Britain’s Antarctic Empire: How whales and imperialism created an Anglo-American ‘Special Rivalry’ in the Antarctic (1946-1949)

By Samuel Jardine

Citation Advice: Samuel Jardine, ‘Britain’s Antarctic Empire: How whales and imperialism created an Anglo-American ‘Special Rivalry’ in the Antarctic (1946-1949), Extreme Empire Project, (Aylesbury, 2020), 1-20

Overview:

Based heavily on primary source evidence from the 1947 Far Eastern Committee and Antarctic reports, this essay will highlight how whaling and imperial rivalry contributed to the growing and pre-existing Anglo-American rivalry in the Antarctic. It contributes to a wider point that conceptions of an ‘Anglo-American’ special relationship post-1945 are at best situational and regional, it only being apparent when UK and US interests align. More often than not though these two powers during the Cold War had divergent and oppositional interests that meant a Churchillian view of the Anglo-American alliance was naive at best. 

Introduction

The concept of an Anglo-American ‘Special Relationship’ as first articulated by Winston Churchill in his 1946 ‘Iron Curtain’ speech is a pervasive idea that many in Britain still believe in today.[i] The tenants of this relationship remain largely as Churchill outlined them back in 1946,[ii] and can be found mirrored in the works of modern historians like David Reynolds.[iii] These features are that the two powers have a shared culture and ideology, a shared history of close cooperation (both World Wars typically being used as examples) and that they had a common foe who wished to displace their ‘shard culture’, at the time that was the USSR, though today we might easily replace that with Iran, China or indeed Russia.

However, the nature of the ‘Special Relationship’ is disputed, some historians highlight its lopsidedness,[iv] others argue further that it is merely a British ‘self-delusion’ that has actually been damaging to UK interests.[v] This essay will expand upon the thoughts of historians like James Whitfield who have highlighted that the ‘Special Relationship’ has ‘obscured’ a history of rivalry between the two allied powers.[vi] Specifically it helps make the case that geographically, British and American interests could far from being in sync, actually find themselves at odds, with cutthroat rivalry and competition following. In these specific contexts the concept of a ‘special relationship’ does not exist.

Thus, it complicates the broader generalizations historians like James Wither have made who argue that despite some ‘bumps’ like Suez, broadly the ‘Special Relationship’ is only in danger of breaking down recently.[vii] Wither assumes that the Special Relationship is a globally encompassing blanket that always exists, everywhere. In fact, its existence is based only in specific areas or compartments of the globe where British and US interests meet and compliment one another. Where there is a conflict of interests in a compartment, no special relationship exists, no special treatment is given, or allowances made. The Antarctic is one such compartment.

The Anglo-American rivalry in the Antarctic is a long-term and complicated feature of the region’s history. This essay will thus highlight its existence, its interplay and consequences by concentrating on two linked incidents lasting over 1946-1949. These being the dispute over Japanese Antarctic Whaling in 1946-7 and the Argentine occupation of the British claimed ‘Falkland Island Dependencies’, the governmental term for the British Antarctic in this period, that began in 1947. In doing so it will highlight both the Anglo-American rivalry and their competing interests in the region and globally.

Home-wrecking Whales: The role of whales in increasing Anglo-American tensions

After Japan’s surrender in September 1945 the victorious allies began to discuss its future, and what kind of a peace they would enforce upon Asia and the Pacific, their decisions would be finalized in the 1947 Canberra Conference, and where supposed to be made on collective grounds between the US and the British Commonwealth. [viii]

However, when it came to the Antarctic there would be a problem. The USA ‘authorized the dispatch of a Japanese whaling expedition to the Antarctic’ in 1946, which may appear innocuous enough, but resulted in fierce British protests. This was not simply because the US had unilaterally took the decision to send the Japanese expedition, but also because Britain, supported by South Africa, Australia and New Zealand, had hoped to exclude Japan from the Antarctic entirely by having it ‘official renounce all political and territorial claims’ to the region it had previously made, which included a ban on whaling. [ix] This was a policy based specifically on protecting and strengthening Britain’s existing economic and imperial interests in the Antarctic.

