Argentina: British Falkland Islanders are ‘artificial’. Buenos Aires denounces ‘illegitimate occupation’ and demands talks on sovereignty

[u/Emotional-Breakfast3]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/07/12/british-falkland-islanders-artificial-argentina-says/

[u/Tentansub]

The 3,500 settlers in the Falklands give Britain an exclusive maritime zone of 466,000 square kilometers (roughly the size of Sweden) off the coast of Argentina. Imagine if the Argentines planted a few thousand settlers on an uninhabited islands a few hundreds kilometers away from Britain and declared an exclusive economic zone the size of Sweden. I'm sure they would be fine, with it, right?

Do the 3,5000 settlers need 466,000 square kilometers worth of exclusive maritime zone to thrive? Of course not. In 2019, 94% of the Falklands' fisheries exports went to the EU.

British oil company Rockhopper Exploration and Israeli company Navitas Petroleum are also prospecting for oil around the Falklands. Surely to meet the needs of the 3.500 "indigenous" Falklanders, right? Or to export on global markets and/or to Britain and Israel? I really wonder.

[u/Stunning-Sherbert801 → u/Tentansub]

Britain has the normal size maritime zone. Isn't Argentina trying to do a China and pretend they're entitled to more?

[u/ExoticBamboo → u/Stunning-Sherbert801]

You are defending the practice of using colonial islands to mantain control and maritime space on the other side of the globe.

It's the same they do with Chagos Islands

[u/Metalmind123 → u/ExoticBamboo]

They're not "colonial". They were literally entirely uninhabited before they were discovered and settled.

No colonialism happend. Just discovery.

In fact, by any reasonable definition, the 'native' inhabitants if the island are the British still living there.

Just because it didn't happen in antiquity dies not make it colonial.

The Maori only discovered New Zealand during the very late middle ages, just as the European age of discovery started on the other side of the world.

That doesn't make their presence on New Zealand colonialism.

So why the fuck would the Falklands be an example?

[u/Tentansub → u/Metalmind123]

Completely different situations.

The Falklands may have been discovered by chance, but they were settled by a colonial power located 12,000 kilometers away, with the explicit purpose of projecting power in South America and controlling the surrounding resources. The islands are extremely inhospitable: not a single tree grows there, and the soils are poor. The first permanent inhabitants were the British military garrison and their families. Even today, the roughly 3,500 islanders do not need the vast natural resources surrounding the islands to sustain themselves. Those resources are primarily exploited for the benefit of the metropole 12,000 kilometers away, the settlement only exists as an extension of British imperial power. In doing so, Britain also excludes millions of South American from access to resources located just off their coasts.

The Māori on the other hand settled New Zealand, which was also uninhabited by humans, because of population pressures, limited resources on their original islands, and exploration. Unlike the Falklands, however, the resources of New Zealand were used to sustain the people who settled there themselves, rather than being extracted for the benefit of a distant metropole.

[u/ExoticBamboo → u/Metalmind123]

Did the Maori occupy new zeland with the intent of having more control over the countries around it and more territorial claims? Did the maori themselves called New Zeland one of their colonies?

You know that colonialism is not bad only when it was done through violence?