Brexit and logistics

Multiple different countries settled people all over the place, and not just the various colonial empires. How come the language of Brazil is Portuguese ? Or that the language of Quebec is French ? Or the Spanish in south america (except Brazil) ?  I would mention the (pretty awful) territories of the prior Belgium empire, but since they can't even decide on a language to use within their home country I'll leave it out.  Even the small collection of islands known as the Falkland Islands have a pretty chequered history. But at least in the case of Britain's last settlement there, it was not entirely but nearly unoccupied, and there was an earlier claim on it through prior settlement. None of which is to say we should be hanging on to it in today's world, but its current populace are somewhat wedded to being under the British umbrella, and not under the rule of a country which is a perennial economic basket case with a semi-detached relationship with functioning democracy.


"The English navigator John Davis in the Desire may have been the first person to sight the Falklands, in 1592, but it was the Dutchman Sebald de Weerdt who made the first undisputed sighting of them about 1600. The English captain John Strong made the first recorded landing in the Falklands, in 1690, and named the sound between the two main islands after Viscount Falkland, a British naval official. The name was later applied to the whole island group. The French navigator Louis-Antoine de Bougainville founded the islands’ first settlement, on East Falkland, in 1764, and he named the islands the Malovines. The British, in 1765, were the first to settle West Falkland, but they were driven off in 1770 by the Spanish, who had bought out the French settlement about 1767. The British outpost on West Falkland was restored in 1771 after threat of war, but then the British withdrew from the island in 1774 for reasons of economy, without renouncing their claim to the Falklands. Spain maintained a settlement on East Falkland (which it called Soledad Island) until 1811.



In 1820 the Buenos Aires government, which had declared its independence from Spain in 1816, proclaimed its sovereignty over the Falklands. In 1831 the U.S. warship Lexington destroyed the Argentine settlement on East Falkland in reprisal for the arrest of three U.S. ships that had been hunting seals in the area. In early 1833 a British force expelled the few remaining Argentine officials from the island without firing a shot. In 1841 a British civilian lieutenant governor was appointed for the Falklands, and by 1885 a British community of some 1,800 people on the islands was self-supporting. Argentina regularly protested Britain’s occupation of the islands."