 Britain’s economic interests in the Antarctic had been from 1908 the revenues it generated from licencing and regulating whaling activity in the region. This was an economic activity that had been deemed so profitable that the Falkland Islands Governor’s primary duty was described as the collection and maintenance of this revenue source,[x] which between 1919 and 1931 saw the collection of over ￡1 million in duties from Whaling operations alone. [xi] Britain was hoping now that the war was over it might re-establish once again its monopoly on whaling that the war had interrupted. [xii] The pursuit and establishment of the British monopoly on whaling had been government policy since 1926, when at the Imperial Conference in that year the government had laid out the aim to have as much of the Antarctic Whaling industry as possible under its control. [xiii] That this revenue source was of sufficient importance to Britain can be seen in 1949 when the Governor of the Falkland Islands sough to fund all scientific research in the Antarctic solely from the taxes collected from whaling. [xiv]

Thus, the British wish to exclude the Japanese from the Antarctic, right down to whaling fleets is entirely understandable for British interests, as competition from Japan would interfere with British profits and its hoped-for monopoly. Indeed, in 1947 the British noted that Japan ‘only adhered with reservations’ to international agreements on the fair practice of whaling,[xv] and had been known historically to flout quotas and controls to give itself an unfair competitive advantage, if that wasn’t enough to cause serious concern for Britain, the fact that in 1940 Japan has sought to establish it’s own base in the Antarctic from which its Whaling fleet could operate from, [xvi] and that up until 1945 Japan had been an implacable and serious geopolitical rival and threat to Britain meant the Commonwealth understandably wanted the Japanese out of the region as far as possible to limit any further danger to their Antarctic holdings and the income they provided.

Photo by Brocken Inaglory of an Antarctic Minke Whale in the Ross Sea, 2007. Minke Whales are one of the whale species hunted in the Antarctic. Image in the Public domain.

That the potential establishment of a Japanese Antarctic base prior to Britain’s war with Japan could be cited as a key reason in 1947 to keep Japan out of the Antarctic was not simply due to a wish to protect whaling revenues though. It had proved to Britain that Japan was a willing and direct imperial competitor in the region, something that could not be tolerated. In 1920 the British Government had informed Australia and New Zealand that it had;

‘come to the conclusion that the whole of the Antarctic should ultimately be included within the British Empire’.[i]

During the 1947 discussions within the Far Eastern Committee it appeared that this stance had not particularly changed for the British delegation. Indeed, Britain in its attempts to have Japan totally excluded from the Antarctic represented a hardening of these interests over time, compared with the earlier threat of French interlopers to the area who had asserted a claim over Adelie Land in 1924.

The British had by contract to it’s treatment of Japan actually tolerated the French presence in the Antarctic on the assumption that further exploration inland would give them a legal basis to bridge the gap in the British and Australian territories the French claims created, and so allow them to encircle the French and keep them confined to the coast. [ii] Alternatively Britain had toyed with the idea of offering the French some islands in the Southern Indian Ocean in exchange for Adelie Land.[iii]

This idea was rejected though on the grounds that France would probably not accept, but also that the proposed Islands to be given to France may not actually have existed, a British official noting that Enderly Land and Kemp Land ‘have never been sighted since their discovery was originally reported nearly a century ago’. [iv] Regardless though Britain’s attempted compromise with, and then simple acceptance of France as a new rival Antarctic power is a far cry away from their aggressive attempts to block Japan. While arguably this might be because Britain’s war and eventual allied victory over Japan may have hardened British attitudes by wanting to punish Japan, compared to their treatment of inter-war France, this does not adequately explain Britain’s far more aggressive stance to Japan’s potential Antarctic presence.

For starters, Britain was well aware that the ‘complete disarmament and demilitarization of Japan’ was a key aim that all the Allies agreed should be implemented,[v] making Japan far less of a threat than 1920s France could have been. Britain actually gave as a reason for Japan’s exclusion from the Antarctic that if not for Japan’s entry into the World War Two in September 1940, Britain feared it would have pursued its Antarctic claims far more forcefully against nations like Chile who had disputed them.[vi] Essentially that despite it being beaten and disarmed, Japan uniquely could not be trusted in the Antarctic. The uniqueness of this treatment jars especially given that France in 1924 had aggressively planted a claim on Adelie land at a time when France was perceived in Britain as a colonial rival and imperial competitor, despite their cooperation during the First World War,[vii] and yet Britain attempted to simply passively encircle the French claims rather than attempt to diplomatically or otherwise evict them.

