Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
the islands of the south-western Pacific Ocean did not form part of any such supercontinent.
Indeed, the name of Australia - formally adopted in 1824 - reflects the early 19th-century be-
lief that it was the world's southernmost continent. By this time sightings of the landmass that
we now know as Antarctica had already begun, although it was not until 1840 that the Amer-
ican naval officer Charles Wilkes proposed the existence of 'an Antarctic continent'. The first
use of the name Antarctica in print is credited to the Scottish mapmaker John Bartholomew
in the 1890s.
Serious exploration of the continent's interior began in 1897 and continued for the next 25
years. A Norwegian expedition led by Roald Amundsen reached the South Pole in December
1911, beating a rival British party by a few weeks. By that time the British had already laid
claim to a slice of Antarctica, and several other countries followed suit over the following
decades. When this map was produced in 1953, seven countries - the United Kingdom, New
Zealand, France, Norway, Australia, Chile and Argentina - maintained land claims, with only
Marie Byrd Land left unclaimed.
Although the map primarily shows the political situation on land and was not intended for
navigation at sea, it is technically a chart, prepared by the Hydrographic Department of the
British Admiralty. The annotations marking British dependencies in the South Atlantic Ocean
were probably added in March 1957. The map illustrates a Commonwealth Relations Office
file relating to British policy in Antarctica in the late 1950s, when the continent's political
importance reached its peak. The file reveals that the United Kingdom had considered with-
drawing her claim to part of the continent but decided not to do so, fearing a negative impact
on her strategic interests in the area and on the claims of her key allies (and former colonies)
Australia and New Zealand. Against the backdrop of the Cold War, it was also thought that
additional nations - including both the United States and the Soviet Union - were likely to
stake their own claims to territory.
The Antarctic Treaty of 1959 averted the potential for conflict. It permitted no additional
land claims but neither approved nor denied the legitimacy of the existing ones. Thus, the
seven territorial claims extant in the 1950s remain the same today. The treaty also barred mil-
itary installations, weapons testing and nuclear waste from the continent, reserving its use for
peaceful, scientific purposes. Antarctica remains the only 'unspoilt' continent with no per-
manent human population, although a few thousand people live there temporarily in research
stations. International co-operation has kept Antarctica conflict-free for more than six dec-
ades, a truly historic occurrence.
