PC: Get the Falkland Islands population of 1 million by 1900?

Just putting iron's in the fire.

How about making the Falklands Island a major naval base like Gibraltar or even on the scale of Pearl Harbour?

Could that bump up the population in any way especially with all the add on facilities?

Who would it be aimed at?
 
For all the talk about oil it wasn't useful until the invention and mass adoption of internal combustion engines. And I can guarantee that oil produced in Texas is going to be much cheaper than oil produced in the falklands.

Maybe but oil found wherever is a boom. Quite interesting reading up on this subject and the islands history. The island could have continued to be important and was from a geograhical perspective until the Panama Canal was built. Could this enterprise be stopped in anyway? although a vital world trade and engineering achievement which has no doubt benefitted the global economy but without its existence the Falklabds could continue to supply vessels.
 
Maybe but oil found wherever is a boom. Quite interesting reading up on this subject and the islands history. The island could have continued to be important and was from a geograhical perspective until the Panama Canal was built. Could this enterprise be stopped in anyway? although a vital world trade and engineering achievement which has no doubt benefitted the global economy but without its existence the Falklabds could continue to supply vessels.

But isn't the oil in the Falklands offshore which basically makes it impossible to happen before oil gets expensive enough and the technology advances enough to make it feasible. And none of this is going to happen before the 1900s to get a million people there.
 
But isn't the oil in the Falklands offshore which basically makes it impossible to happen before oil gets expensive enough and the technology advances enough to make it feasible. And none of this is going to happen before the 1900s to get a million people there.


No good point and tbh this idea of a million people is a huge stretch even in 2018
 

Philip

Donor
How about making the Falklands Island a major naval base like Gibraltar or even on the scale of Pearl Harbour?

Even if the Falklands have an appropriate harbour, why?

Gibraltar controls access to the Mediterranean Sea. Pearl enables power projection across the Pacific. What advantage so the Falklands provide?
 

WILDGEESE

Gone Fishin'
Even if the Falklands have an appropriate harbour, why?

Gibraltar controls access to the Mediterranean Sea. Pearl enables power projection across the Pacific. What advantage so the Falklands provide?

I might be wrong but didn't the RN do bunkering services for their vessels around the turn of the century.

I'm thinking of expanding this somewhat.
 
Just putting iron's in the fire.

How about making the Falklands Island a major naval base like Gibraltar or even on the scale of Pearl Harbour?

Could that bump up the population in any way especially with all the add on facilities?

It certainly would, but the problem is getting the place to be a naval station of any real note (and that's going to be a lot lower than Gibraltar or Pearl Harbor). The Falklands are strategic in that they sit not far from the Drake Passage (and thus the Clipper Route), and also are a good base for the coast of South America in general. But it begs the question as to why the British just don't grab Tierra del Fuego instead? The Chileans didn't really get to it until the 1850s or so, after all, and the Argentines a bit later. What the British could do if they wanted an even better base in the Drake Passage area is to leverage their economic influence in Chile and Argentina into gaining a significant amount of land in Tierra del Fuego--maybe even exchange the Falklands for the place.

Even with a naval base and some good development, I wouldn't see more than 20-30,000 people there.
 
You would need all sorts of things to make FI much more populated than today. One of the main issues is that for most of the possible reasons it is just better to be in Argentina.
 
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