Ingenious and innocuous? Article IV of the antarctic treaty as imperialism

Abstract

The fiftieth anniversary of the entry into force of the Antarctic Treaty on 23 June 1961 provides opportunity for assessment of this international instrument. This paper calls for more nuanced reading of the lead up to the 1959 Antarctic Treaty and of the impact, in terms of relative gains, of the ATS on the fundamental issue of sovereignty. In accepting the utility of a postcolonial lens on international cooperation in Antarctica, the paper proposes that the history of the international politics of Antarctica can better be viewed not in terms of one, but of three, successive waves of Antarctic imperialism, the third of which is the Antarctic Treaty itself. © 2011 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.