The Last Colony – A Tale of Exile, Justice and Britain’s Colonial Legacy
Author: Philippe Sands
Publisher: W&N (August 2022)
ISBN – 10: 147461812X
The Last Colony is a powerful and poignant book that should be read by anyone who cares about justice, humanity and human rights. The author Philippe Sands is Professor of Law at UCL and a practising barrister. He has been involved in many of the most important cases of recent years, including Pinochet, Congo, Rwanda and Iraq. He is the author of Lawless, Torture Team, East West Street, which won the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-fiction. He is President of English PEN and a member of the board of the Hay Festival.
This is a thought provoking book that exposes the human side of the story relating to the last British Colony with the developments in international law that culminated in Mauritius’ victory against Britain at the Hague International Court of Justice. In the book you will learn about Britain’s unfair and underhanded treatment of the Chagossians at the time of Mauritian independence.
Three years before Mauritius gained independence from the UK in 1968, the UK severed the Chagos Islands from the rest of the country so it could lease the island of Diego Garcia to the US for a military base. The UK then forcibly deported 2,000 Chagossians, who have waged a long legal battle to return.
In 2019 the international court of justice, the UN’s highest court, ruled that the continuing British occupation of the islands was illegal and the Chagos Islands were rightfully part of Mauritius. The UK ignored the ruling on the grounds that it was advisory, but this position became increasingly untenable in the context of British attempts to uphold the importance of international law.
In this book you will learn of the most shameful episode of British post-war colonialism when the UK government expelled the Chagossians because under international law it could only separate the archipelago from Mauritius if it had no permanent population. All Chagossians were removed from the islands by the end of 1971.
The UK has now agreed to open negotiations with Mauritius over the future handover of the Chagos Islands, in a major reversal of policy following years of resistance and legal defeats.