The Chagos Archipelago, a small group of islands in the Indian Ocean, has been much in the news again of late. The UK government announced on 4 November that around 60 Tamil refugees who have been stranded on the island of Diego Garcia for three years would finally be allowed to come to the UK. Earlier, the UK and Mauritius governments jointly announced on 3 October that a political agreement had been reached between them to transfer sovereignty over the archipelago, with the exception of Diego Garcia, from the UK to Mauritius. What has arguably been one of the most shameful recent chapters in British foreign policy is therefore finally set to close.

In The Last Colony, Philippe Sands traces the history of the islands from 1945 linking it with the life of one of its deported Chagossian inhabitants, Madame Liseby Elysé, and his own involvement in the international legal battles which have sought to assert the rights of the Chagossians to return to their islands and to obtain compensation for their displacement.

The connection between the islands and the UK dates back to the end of the Napoleonic wars following which Mauritius and its dependencies, including the Chagos Islands, were ceded by France to Britain and governed as a colony.

The UN Charter contains a commitment to decolonisation and in the years after 1945 Britain granted independence to many of its former colonies. In the case of Mauritius successive governments were resistant. Unbeknown to the Mauritian government and the Chagossians, the US was attempting to persuade the British to allow them to construct a military base on Diego Garcia. In 1965, under pressure from the Americans, Harold Wilson effectively blackmailed the Mauritian government into agreeing to the separation of the Chagos Islands from their territory in exchange for independence. Behind the back of the UN, a new colony, the British Indian Ocean Territory, was created by Order in Council – the last new colony of the UK, hence the title of the book. By 1973, all of the inhabitants had been deported to Mauritius or the Seychelles. A significant number also came to the UK and settled in Crawley.

Sands expertly weaves the dreams and efforts of Mme Elysé and her fellow Chagossians to return to their birthplace into a tale of diplomatic and legal duplicity, failures in the British courts, and finally triumph in the International Court of Justice.

The Last Colony: A Tale of Exile, Justice and Britain’s Colonial Legacy by Philippe Sands. Published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson.