Hostname: page-component-669899f699-g7b4s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-26T18:01:24.596Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Fifty years on: putting the Antarctic Treaty into the history books

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 October 2009

Peter J. Beck
Peter J. Beck*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Kingston University, Kingston upon Thames KT1 2EE (P.Beck@kingston.ac.uk)
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Recent media coverage of the threatened collapse of the vast Wilkins ice shelf highlights the manner in which the established focus on global warming and the ozone hole has led Antarctica to be well and truly accepted as playing an integral role in global environmental systems. By contrast, histories of the 1950 and 1960s continue still to treat Antarctica largely as, to quote Philip Quigg (1983), ‘a Pole Apart’, that is a marginal region struggling for inclusion on most world maps. Despite the occasional newsworthy item, like the 1952 Anglo-Argentine clash at Hope Bay (Beck 1987: 18–21) or the 1955–1958 British Trans-Antarctic Expedition (Fuchs and Hillary 1958), Antarctic affairs have not been regarded, except perhaps in Argentina, Australia, Chile and New Zealand, as sufficiently mainstream during the 1950s and 1960s to warrant inclusion in national or global histories covering that period. As a result, it remains easy still to gloss over the 1959 Antarctic Treaty as possessing rather limited contemporary significance, and hence to dismiss it as a limited purpose agreement confined to a relatively marginal area. Indeed, for some commentators, the treaty was even interpreted as a lost opportunity in terms of failing either to internationalise the region or to resolve the longstanding Antarctic sovereignty problem.

Type
50 years on: invited reflections on the Antarctic Treaty
Information
Polar Record , Volume 46 , Issue 1 , January 2010 , pp. 4 - 7
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

ATCM (Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting). 1991. Final report of the XVIth Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting, Bonn 7–18 October 1991.Google Scholar
Beck, P.J. 1986. The international politics of Antarctica. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar
Beck, P.J. 1987. A cold war: Britain, Argentina and Antarctica. History Today 37 (6): 16–23.Google Scholar
Beck, P.J. 2004. Twenty years on: the UN and the ‘Question of Antarctica,’ 1983–2003. Polar Record 40 (214): 205–212.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Booker, M. 1978. The Last Quarter: the next twenty-five years in Asia and the Pacific. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.Google Scholar
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. 1960. Editorial: the dawn of a new decade. Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 16 (1): 2–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daniels, P. 1973. The Antarctic Treaty. In: Lewis, R.S., and Smith, P.M. (editors), Frozen future: a prophetic report from Antarctica. New York: Quadrangle: 31–45.Google Scholar
Dodds, K. 2007. The great game in Antarctica: Britain and the 1959 Antarctic Treaty. Contemporary British History 22 (1): 43–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fuchs, V.E., and Hillary, E.. 1958. The crossing of Antarctica: the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition, 1955–8. London: Cassell.Google Scholar
Heap, J. 1983. Antarctic cooperation: a quarter of a century's experience. In: Orrego Vicuna, F. (editor), Antarctic resources policy: scientific, legal and political issues. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 103–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuznetsov, V. 1960. The conference on Antarctica. Washington DC: US Government.Google Scholar
Missiles and Rockets: Magazine of World Astronautics. 1959. Red threat from Antarctica. Missiles and Rockets: Magazine of World Astronautics 1 June 1959: 15–16.Google Scholar
Quigg, P.W. 1983. A pole apart: the emerging issue of Antarctica. New York: McGraw Hill.Google Scholar
The Economist. 1961. ‘Keep off the ice’. The Economist, 5 August: 554.Google Scholar
Toma, P.A. 1956. Soviet attitude towards the acquisition of territorial sovereignty in the Antarctic. American Journal of International Law 50: 611–626.CrossRefGoogle Scholar