page_title: Territorial claims in Antarctica
section_title: Other European claims
hierarchical_section_title: Territorial claims in Antarctica / History / Other European claims
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Reconnaissance de la Terre Adélie, le 20 janvier 1840. Atlas pittoresque, planche 169
context_page_description: There are seven sovereign states who have made eight territorial claims in Antarctica: Argentina, Australia, Chile, France, New Zealand, Norway and the United Kingdom. These countries have tended to place their Antarctic scientific observation and study facilities within their respective claimed territories; however, a number of such facilities are located outside of the area claimed by their respective countries of operation, and countries without claims such as India, Italy, Russia and the United States have constructed research facilities within the areas claimed by other countries.
context_section_description: The basis for the claim to Adélie Land by France depended on the discovery of the coastline in 1840 by the French explorer Jules Dumont d'Urville, who named it after his wife, Adèle. He erected the French flag and took possession of the land for France, on January 21, 1840 at 5:30 PM.
  The British eventually decided to recognize this claim, and the border between Adélie Land and the Australian Antarctic Territory was fixed definitively in 1938.
  These developments also concerned Norwegian whaling interests which wished to avoid British taxation of whaling stations in the Antarctic and felt concern that they would be commercially excluded from the continent. The whale-ship owner Lars Christensen financed several expeditions to the Antarctic with the view to claiming land for Norway and to establishing stations on Norwegian territory to gain better privileges. The first expedition, led by Nils Larsen and Ola Olstad, landed on Peter I Island in 1929 and claimed the island for Norway. On 6 March 1931 a Norwegian royal proclamation declared the island under Norwegian sovereignty and on 23 March 1933 the island was declared a dependency.
  The 1929 expedition led by Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen and Finn Lützow-Holm named the continental landmass near the island as Queen Maud Land after the Norwegian queen Maud of Wales. The territory was explored further during the Norvegia expedition of 1930–31. Negotiations with the British government in 1938 resulted in setting the western border of Queen Maud Land at 20°W.
  The United States, Chile, the Soviet Union and Germany disputed Norway's claim. In 1938 Germany dispatched the German Antarctic Expedition, led by Alfred Ritscher, to fly over as much of it as possible. The ship Schwabenland reached the pack ice off Antarctica on 19 January 1939. During the expedition, Ritscher photographed an area of about 350,000 square kilometres (140,000 sq mi) from the air and dropped darts inscribed with swastikas every 26 kilometres (16 mi). However, despite intensively surveying the land, Germany never made any formal claim or constructed any lasting bases. Hence, the German Antarctic claim, known as New Swabia, was disputed at the time, and currently is not considered.
  On 14 January 1939, five days before the German arrival, Norway annexed Queen Maud Land after a royal decree announced that the land bordering the Falkland Islands Dependencies in the west and the  Australian Antarctic Dependency in the east was to be brought under Norwegian sovereignty. The primary aim of the annexation was to secure the Norwegian whaling industry's access to the region. In 1948 Norway and the United Kingdom agreed to limit Queen Maud Land to from 20°W to 45°E, and to incorporate the Bruce Coast and Coats Land into Norwegian territory.
caption: Discovery and claim of French sovereignty on Adélie Land by Jules Dumont d'Urville, in 1840.
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