This all then gives weight to the fact that Britain’s Antarctic imperialism had hardened since the 1920s, instead of as we might normally perceive Britain beginning its process of decolonization. Its drive to evict Japan totally and permanently from the region echoes its 1920 ambition to control the Antarctic through steady, ‘definite and consistent’ extending and asserting of British authority over the area. [viii] Indeed then it might be seen as Britain using this opportunity to not simply keep Japan ‘out’ of the Antarctic, and so further secure it’s Antarctic empire, but also as a tacit way to get the US and others at the conference to recognize Britain’s leading role in the Antarctic, as if the US had agreed with Britain’s reasoning of preventing Japan from going back to the region it meant Britain could make the case that the US passively accepted Britain’s premier position and imperial designs to protect and control the Antarctic.

Map by Discovering Antarctic (https://discoveringantarctica.org.uk/how-is-antarctica-governed/the-antarctic-treaty/making-claims/). This map of the Antarctic shows the different claims that have been made. While the 1961 Antarctic Treaty ‘internationalized’ the Antarctic, placing the continent under the joint administration of now 29 Consultative Parties with a vote on Antarctic matters (including the claimants listed here), it did not however ‘solve’ the Antarctic claims, instead it merely froze them. As can be observed Britain, Argentina and Chile all have overlapping claims to the Antarctic, stemming from at least 1908. The Antarctic thus remains a potential ‘hot spot’, particularly as attention turns to the potential economic wealth of the continent.

This would have been a big deal, as the US did not recognize Britain’s existing Antarctic interests at all. Its policy towards the worlds fifth largest continent was that it ‘neither makes any territorial claims of its own, nor recognizes those made by other powers’.[i] The reason behind this was the US, as a relative late-comer to the Antarctic scramble of the early 20th century wanted to keep its options open regarding exactly where it wanted to establish a foothold, if at all. This essentially meant that regarding the Commonwealths interests, the US was somewhat purposefully blind to them, certainly if it conceded to the argument that Britain had valid interests in limiting the access of whaling in Antarctic waters based upon its own concern, it might be seen as a tacit admission of wider British claims that could undermine their policy of ‘no recognition’ and come back to haunt the Americans at a later date if they ever decided to plant their own Antarctic flag.

It is in this light then that the US unilaterally felt that it both could decide on its own to send a Japanese Whaling fleet to the Antarctic, as according to the US view of the issue, there was no such thing as a valid ‘British interest’ to the region. It also meant that the USA could not accept Britain’s protests and counterarguments as valid, because to recognize them would mean to accept that Britain may have a point (and thus have valid claims). This meant there could be no meeting of minds between Britain and the US to even start to ‘work things out’. There was no common ground to be had.   

Getting Frosty- The British Commonwealth squares off against the United States

Britain in its aggressive pursuit of shoring up and strengthening it’s Antarctic domains was actually prepared to violate the principles of the post-war Japanese peace it had agreed with the Americans, potentially causing a wider rift between Britain and the US as their Antarctic disagreement spilled over into their wider geopolitical concerns.

The agreed principle had been that Japan would eventually be reintegrated into the global order on a ‘normal’ basis as a fully functioning and sovereign nation,[ii] albeit with certain military constraints written into its constitution. This agreement had been informed by the USA’s burgeoning geopolitical rivalry with the USSR. US planners had identified the Soviet Union as being a key threat to the US as early as the autumn of 1945.[iii] Plans as early as 1943 had called for US bases to be established in a ring around the Eurasian landmass to exert aerial power projection as US policymakers long before either world war had identified that any power which looked to dominate the Eurasia would be a threat to US interests. One of these bases was specifically stated as needing to be situated in Japanese controlled Okinawa,[iv] thus good relations with a stable, US-leaning Japanese state would could defend itself was integral to the US.     

