Territorial claims in Antarctica

Seven sovereign states – Argentina, Australia, Chile, France, New Zealand, Norway, and the United Kingdom – have made eight territorial claims in Antarctica. These countries have tended to place their Antarctic scientific observation and study facilities within their respective claimed territories; however, a number of such facilities are located outside of the area claimed by their respective countries of operation, and countries without claims such as Spain, China, India, Italy, Japan, Pakistan, Russia, South Africa ( SANAE), Poland, and the United States have constructed research facilities within the areas claimed by other countries. There are overlaps among the territories claimed by Argentina, Chile, and the United Kingdom.

History

Spanish claims

According to Argentina and Chile, the Spanish Crown had claims on Antarctica. The ''capitulación'' (governorship) granted to the conquistador Pedro Sánchez de la Hoz in 1539 by the King of Spain, Charles V, explicitly included all lands south of the Straits of Magellan, (Terra Australis, and Tierra del Fuego and by extension potentially the entire continent of Antarctica) and to the East and West the borders were the ones specified in the Treaty of Tordesillas and Zaragoza respectively, thus creating the Governorate of Terra Australis.

De la Hoz transferred the title to the conqueror Pedro de Valdivia in 1540. In 1555, the claim was incorporated to Chile.

This grant established, according to Argentina and Chile, that an '' animus occupandi'' existed on the part of Spain in Antarctica. Spain's sovereignty claim over parts of Antarctica was, according to Chile and Argentina, internationally recognized with the ''Inter caetera'' bull of 1493 and the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494. Argentina and Chile treat these treaties as legal international treaties mediated by the Catholic Church that was at that time a recognized arbiter in such matters. Each country currently has claimed a sector of the Antarctic continent that is more or less directly south of its national Antarctic-facing lands.

Modern Spain has not claimed any Antarctic territory. It operates two summer research stations ( Gabriel de Castilla Base and Juan Carlos I Base) in the South Shetland Islands.

British claims

The United Kingdom reasserted sovereignty over the Falkland Islands in the far South Atlantic in 1833 and maintained a continuous presence there. In 1908, the British government extended its territorial claim by declaring sovereignty over "South Georgia, the South Orkneys, the South Shetlands, and the (South) Sandwich Islands, and Graham's Land, situated in the South Atlantic Ocean and on the Antarctic continent to the south of the 50th parallel of south latitude, and lying between the 20th and the 80th degrees of west longitude".''International law for Antarctica'', p. 652
Francesco Francioni and Tullio Scovazzi, 1996. All these territories were administered as Falkland Islands Dependencies from Stanley by the Governor of the Falkland Islands. The claimed motivation for this declaration was what the British said was the need to regulate and tax the whaling industry effectively.

In 1917, the wording of the claim was modified, so as unambiguously to include all the territory in the sector stretching to the South Pole (thus encompassing all the present British Antarctic Territory). The new claim covered "all islands and territories whatsoever between the 20th degree of west longitude and the 50th degree of west longitude which are situated south of the 50th parallel of south latitude; and all islands and territories whatsoever between the 50th degree of west longitude and the 80th degree of west longitude which are situated south of the 58th parallel of south latitude".

It was the ambition of Leopold Amery, then Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, that the United Kingdom incorporate the entire continent into the Empire. In a memorandum to the governors-general for Australia and New Zealand, he wrote that 'with the exception of Chile and Argentina and some barren islands belonging to France... it is desirable that the whole of the Antarctic should ultimately be included in the British Empire.' The first step was taken on 30 July 1923, when the British government passed an Order in Council under the ''British Settlements Act 1887'', defining the new borders for the Ross Dependency"that part of His Majesty's Dominions in the Antarctic Seas, which comprises all the islands and territories between the 160th degree of East Longitude and the 150th degree of West Longitude which are situated south of the 60th degree of South Latitude shall be named the Ross Dependency." The Order in Council then went on to appoint the Governor-General and Commander-in Chief of New Zealand as the Governor of the territory.

