The British Indian Ocean Territory

Description

While Britain’s empire decolonised after the Second World War, one more colony was created, in secret and against international law: the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT). This founding, in 1965, dismembered sixty Indian Ocean islands within the then British colonies of Mauritius and Seychelles. The entire population of these islands was forcibly displaced to make way for Anglo-American military facilities.

Ostensibly, the new territory was first created to house a communications station on Diego Garcia. But BIOT’s utility went far beyond this specific purpose: it facilitated the transfer of strategic power from the UK to the US in the new Cold War world. Samuel Bashfield’s eye-opening account illuminates how British and American defence strategies each shaped BIOT’s militarisation, with the territory used both by London–to slow its withdrawal ‘East of Suez’–and by Washington, to entrench its own power in the Indian Ocean and the Middle East.

Diego Garcia did not become one of the West’s critical overseas bases by chance. It was painstakingly honed as a linchpin of Western predominance. Drawing on declassified archives, Bashfield reveals how BIOT was selected, militarised, transacted and defended, from its illegal creation through to the end of the Cold War.

Author(s)

Samuel Bashfield PhD is an Australian-based defence and national security scholar. He is currently a research fellow specialised in security and geopolitics at La Trobe University, Australia.