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“Some Sanity and Love”: The Cold War, Antarctic Treaty, and Fids’ identity, 1957–1958

Part of: 60th anniversary of the Antarctic Treaty

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2019

Andrew J. Avery Open the ORCID record for Andrew J. Avery [Opens in a new window]
Andrew J. Avery*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA
*
Author for correspondence: Andrew J. Avery, Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

In 1942, the British government created the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey (FIDS) to enforce sovereignty over the Antarctic Peninsula. The small groups of men who worked for the Survey called themselves Fids. During the late 1950s when Antarctic sovereignty was being hotly debated and worked out by national governments, Fids serving at British bases criticised the British government’s use of science as a bargaining chip. Using in-house magazines written and printed at FIDS bases and oral histories, this article examines how Fids viewed Antarctic politics and how those events influenced daily life at bases on the Peninsula.

Keywords

AntarcticaBritish EmpireCold War
Type
Research Article
Information
Polar Record , Volume 55 , Issue 5 , September 2019 , pp. 334 - 336
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2019 

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