THE CONTENTION FOR ANTARCTIC RIGHTS: CHILE AND ARGENTINA IN THE AUSTRAL AREA (1890-1910)

Abstract

During the last decades of the 19th century, the discoveries in the southernmost area of the planet showed the existence of a sixth continent, Antarctica, by which the closest countries competed for their sovereignty. At the beginning of the 20th Century, Chile and Argentina confronted each other for this dilemma, since both countries quarreled for the recently discovered lands, and thus, increasing their geopolitical projection to the South for both of them. In this article, we analyze the main facts of this dispute occurred from 1890 to 1910, when the abovementioned States established their first formal claims. For that purpose a qualitative methodology will be used, based on review of sources that were produced in a space bounded time that starts at the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century.