The need for a strong, western-leaning Japan as a buffer state for the US against the Soviets became all the more pressing as the division of Korea became apparent. By 1947 the divisions permanency was becoming clear when the US Secretary of State Marshall wrote a letter to the Soviet Union’s Foreign Minister Molotov questioning why the Soviet commander in Korea had ‘refused to permit free economic exchange’ between the Soviet occupied north and Allied occupied south of the country.[v] The implication here is that the Soviets were aiming to prevent any eventual unification of Korea that might have a friendly disposition towards the US, by isolating its economy into two distinct parts to give them total influence over at least one part of the country without competition from Allied ‘soft power’. Molotov retorted in his reply to Marshall that the Soviets were merely following the agreement the USA itself had signed at the December 1945 Moscow conference that unity should be delivered first as a pre-condition to subsequent development.[vi] Such a move would have benefited the Soviets as they already had a huge military presence in the region and a unified Korea would be right on their door-step and easy to control. Instead the US aimed through economic reconstruction to build goodwill and sympathy within its own zone of control, before it unified. In this way it hoped to shift influence away from the Soviets and towards it. The Soviets thus by making such a reply were well aware of this and were firmly placing the blame for a divided Korea on the USA. Britain was aware that the US were trying to prevent Korea from becoming what they perceived to be as a Soviet ‘puppet state’.[vii] Something that full unification early on might have potentially caused.

Britain then, by aiming to permanently exclude Japan from the Antarctic through it both renouncing its pre-war claims as well as preventing it from whaling in the region again,[viii] was endangering the creation of a ‘normalized’ US-friendly Japan by curtailing its sovereignty in areas that were not just military, in a way that no other normally functioning state had to put up with. Such treatment would have run the risk of breeding resentment and stoking the fires of hostility towards the Allies from the Japanese people and government in the near future if it had been allowed to happen. All powers in the post-war settlement were aware the damage that the harsh terms of Versailles had done in stoking resentment in Germany and leading partly to the rise of the Nazi party and the outbreak of the recent Second World War, and they were eager to avoid repeating the same mistakes.[ix] However, Britain was being punitive here against Japan as it sought to protect its imperial interests at the cost that Japan might not remain a friendly power to the Allies in the post-war environment. The USA naturally opposed this move based on it being deemed as unfair treatment towards Japan,[x] as well as based on their own Antarctic policy.

Britain and the USA were thus at loggerheads to the extent that it was reported by Britain’s acting secretary H.A. Graves that the US ambassador was in a ‘Towering rage’,[xi] so much so that the USA completely ignored a second British protest made when it was rumoured that the US had intended to allow a second Japanese whaling expedition to go ahead, again without any Allied consultation, and indeed then authorized without consultation, said second whaling expedition to go ahead.[xii]

Photo of Britain’s Rothera Station, 2009. Image in the public Domain. Rothera was founded in 1975 and serves as the capital of Britain’s current Antarctic Territory

Britain’s Antarctic stance was supported by its Commonwealth, particularly Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. They together mirrored Britain’s economic and imperialist interests in the Antarctic. South Africa was noted as being ‘concerned by the effect which Japanese whaling operations would have on their own industry’, while Australia and New Zealand who both had been given their own Antarctic territories by Britain were ‘affected by reason of the earlier Japanese encroachment’.[i] Indeed later they would be concerned by the implications that an unchallenged Argentinian occupation would have for their ‘slice of the Antarctic’.[ii] The noting of this concern for their Antarctic territories against Japan, and then Argentina adds an imperial dimension to what are historically perceived to be as simply ‘colonies’ or ‘Dominions’ of Britain, and is deserving of further research. But it highlights that imperial concerns for Britain and its imperial-based Commonwealth were high on their agenda, even trumping prospects for good relations with the USA, that were arguably integral for these Commonwealth members in the immediate post-war aftermath. The Empires joint Antarctic was deemed to be important enough that Britain would clash with the USA in an area that the US felt was integral to its national interests and the developing scope of the Cold War.   

Comrades? Anglo-Soviet Relations during the conference

The British awareness of the USSR’s geopolitical struggle with the USA did not thus deter them from aiming to protect its imperial Antarctic interests at the expense of causing disruption to US policy (and thus angering a much-needed ally).

Indeed, it was even noted by Britain that during these talks it got on far better with the Soviet delegation, relations with whom were ‘reasonably harmonious’ by comparison to the stormy Anglo-American relations. Though it was noted that this might merely be an ‘impression’ created by the lack of conflicting interests between Britain and the USSR in the region, though it was subsequently also noted that the USSR agreed to policies that were important to British economic and political interests,[iii] the point being they didn’t try and stir up trouble where they could have, as the US had done with the Japanese Whaling expeditions.  

