ABSTRACT
The earliest recorded European contact with land that might have been the Falkland/Malvinas Islands appears to have been in 1501, when Amerigo Vespucci, an Italian geographer accompanying a Portuguese exploration, reported a sighting vaguely in the area. The location is doubtful, and the description unclear. From 1400 to 1800 there is no clear evidence that any European state regarded mere discovery or sighting as sufficient to establish sovereignty over unclaimed land. Indeed, even temporary landings and the naming of rivers or other geographical features were not regarded as sufficient to exclude the legal claims of later explorers who did more. The Spanish settlement, governed from Buenos Aires, survived two more generations. On the outbreak of the wars of independence in Latin America in 1806, it was abandoned by Spain. The allegations of “piracy” against Vernet and Brisbane seem to have been totally baseless by any understanding of the law of the 1830s.
