The Chagos Islands Affair

Is there no end of sovereignty disputes in the world? At one time, I thought there were relatively few remaining ones, but I keep discovering new an interesting ones.

This one concerns the British Indian Ocean Territory, also known as the Chagos Islands, a series of tiny atolls in the Indian Ocean (basically in the middle of nowhere). They are claimed by Mauritius, and the UK was set to hand them back this year after a ruling by the ICJ. However, Donald Trump criticized the decision on Truth Social (in connection with the Greenland situation). According to an article I read but can no longer locate, this caused Starmer to withdraw the decision to turn the islands over to Mauritius. I’m not sure what the current status is.

What do the natives think? One of the most interesting aspects of this case is that the natives are Europeans. The French were the first to settle the Chagos in the 18th century. They brought in slaves to work there. These people continued to live in the islands until 1971, when they were resettled to allow the U.S. to set up a naval base at Diego Garcia, the largest of the atolls. Therefore, the first people living there were Europeans; the only people living there now are British and Americans; and the people who have the best claim to be “indiginous” were brought there from Africa, India, and Malaya, and speak a French creole language.

My sympathies go to these people, of whom there are about 10,000 currently living (it is unclear how many there were at the time of their expulsion). I have less sympathy (basically none) for the claims of Mauritius, which rest entirely on the fact that the British once administered them together and therefore they should remain together. This seems like a strange argument, considering how quick people are to criticize meaningless colonial boundaries. In any case, Mauritians (who also followed European settlement rather than preceded it) have no historical connection to the Chagos Islands prior to the colonial period and very little afterward.