While this does not quite go so far as to say that Britain’s relationship with the USSR in the late 1940s was stronger than that with the USA, it does highlight an important challenge to the narrative of the ‘Special Relationship’ assumed by contemporary politicians and later historians, this being that far from a ‘special relationship developing’, or indeed ‘closer friendly ties’ resulting from the second world war, Britain’s attitude to the USA and vice versa can be more perceived as two rivals with directly overlapping and contradictory interests more often than not. There is no broad global friendship, but a pragmatic and often times confrontational relationship between Britain and the United States. This challenges or at least complicates traditional interpretations of an Anglo-centric partnership, and perhaps highlights that much as with interwar France, Britain and the USA had been wartime allies, but always continued to be colonial rivals.         

On thin ice- Britain’s climbdown over Japan

Britain did subsequently back down over the Japanese whaling issue, despite continued Commonwealth opposition to the USA’s protection of a normalization with Japan, over the British Commonwealths own economic and security interests. Britain justified its climb-down though not on any special affinity for the USA, but that despite on balance a ban being justified for Japanese activity in the Antarctic, it was ‘desirable for tactical reasons not connected with whaling to adopt a line not too directly opposed to the United States’.[iv]

The usage of the world ‘tactical’ is important, for while it might be taken to mean a climb-down, it also means Britain is seeking or expecting a fight with the US in other areas of the negotiation and so doesn’t want to spend all its political capital on this issue.

The wording implies also that the tactical backdown might have a lot to do with concurrent events in the Antarctic where the USA could cause Britain problems. This is likely the Argentinian violation and subsequent occupation of several of Britain’s Antarctic territories including the strategically important Deception Island. Argentina from January 1947 had put ‘numerous landing parties’ ashore and by the 12th of December 1947, the British Governor of the Falklands Islands was reporting a full fleet of Argentine warships harboured at Deception Island and a permanent Argentine base was being established.[v]

From these pressures, it is likely that given the British awareness of the USA’s opposition to its Antarctic interests, it dare not risk angering the USA in that region further, particularly as the US in the region tended to favour an ‘All-American’ special relationship, which promoted Argentina, over its Anglo-American relationship simply because Argentina’s goodwill was more important in keeping communism out the USA’s ‘backyard’.[vi] To this end, Britain felt it would be important to not push the anti-imperialist US too far, lest it lose US support on the UN, if the Security Council, which Britain deemed to also be anti-imperialist, decided to intervene in the brewing Anglo-Argentine confrontation.[vii] Britain thus could not risk being isolated and so potentially losing its entire Antarctic empire on the whims of the UNSC that placed a greater emphasis on ‘contemporary political arguments’ over legal and historical arguments to settle claims.[viii] This is a clear reference to the feared prevailing decolonizationist stance which was perceived to dominate the UN. In this context the Japanese presence in the Antarctic no longer was a big concern, as Britain risked losing nearly all of its Antarctic Empire to a newly active Argentina.  

Putting the Cold in Cold War- The US sets its ‘All-American’ Special Relationship against Britain

Despite the potential of a hostile US and equally hostile UN Security Council, Britain was resolved to retain its Antarctic holdings as it tactically retreated away from attempting to prevent the Japanese whaling in the region. This is because Deception Island had been the centre of Britain’s Antarctic Whaling Industry,[ix] it was also the ‘strategic, political and commercial key to our [Britain’s] sector of the Antarctic’.[x] To this end it despatched a naval Cruiser and passed along orders to Britain’s ambassador in Buenos Aires to notify the Argentine government that any further Argentine ships aiming to gain entry to Deception Island’s harbour ‘would be resisted by force’.[xi] This was despite any act of force being expected to see Britain dragged in front of the UN Security Council as a defendant, [xii] which was deemed to practically ensure that the UNSC ruled in Argentina’s favour, especially as the USA support was deemed ‘doubtful’ at best.[xiii]

