Abstract
Speaking for the British government in April 1982 at the time of an escalating Argentine threat to British control over the Falkland Islands, Sir Anthony Parsons informed the UN Security Council that ‘my Argentine colleague and I could debate endlessly the rights and wrongs of history, and I doubt whether we would agree’.1 Nicanor Costa Mendez, the Argentine Foreign Minister, proved the point when asserting that there existed no cause for disagreement:
The representative of the United Kingdom said that he had doubts about being able to arrive at an agreement with the representative of my country as to the historical vicissitudes. This is possible, but it would seem difficult for us not to agree on the facts of history which are absolutely indisputable.2
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Notes
Sir Anthony Parsons, British representative, 1 April 1982, quoted in Britain and the Falklands Crisis: a Documentary Record (London: HMSO, 1982), p. 24.
Raphael Perl (ed.), The Falkland Islands Dispute in International Law and Politics: a Documentary Sourcebook (New York: Oceana, 1983), p. 438.
Roberto Guyer, quoted in Michael Charlton, The Little Platoon: Diplomacy and the Falklands Dispute (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), p. 103.
Daniel Kon, Los Chicos de la Guerra (London: NEL, 1983), pp. 46–7.
Laurio H. Destefani, The Malvinas, the South Georgias and the South Sandwich Islands, the conflict with Britain (Buenos Aires: Edipress, 1982), p. 5.
Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 14
Peter J. Beck, ‘Has history a future?’, Contemporary Review, 249 (1986), pp. 264–267; Christopher Thorne, ‘International Relations and the promptings of history’, Review of International Studies, 9 (1983), pp. 123–31.
R.W. Davies, Soviet History in the Gorbachev Revolution (London: Macmillan, 1989), pp. 1–6.
Lech Walesa, Path of Hope (London: Collins, 1987), p. 36.
J.A.S. Grenville, Europe Re-Shaped 1848–78 (London: Fontana, 1976), p. 349.
Arthur Marwick, The Nature of History (London: Macmillan, 1970), p. 11.
H. Tinker (ed.), A Message from the Falklands (London: Junction, 1982), pp. 188–90.
Michael Akehurst, A Modern Introduction to International Law (London: Allen and Unwin, 6th ed. 1987), pp. 15, 143.
Raphael Samuel (ed.), Patriotism: the Making and Unmaking of British National Identity (London: Routledge, 1989), vol. 1, pp. x–xi; see also Anthony Barnett, Iron Britannia (London: Allison and Busby, 1982).
FCO, Background Brief: The Islands-Early History (London: FCO, 1983), p. 1
FCO, Background Brief: Claims to the Falkland Islands (London: FCO, 1986).
Peter J. Beck, The Falkland Islands as an International Problem (London: Routledge, 1988), pp. 35–38.
Ian Brownlie, Principles of Public International Law (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 3rd. ed. 1979), pp. 149–150.
Pym to Tam Dalyell, MP, 8 July 1982, in Tam Dalyell, One Man’s Falklands (London: Woolf, 1982), pp. 137–138.
Ian Brownlie, International Law and the Use of Force by States (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), p. 422; Akehurst, International Law, p. 295.
John M. Lindsay, ‘Conquest: a legal and historical analysis of the root of United Kingdom title in the Falkland Islands’, Texas International Law Journal, 18 (1983), p. 130.
Peter J. Beck, ‘Research Problems in Studying Britain’s Latin American Past: the case of the Falklands Dispute 1920–1950’, Bulletin of Latin American Research, 2 (1983), pp. 5–13.
Minute by R. Vansittart, 4 January 1926, F0371/10605/A6597; F.S. Northedge, Descent from Power: British Foreign Policy 1945–73 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1974), p. 360.
Alfredo I. Palacios, Las Islas Malvinas: Archipelago Argentino (Buenos Aires: Editorial Claridad, 1934), p. 127.
Jack Child, Geopolitics and Conflict in South America: Quarrels among Neigh-bours (New York: Praeger, 1985), pp. 41–43.
Jack Child, ‘Antarctica and the Southern Ocean: Latin American interests’ in A. Gauhar (ed.), Third World Affairs 1988 (London: Third World Foundation, 1988), pp. 374–381
Virginia Gamba-Stonehouse, Strategy in the Southern Oceans: A South American View (London: Pinter, 1989), pp. 71–133
Jack Child, ‘Latin Lebensraum: the geopolitics of Ibero-American Antarctica’, Applied Geography, 10(4) (1990), pp. 291–3.
Manual Estrada 4° Grado (Buenos Aires: Angel Estrada, 3rd. ed. 1988), pp. 106–7. See also for younger children: Susana Molfino, La Argentina: La Tierra, El Hombre, Sus Recursos (Buenos Aires: Kapelusz, 2nd ed. 1985), p. 167. See also Peter J. Beck, ‘Whose Island Story?’, History Today, 39 (1989), pp. 8–11.
For example, see Jorge M. Ramallo, Historia 3 (Buenos Aires: Ediciones Braga, 1988), pp. 11–13
Ernesto Palacios, Historia de la Argentina 1515–1983 (Buenos Aires: Abelado-Perrot, 15th ed. 1988), pp. 316–17.
Peter J. Beck, ‘Argentina’s Philatelic Annexation of the Falkland Islands’, History Today, 33(2) (1983), pp. 39–44.
Alfonsin, 11 March 1983, quoted HCFAC 1983–84, Report, vol. 2, p. 149; Roberto Roth, Después de Malvinas, Que? (Buenos Aires: Ediciones La Campana, 1982), p. 12.
J.C. Metford, in J. Goebel, The Struggle for the Falkland Islands: a Study in Legal and Diplomatic History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982 ed.), pp. vi–viii.
Marc Ferro, The Use and Abuse of History (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981), p. vii; Marwick, The Nature of History, p. 11.
Geoffrey Howe ‘Sovereignty and interdependence: Britain’s place in the world’. International Affairs, 66 (1990), p. 676, p. 691.
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© 1992 Alex Danchev
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Beck, P. (1992). The Policy Relevance of the Falklands/Malvinas Past. In: Danchev, A. (eds) International Perspectives on the Falklands Conflict. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-21932-2_2
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