>go to war over some worthless islands in the middle of nowhere filled with nothing but sheep and penguins
>population 1,800, only a third of which identify as british
>1,000 die in the conflict and 3,000 are wounded
>total cost of falkland war: $1,190,000,000
>hong kong population at handover is 6,500,000
>the pearl of the orient
>gross domestic product: USD $200,000,000,000 a year and growing
>gift it to china without putting up a fight
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They only handed it over after it's lease was finished.
They only leased some areas surrounding Hong Kong. Hong Kong itself was British territory.
Was the Falklands War truly that expensive?
If Galtieri hasn’t sperged out then the Brits would have eventually handed over the islands, now they are British for the conceivable future
Simple, they had no way at all to defend Hong Kong if the Chinese decided they wanted it. Best to save face and act like you're doing it willingly.
$1.2 billion is basically nothing.
It is if you are fighting kids in mismatched equipment in some desolate island
Did it even have any strategic value or was it just a muh pride and reputational cost sort of thing?
Muh pride, junta is quickly losing popular support, need to rally the people
I think there’s oil around it
>>population 1,800, only a third of which identify as british
What? Source? I'm pretty certain most of them identify as British, since they did vote to stay with Britain.
Before the war
What did they identify as? Weren't they all white British descendants? Or did they think of themselves as Falklanders, first and foremost?
Welsh and Irish mostly, and they weren’t considered British citizens and it was a shitty existence on a desolate island full of sheep for them to fuck
It was after the war that Britain started investing in the island and there was a little immigration.
Nowadays they most consider themselves Kelpers over Brits, but they still prefer to belong to Britain.
>they only leased some areas
>just some areas
the new territories, which was the part that was leased is 367 square miles
the parts that britain owned in perpetuity were hong kong island, and kowloon (the peninsula north of the island) which are 30 and 18 square miles respectively. But yeah, its just some areas surrounding Hong Kong, who needs it?
And they didn't just give it to them, the agreement to cede all of Hong Kong in 1997 was made only after 5 years of intense negotiations in the 1980s where China agreed to respect Hong Kong's democratic institutions (which were only created in the 1970's so that GB would be able to argue this at the negotiating table, prior to that HK had an unelected government appointed by GB). The Chinese argued that Hong Kong Island and Kowloon were ceded to Britain in the treaty of Nanjing and the treaty of Beijing which were unequal treaties that Britain itself had declared null in 1943 as a gesture of good will since they were fighting a war together.
2/3rds of the population lived in hong kong island or kowloon
>China agreed to respect Hong Kong's democratic institutions
thediplomat.com
Muh pride basically.
> the new territories
Sure, though without the New Territories, Hong Kong and Kowloon weren't viable.
If the Brits didn't hand over the whole thing, the Chicoms would simply cut off the water supply from the New Territories into Kowloon and Hong Kong and they're be fucked.
> China agreed to respect Hong Kong's democratic institutions
lol
Because Hong Kong was leased in the first place, do you really not know this?
>ywn live in an alternate history timeline where Hong Kong is ceded back to Republic of China
RTFT pleb
>Not living in the timeline where the Empire never dies.
>handing over one thousand eight hundred Brits to a bunch of fucking fascists
> The brits saw the Second Boer War, The World Wars and the Falkland War in a single lifetime.
Will the Krauts ever stop?
hah