Britain’s once again aggressive commitment to its Antarctic holdings has it willing to shoulder the USA’s and international ire. This time though the core of Britain’s Antarctic empire was at risk of being lost, and along with-it Britain’s international standing if an energetic show of force was not undertaken.[xiv] If Britain lost here, it was also feared that the wider empire would be severely weakened with the Foreign Office worrying that inaction would ‘encourage the effort with which Latin American countries are at present making to oust us from inhabited colonies’ these being specifically British Honduras, Guiana and the Falklands as well as have ‘implications elsewhere in the colonial empire’[xv], one example given by the Private Secretary Mr J Hunt, being Iran’s claims to Bahrain.[xvi]

Image in the Public Domain. A map of Deception Island, it’s geography and the Antarctic bases and docks. The unique shape of the island, and its position off the coast of the Antarctic provided one of only two ‘safe harbours’ off the Antarctic coast. A sea famous for its stormy waters.

The USA during this crisis, sought to fundamentally destroy both Britain’s Antarctic empire, as well as potentially given British analysis of the macro consequences for any Antarctic losses, fatally undermine its wider empire. In a private conversation between an official from the US State Department and a counsellor from the British embassy in Washington it was noted that ‘though the United States Government have not yet formulated any clear-cut Antarctic policy, they are most unlikely to support either our proposal that the Argentines should apply for British leases on their bases in the Falkland Islands Dependencies, or our suggestion that the dispute should be referred to the international court for arbitration’. Instead the US proposed a radical solution by ‘placing the Antarctic under some form of United Nations trusteeship’[i]. This would see the end of British control over areas that Britain believed itself legally entitled to and Britain would lose all control and potential economic and strategic benefit from its Antarctic holdings.

This was something Britain believed the USA was all too well ware of, as it was ‘fully alive to the strategic importance of the dependencies’,[ii] thus, the US by internationalizing the Antarctic under the UN would gain a permanent and controlling stake in Britain’s former Antarctic empire, and both decolonized the area from its British rival and minimized any residual influence Britain may have had, while enhancing US control of an area that was potentially economically and strategically very valuable,[iii] at no real cost to itself.

Moreover, it was clear that the US in this plan leaned towards Argentina’s side in the Antarctic claims dispute, as the US had hoped that it would be Argentina that should speak for the Administering authority established on the UN Trusteeship Council for the Antarctic.[iv] This would not only have given Argentina a significant degree of authority over the Antarctic authority, but it also implied it was the most prominent power. Indeed, feasibly the US plan for internationalization may have indeed been concocted alongside Argentina, as Britain learned through a leak that on the 13th July the US State Department had communicated the entire plan to Argentina before informing Britain of it. [v]  This implies the US was at least keeping Argentina appraised of its plan to take the Falkland Island Dependencies out of British control, if not being an outright American-Argentine plan.

Britain though was not going down without a fight, it was confident that it could stave the US off by using the USA’s awareness of the British Falkland Island Dependencies strategic importance against it. One of the key US concerns for the Antarctic was that it might become a missile platform and airbase for the Soviets to use, to potentially attack the USA’s soft underbelly if the Cold War went hot- it’s trade with Latin America and the Southern hemisphere.[vi]

Britain hoped to play on the USA’s Cold War fears of this, and the USSR more generally  by highlighting how a UN internationalization of the region would allow ‘any potential enemy power to extend its influence in the area’, while Britain’s continued ownership ‘holds a greater certainty than any other course…of effectively excluding the USSR from this important strategic area’.[vii] The manipulation of US fears of the USSR gaining a hold on the Antarctic was expected to give Britain at worst ‘permanent control of at least the key points in the dependencies which we have already occupied and claim to administer’.[viii] This argument worked and Britain was able to get the US to back-off entirely while it settled in for a long-term high-stakes game of ‘base race’ with the Argentine and Chilean claimants.

This situation again though highlighted the lack of common ground between Britain and the USA, and more than that, it actually provides a lens to portray the ‘special relationship’ as being mere smoke and mirrors in the Antarctic at least. Instead of close cooperation, or at least a special regard for one another, Britain and the USA due to their opposing Antarctic policies, rival geopolitical interests and differing priorities frequently clashed with one another, their relationship was one of two global powers at once sparring, while also aiming to pursue their agenda’s in the most efficient pragmatic way, seizing opportunities to strengthen their position at the expense of the other, but tactically backing down when required. This is not remotely an Anglo-American friendship; indeed, it appears that from 1947 Britain had actually become more aggressive than previously in defence of its Antarctic interests, going to greater lengths than previously to protect its imperial holdings there. The Special Relationship did not then exist in every geographic compartment and conflicts of interest could occur that while not leading to a ‘hot war’ they could have equally explosive showdowns as both Britain and the USA manoeuvred for advantage.        