In 1930, the United Kingdom claimed Enderby Land. In 1933, a British imperial order transferred territory south of 60° S and between meridians 160° E and 45° E to Australia as the Australian Antarctic Territory.

Following the passing of the Statute of Westminster in 1931, the government of the United Kingdom relinquished all control over the governments of New Zealand and Australia. This, however, had no bearing on the obligations of the governors-general of both countries in their capacity as Governors of the Antarctic territories.

Other European claims

The basis for the claim to Adélie Land by France depended on the discovery of the coastline in 1840 by the French explorer Jules Dumont d'Urville, who named it after his wife, Adèle. He erected the French flag and took possession of the land for France on 21 January 1840 at 17:30.

The British eventually decided to recognize this claim, and the border between Adélie Land and the Australian Antarctic Territory was fixed definitively in 1938.

These developments also concerned Norwegian whaling interests which wished to avoid British taxation of whaling stations in the Antarctic and felt concern that they would be commercially excluded from the continent. The whale-ship owner Lars Christensen financed several expeditions to the Antarctic with the view to claiming land for Norway and to establishing stations on Norwegian territory to gain better privileges. The first expedition, led by Nils Larsen and Ola Olstad, landed on Peter I Island in 1929 and claimed the island for Norway. On 6 March 1931 a Norwegian royal proclamation declared the island under Norwegian sovereignty and on 23 March 1933 the island was declared a dependency.

The 1929 expedition led by Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen and Finn Lützow-Holm named the continental landmass near the island as Queen Maud Land after the Norwegian queen Maud of Wales. The territory was explored further during the ''Norvegia'' expedition of 1930–31. Negotiations with the British government in 1938 resulted in setting the western border of Queen Maud Land at 20°W.

The United States, Chile, the Soviet Union and Germany disputed Norway's claim. In 1938, Germany dispatched the German Antarctic Expedition, led by Alfred Ritscher, to fly over as much of it as possible. The ship ''Schwabenland'' reached the pack ice off Antarctica on 19 January 1939. During the expedition, Ritscher photographed an area of about from the air and dropped darts inscribed with swastikas every . However, despite intensively surveying the land, Germany never made any formal claim or constructed any lasting bases. Hence, the German Antarctic claim, known as New Swabia, was disputed at the time, and is currently not taken into account.

On 14 January 1939, five days before the German arrival, Norway annexed Queen Maud Land after a royal decree announced that the land bordering the Falkland Islands Dependencies in the west and the Australian Antarctic Dependency in the east was to be brought under Norwegian sovereignty. The primary aim of the annexation was to secure the Norwegian whaling industry's access to the region. In 1948, Norway and the United Kingdom agreed to limit Norway's longitudinal claims of Queen Maud Land to 20°W to 45°E, and to incorporate the Bruce Coast and Coats Land into Norwegian territory.

South American involvement

Argentina and Chile have a long history in Antarctica. In 1893, when Argentina started issuing whaling, hunting and fishing licenses in Antarctic waters, the Chilean government protested and issued fishing ordinances of its own, with the goal of preventing the indiscriminate exploitation of maritime resources and their potential extinction. The Chilean Navy was tasked with stopping clandestine fishing vessels, but their presence proved ineffective. In early 1906, the Chilean government granted permits to private business ventures to settle the lands beyond the South Shetland islands, with the goal of establishing a permanent presence in the region and improving Chile's control of the area. Argentina protested immediately.

Two years before, in 1904, the Argentine government had established a permanent presence in Antarctica with the purchase of a meteorological station on Laurie Island established in 1903 by William S. Bruce's Scottish National Antarctic Expedition. Bruce offered to transfer the station and instruments for the sum of 5,000 pesos, on the condition that the government committed itself to the continuation of the scientific mission. The Envoy at the British Legation in Argentina, William Haggard, also sent a note to the Argentine Foreign Minister, José A. Terry, ratifying the terms of Bruce's proposition. In 1906, Argentina communicated to the international community the establishment of a permanent base in the South Orkney Islands

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