxieties that there not be another, and more catastrophic World War, this time with nuclear weapons, the dispute between Britain, Argentina and Chile, which had rumbled on at a low level of engagement during the Second World War, became more prominent.

This was a hungry world, with trade in disarray.

By the end of 1946 due democratic process confirmed Juan Peron (1895-1974)¹ and Gabriel Gonzalez Videla (1898-1980) in power as leaders, respectively, of Argentina and Chile.

At the beginning of 1946, in January, Chile had renewed its assertion, made first in November 1940, that the South Shetlands, Greenwich Island and Graham Land were part of Chile. In March 1947, Chile set up a permanent base on Greenwich Island².

In 1947, on 9th April, 1947, a British Magistrate, acting for the Governor of the Falkland Islands, delivered a note to the officials in charge of an Argentinian post on Gamma Island³, saying the Argentinians were trespassing on territory of His Majesty's Government. Argentina's position was that the Argentinian navy was at all times acting within its own territory, and, therefore, did not need British permission. For the next nine years Britain, Argentina and Chile sniped at one another on the subject of Antarctica and sub-Antarctic Islands, mainly via diplomatic notes, occasionally in the press. The story from Britain's perspective was one of encroachments into its Sovereign territories. Chile and Argentina each said, separately, they were exercising their own irrefutable rights of sovereignty. At the time Chile and Argentina were disputing with one another the demarcation between their Antarctic claims. The Foreign Office (not yet called the Foreign and Commonwealth Office) record is straightforward and factual, without speculation as to motives.

Chile and Britain, and Argentina and Britain were not enemy nations, and had been friendly before the outbreak of the Second World War. In the case of Argentina and Britain there is one sense in which Antarctica was simply a card in trade negotiations between the two nations. It was a card Britain wished to take out of play.

FOOTNOTES
1 Modern History Sourcebook: Juan Domingo Peron (1895-1974): Justicialism
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1950peronism2.html
Accessed 22nd February, 2013.
2 FO 371/97370
3 Ibid

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