Further Research

This is only one small story from the history of the Anglo-American rivalry in the Antarctic. I have written extensively about the entire nature of British imperialism and the Anglo-American and ‘All-American’ relationships in the region in my paper on the subject of the decline of Britain’s Antarctic Empire that will be made Open Access soon. It is paper that challenges existing historical interpretations of the Antarctic’s post-1943 history and I hope may form the basis for my PHD. However, there are still plenty of further areas for research in this young historical field that I intend to get stuck into such as the Cold Conflict which raged between Britain, Argentina and Chile over Deception Island or how events in the Antarctic on more than one occasion threatened to turn the cold confrontation into a hot war, if not for skilful diplomatic manoeuvring by all parties. The analysis of these events, and the brining to light and life of this is history is something I hope to do, and that I hope you may enjoy.

Endnotes:

[i] In 2016 57% of Britons according to a YouGov survey believe there is a ‘special relationship’; YouGov, (https://yougov.co.uk/topics/consumer/articles-reports/2016/09/14/belief-special-relationship-between-uk-and-us-rema), Accessed 27 June 2020

[ii] International Churchill Society, (https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1946-1963-elder-statesman/the-sinews-of-peace/), accessed 16 May 2019, 5 March 1946, Iron Curtain Speech by Winston Churchill.

[iii]A "Special Relationship"? America, Britain and the International Order Since the Second World War', International Affairs, 62 (1985), 4-5

[iv] Ruike Xu, Alliance Persistence Within the Anglo-American Special Relationship, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 57

[v] John Baylis, Anglo-American Relations Since 1939: The Enduring Alliance (Manchester, 1997), 10-13

[vi] James Whitfield, ‘The Not-So-Special Relationship’, History Today, (https://www.historytoday.com/miscellanies/not-so-special-relationship), accessed 27 June 2020

[vii] James Wither, ‘An Endangered Partnership: The Anglo-American Defence Relationship in the Early Twenty-First Century’, European Security, 15 (2006), 48

[viii] BL, IOR/Q/21/20, Whaling, 8 August 1947

[ix] BL, IOR/Q/21/20, Japanese Interests in the Antarctic, 11 August 1947, 3.

[x] BL, IOR/L/PS/12/1292, Appendix IV, 19.

[xi] 5 Johan Nicolay Tonnessen and Arne Odd Johnsen, The History of Modern Whaling (London, 1982), 302.

[xii] British Library, London, IOR/L/PS/12/1292, Appendix IV, 19

[xiii] BL, IOR/L/E/8/585, Memorandum prepared for the Imperial Conference 1926

[xiv] Adrian John Howkins, ‘Frozen Empires: A History of the Antarctic Sovereignty Dispute Between Britain, Argentina and Chile, 1939-1959’, (The University of Texas, MA. Dissertation, 2008), 187.

[xv]BL, IOR/Q/21/20, Whaling, 8 August 1947

[xvi] BL, IOR/Q/21/20, Japanese Interests in the Antarctic, 11 August 1947, 3.

[xvii] BL, IOR/L/E/8/585, Memorandum prepared for the Imperial Conference 1926

[xviii] Ibid.

[xix] Ibid.

[xx] Ibid.

[xxi] BL, IOR/Q/21/20, Tenth Monthly Committee Report, 1.

[xxii] BL, IOR/Q/21/20, Japanese Interests in the Antarctic, 11 August 1947

[xxiii] James Barr, A Line in the Sand: Britain, France and the Struggle for Mastery of the Middle East (London, 2011), 7.

[xxiv] BL, IOR/L/E/8/585, Memorandum prepared for the Imperial Conference 1926

[xxv] British Library, London [Hereafter BL], IOR/L/PS/12/1292, Appendix I, 3.

