The Last Colony
Philippe Sands, QC
The Last Colony
Philippe Sands, QC
After the Second World War, new international rules heralded an age of human rights and self-determination. Supported by Britain, these unprecedented changes sought to end the scourge of colonialism. But how committed was Britain?
In the 1960s, its colonial instinct ignited once more: a secret decision was taken to offer the US a base at Diego Garcia, one of the islands of the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean, create a new colony (the 'British Indian Ocean Territory') and deport the entire local population. One of those inhabitants was Liseby Elyse, twenty years old, newly married, expecting her first child. One suitcase, no pets, the British ordered, expelling her from the only home she had ever known.
For four decades the government of Mauritius fought for the return of Chagos, and the past decade Philippe Sands has been intimately involved in the cases. In 2018 Chagos and colonialism finally reached the World Court in The Hague. As Mauritius and the entire African continent challenged British and American lawlessness, fourteen international judges faced a landmark decision: would they rule that Britain illegally detached Chagos from Mauritius? Would they open the door to Liseby Elyse and her fellow Chagossians returning home - or exile them forever?
Taking us on a disturbing journey across international law, The Last Colony illuminates the continuing horrors of colonial rule, the devastating impact of Britain's racist grip on its last colony in Africa, and the struggle for justice in the face of a crime against humanity. It is a tale about the making of modern international law and one woman's fight for justice, a courtroom drama and a personal journey that ends with a historic ruling.
Review
Nick Curnow
To begin at the end: the poet and politician Aimé Césaire says, ‘a civilisation that plays fast and loose with its principles is a dying civilisation.’ Césaire’s words come at the very end of The Last Colony, a final coda to a book of mounting rage. Author Philippe Sands, a barrister and specialist in international law, details the struggle of the people of the Chagos Archipelago against the United Kingdom, who, in 1967, forced the Chagossians off their homeland and into permanent exile so that the United Kingdom (and America) could build the ironically named military base Camp Justice on the island of Diego Garcia. The case was finally brought to the International Court of Justice at the United Nations in 2019.
Sands acted as one of the lawyers for the peoples of Chagos, and to explain the complexity of prosecuting the case, he charts the passage of decolonisation in the wake of the Second World War, the systems at the U.N. that express the illegality of empire, and how decades of legal challenges from all over the world helped in aiding Sands and the Chagossians.
Interwoven with the tides of international politics and law is the story of one woman: Madame Liseby Elysé, who was expelled with the rest of her family from her home on the Peros Banhos atoll. It is these sections with Madame Elysé that give the rest of The Last Colony its weight; that what is being challenged is not just lines drawn on a map but the injustice that is inflicted on people.
As the United Kingdom isolates itself from the world, tormented by a corrupted political system, poisoned by nostalgia for imperial power, I would like to return to the Césaire quote above. History attests to the misery that the United Kingdom has inflicted upon its colonies, the criminal actions that the British government has undertaken to keep them, and the injustice that continues to this day.
Nick Curnow is a bookseller at Readings Carlton.
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