Colonialism, Justice, and the Falkland Islands

Thirty years after the Falklands War, Argentina is making another push to get the islands back:

President Cristina Fernandez is ratcheting up pressure by trying to isolate the archipelago’s English-speaking inhabitants while heaping scorn on a British government that has refused to relinquish control. . . . In recent weeks, Argentina has embarked on a multi-pronged effort that has included stopping British vessels from docking and winning support from neighboring countries to restrict port access to ships flying the Falkland Islands flag. The Argentine industry minister called on companies to reduce British imports, and the president has accused Cameron of “near stupidity” for refusing to negotiate.

In Argentina’s latest gambit, Foreign Minister Hector Timerman informed the London and New York stock markets that oil exploration companies in the Falkland Islands could risk civil and criminal penalties for operating “illegally,” as he put it. “I think they have to realize that the Empire is dead,” he said in an interview last year. “And at some point, they will have to accept to negotiate with us.”

The response of the British government is that they have nothing to do with the matter, since the Falklands now govern themselves.

The question of what to do with the Falklands raises one of the most interesting moral questions about history: how old does a crime have to be for it simply to become a historical fact about which nothing can be done?

Britain stole the Falklands from Argentina in 1833 and planted a settlement there to serve its navy. Nobody disputes that this was a dubious act. However, all the people who live in Falklands now are descended from those British settlers. They were born in the islands, as were their parents and grandparents and so on for 175 years. They want to remain British. The clumsy attempt Argentina made to seize the islands by force in 1982 only increased the islanders' dislike for Argentina and their determination to remain part of the British Commonwealth.

I think that by this time Argentina's attempts to reclaim the islands make no more sense than would an Iroquois claim to Albany. I realize that this may invite abuse by powerful nations in many circumstances, but the notion that land should always belong to the people who occupied it at the beginning of the historical record is obviously untenable. Are we going to undo the Arab conquests? Give Romania back to the Dacians? Restore London to the Welsh?

How long, then, does a nation have to hold a piece of land before the claims of the previous occupants are extinguished? I suggest that when the original immigrants have all died, and every inhabitant of the place was born there, and there are no more displaced persons alive, then the invaders are now the rightful owners. Or perhaps we should use a century as a more concrete guide. I refuse to accept that we are liable for the crimes of our grandparents: where we are born and grow up in our home, and it would take some kind of very strong argument to convince me otherwise.