[xxvi] BL, IOR/Q/21/20, United Kingdom views on Measures for the control of Japan Memorandum by the United Kingdom Delegation, 1-7.

[xxvii] Melvyn P. Leffler, ‘National Security and US Foreign Policy’, in Melvyn P. Leffler and David S. Painter (eds), Origins of the Cold War: An International History- Second Edition (Abingdon, 2005), 21.

[xxviii] Leffler, ‘National Security’, 18.

[xxix] BL, IOR/Q/21/20, Annex C Correspondence between Mr Marshall and Monsieur Molotov initiated in Moscow in April 1947

[xxx] Ibid.

[xxxi]  BL, IOR/Q/21/20, Korea, 12 August 1947

[xxxii] BL, IOR/Q/21/20, Whaling, 8 August 1947

[xxxiii] Diane B. Kunz, ‘A Comment’, in Manfred F. Boemeke, Gerald D. Feldmen, and Elisabeth Glaser (eds), The Treaty of Versailles: A Reassessment After 75 Years, (Cambridge, 1998), 528

[xxxiv] Ibid.

[xxxv] BL, IOR/Q/21/20, Monthly report on the activities of the Far Eastern Commission, 31 July 1947

[xxxvi] BL, IOR/Q/21/20, Whaling, 8 August 1947

[xxxvii] BL, IOR/Q/21/20, Japanese Interests in the Antarctic, 11 August 1947

[xxxviii] BL, IOR/L/PS/12/1292, Antarctic Argentine Landings on Deception Island, 8 January 1948

[xxxix] BL, IOR/Q/21/20, Monthly report on the activities of the Far Eastern Comission, 31 July 1947

[xl] BL, IOR/Q/21/20, Whaling, 8 August 1947

[xli] Ibid.

[xlii] Samuel Jardine, ‘An Empire on Thin Ice: Britain’s Antarctic Empire and the Role of American Special Relationships in its Decline, 1943-1959’, (Kings College London, MA Dissertation, 2019), 5

[xliii] BL, IOR/L/PS/12/1292, Appendix I, 6.

[xliv] BL, IOR/L/PS/12/1292, Appendix I, 5

[xlv] BL, IOR/L/PS/12/1292, Appendix I, 5

[xlvi] BL, IOR/L/PS/12/1292, Appendix I, 1.

[xlvii] BL, IOR/L/PS/12/1292, Appendix I, 5.

[xlviii] BL, IOR/L/PS/12/1292, Antarctic Argentine Landings on Deception Island, 8 January 1948

[xlix] BL, IOR/L/PS/12/1292, Appendix I, 5.

[l] BL IOR/L/PS/12/1292, Appendix I, 3.

[li] BL, IOR/L/PS/12/1292, Appendix I, 4.

[lii] BL, IOR/L/PS/12/1292, C.P.(48)12 Argentine landings on Deception Island 7 January 1948

[liii] BL, ibid.

[liv] BL, IOR/L/PS/12/1292, Appendix I, 3

[lv] BL, IOR/L/PS/12/1292, Appendix I, 5 January 1948

[lvi] TNA, FO 371/119835, Memo on 1948 Proposals for UN Trusteeship of the Antarctic, 20 February 1956

[lvii] TNA, CAB 129/28/35 Memorandum on the Antarctic by Bevin, 20 July 1948

[lviii] Klaus Dodds, Assault on the unknown: Geopolitics, Antarctic science and the International Geophysical Year (1957-8), in Simon Naylor and James R. Ryan (eds), New Spaces of Exploration: Geographies of Discovery in the Twentieth Century, (London, 2010), 150

[lix] BL, IOR/L/PS/12/1292, Appendix I, 5 January 1948.

[lx] Ibid. 

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British Library, London, IOR/L/E/8/585, ‘British Policy in the Antarctic 7th September 1936’

British Library, London, IOR/L/PS/12/1292, ‘Deception Island 1948’

British Library, London, IOR/Q/21/20, ‘Far Eastern (Official) Committee 1947’

The National Archives, London, CAB 129/28/35, Memorandum on the Antarctic by Bevin, 20 July 1948

The National Archives, London, FO 371/119835, Antarctic: Legal situation and UN, Memo on 1948 Proposals for UN Trusteeship of the Antarctic, 20 February 1956

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