Philippe Sands is a Human Rights lawyer who has litigated in the international courts. He is also a captivating writer. I first read his book East West Street (see review here) and then The Ratline (see review here) both of which I found fascinating. This is why I bought this book, The Last Colony, new, when I saw it. Of course, it has subsequently lingered on my shelves until I included it in this current challenge.
The colony of the title is the Chagos Islands, of which the main one is Diego Garcia. These were much in the news last year because of an arrangement made for their future, but my book was published in 2023 and doesn’t include the most recent developments, although I now understand what has happened much better than I did previously.
The book tells the history of the islands and their governance. They were a French colony and then a British one as part of Mauritius. When Mauritius was given independence by Britain in the 1960s the Chagos Islands were not included in the deal and a new colony called the British Indian Ocean Territory was created. In the 1970s the entire population was removed from the islands by the British government on the shaky grounds that they were a transient population (they were mostly descendants of slaves brought there by colonists). Since that date most of the islands have been unoccupied except for Diego Garcia which has a large, American military base.
This book tells the story of the exiles, using their words, and also of the court case which Mauritius took to the UN to have the colony returned to them. The author was retained by the Mauritius government to act on their behalf in the case against the British government. A lot of the book, therefore, is about the various legal cases and the barriers faced by the litigants. This is well told and easy to understand by a non-lawyer such as myself. It is prevented from becoming too dry by the author’s personal opinions of the personnel involved (he is scathing about Boris Johnson) and by the stories of the aging exiles. The author has also commissioned a cartoonist to provide pictorial renditions of the legal battles. These are interesting but did little for me, as I am not really a visual person.
I am so pleased that I have finally read this book. I thought it was clear and humane and also that it put into context a lot of what I already understood about this situation. It raises some difficult questions about the legacy of colonialism, which is a very current issue. I intend to keep the book but am confused about where to place it – does it go with true crime, several other books about court cases, or with books about the legacy of slavery ? I expect that I shall move it around a bit until it finds its true home.
Anne Is Reading 