Edward Hampshire - The Falklands naval campaign 1982 war in the South Atlantic

For ten short weeks in 1982, two Western states, both allies of the United States, fought a bloody, intense but limited war in the South Atlantic, over islands long settled and administered by one of the powers and long claimed by the other. The two states were the United Kingdom and Argentina, and the islands were the Falkland Islands, known by the Argentines as the Malvinas.

Although the first recorded landing was by a British naval officer in 1690, Spain claimed the islands under the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494 under which the New World had been divided between Spain and Portugal. The British rejected this, stating that the existence of the islands had not been known then. Either way, neither power settled the islands, and it was only in 1764 that the first settlement was created, this time by the French at Port Louis. Independently, the British began to settle West Falkland a year later. Both the British and the French were initially in ignorance of each others tiny groups of houses on different sides of the islands.

In 1766 the French sold their settlement to the Spanish, who appointed a governor. Claims and counter-claims of sovereignty to the islands nearly resulted in war between the two powers in 1770, but Spain backed down and allowed British settlers, who had been expelled some years earlier, to return whilst not giving up its claim. Making a living on the islands was difficult, and the British settlers left some years later leaving a plaque setting out their continued claim, whilst the Spanish turned to using the islands as a prison colony. The Spanish themselves left in 1811, again leaving a plaque embossed with their claim on the islands. When the newly independent Argentina appointed a governor to the islands in 1829, the British protested. When that governor decided to seize three American fishing vessels in Falklands waters, the US government retaliated by destroying all the settlements on the islands and deporting all inhabitants. Diplomatic relations with the US were severed until 1844. The British then took the opportunity to resettle the islands. Some Argentines had returned, but when facing a British naval force, their disunity was such that they murdered the interim commander on the islands, and later surrendered to the British. British settlement began in 1833, and the British case has rested on early, continuous and peaceful settlement since that date, reinforced by the wishes of the inhabitants of the islands. The Argentine case rests its position as successor to the Spanish claim and its short period of occupation before 1833.

An Admiralty Chart from 1884 showing eastern East Falkland. The settlement marked in the centre of the image is Port Stanley. The dots and numbers are sounding points measuring the depth of water. (Publ ic Domain)

Stanley Water from the air facing east in 1982. In the middle ground is Port Stanley, and in the far distance on a peninsula the airfield can be made out. (Crown Copy right/OGL)

Since 1833 the British had settled the Falkland Islands with a small number of sheep farmers, and during the 19th century the islands had been an important coaling station for warships in the South Atlantic. However, since the advent of oil as a warship fuel, the strategic significance of the islands to the British had diminished considerably. It remained a remote dependent territory populated by a few thousand settlers a long distance from the British popular consciousness and a low priority for British policymakers.

For Argentina, the existence of the Falklands as a British dependency had long been a point of contention. Many in Argentina saw continuing British jurisdiction over these islands as a colonial hangover and evidence that their country had not fully shaken off colonial rule. It was often forgotten by the British, that despite strong historical links between Argentina and the United Kingdom including a significant community of settlers of British extraction, part of the fight for Argentine independence had been conducted against an ill-judged and opportunistic British expedition from South Africa led by Admiral Home Riggs Popham during the Napoleonic Wars, rather than against the Spanish. The islands therefore ignited significant Argentine nationalist feeling, and when more nationalist-inclined administrations were in power in Buenos Aires, the issue of the sovereignty of the Falklands would become more prominent. Since the 1960s, and resulting from Britains policy of divesting itself of as many of its residual colonies as possible, diplomatic talks between the two states had been underway to discover whether a mutually acceptable solution to the problem could be achieved. In the end, nearly all the negotiations faltered due to the unwillingness of the islanders themselves whose ancestors had been settled from Britain and who regarded themselves as British to accept Argentine sovereignty or even partial sovereignty.

Through the 1960s and 1970s a number of actions by individual Argentines served to keep the issue of the Falklands alive whilst negotiations continued with little sense of a conclusion.