Any British person travelling around Argentina is certain to become involved, at some point, in a discussion on the islands known to Brits as the Falklands , and to Argentines as Las Malvinas . The mere mention of British nationality brings up the mental association, and Brits are likely to hear the word several times a day. From the cradle - and with a fervour little short of indoctrination - Argentines are brought up being taught that the islands are Argentine. At every single point of entry to the country, visitors are greeted with a sign declaring Las Malvinas Son Argentinas - "the Malvinas are Argentine" - and, in 1999, a poll for the newspaper Clarín showed that only 14 percent of Argentines believe that solving the "Malvinas problem" is not important. In the vast majority of cases, these conversations are polite and usually very interesting. Only on extremely rare occasions is it raised in an antagonistic way: in these cases, it's best simply to avoid the subject and you won't have a problem. Come what may, it is always worth familiarizing yourself with the history of the islands and some of the resultant sovereignty issues.

The islands lie some 12,500km from Britain and 550km off the coast of Argentina. Disputes have raged as to who first discovered them, but the first verifiable sighting comes from the Dutch sailor, Seebald de Weert, who sailed past here in 1600. In 1690, Captain John Strong discovered the strait that divides the two major islands in the group, and christened the archipelago the "Falkland Islands", after Viscount Falkland, the Commissioner of the British Admiralty at the time.

French sailors from St Malo made numerous expeditions to the islands from 1698, naming them the Malouines after their home port, from which derives the Argentine toponomy of Islas Malvinas. The first serious attempt at settlement came with a French expedition sponsored by Louis de Bougainville, which established a base at a place they named Port St Louis in 1764. A year later, claiming ignorance of the French settlement, a small party of British sailors settled Port Egmont nearby, and claimed the islands for George III. The founding of this humble settlement was part of a wider strategy to break the Spanish monopoly over trade in the "Spanish Sea" - the Pacific - as it could act as a South Atlantic staging post for ships heading round the Horn. The Spanish, at this time, believed they had legal title to the area dating from the famous 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, arranged by the papacy that divided the Americas between Spain and Portugal. (The British later claimed that this treaty was invalid as it rested on a papal authority they no longer recognized.) Though annoyed by the French settlement, Spain was reluctant to come to blows with an ally, and negotiated a settlement: Bougainville was paid off and, in 1767, St Louis was surrendered to a Spanish contingent. In 1770, the Spanish evicted the British colony - an act that raised international tensions and caused the British to reassert their presence. In 1774, the British were persuaded to abandon their colony (although not, they would later maintain, their claims to sovereignty), at the same time that Spain agreed to cede control of Florida. The Spanish maintained a presence on the islands until 1811, when the garrison was withdrawn in order to combat pro-independence fighters in the mainland continental colonies.

In 1820, the newly independent Argentinian federation asserted what it viewed as the right to inherit the sovereign Spanish title to the islands. This was not, initially, contested by the British, but in the late 1820s Britain started to make noises again about reasserting its sovereignty claim: the desire to establish a marine base to carry out trade with its Australian colony as well as a need to prevent "piracy" and sealing/whaling rights being the driving forces. The self-appointed Argentine governor of the islands, Luis Vernet , had made attempts to impose restrictions on US and British sealers as regards the numbers of seals and wild cattle they culled and impounded three US sealing vessels. In response, in 1831, the US consul in Buenos Aires had sent a punitive expedition against him, and later, in 1833, the consul colluded with the British in the expulsion of the Argentine colony. The Argentinian federation, paralysed by internal disputes, was powerless to prevent the British from taking the islands. Britain established a base on the islands, and its colony developed significantly after the establishment, in 1851, of the Falkland Islands Company and with the beginnings of serious commercial exploitation: from the mid-1860s with the establishment of sheep farming and, as the century wore on, the boom in whaling and animal oil (elephant seal and penguin) industries. By 1871 there were already 800 people living in Port Stanley.

In April 1982, faced with severe domestic unrest, rampant inflation and high unemployment, Argentine General, Leopold Galtieri saw the opportunity to divert attention away from his junta's failed domestic policies by organizing a military crusade to liberate the islands. Far from noticing the signs of the impending invasion, the British actually contributed to Galtieri's mood of optimism by making preparations for the scrapping of HMS Endurance , the UK's only naval presence in the South Atlantic, an event interpreted by Galtieri as signalling that Britain was preparing to withdraw from the region. Galtieri, whose military regime was actively supported by the Reagan administration, believed he could count on US support: a miscalculation as it turned out. However, the most serious error of judgement was that he believed Britain would acquiesce in the face of an invasion. As far as the self-styled Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher, was concerned, however, the invasion was a gift given her own domestic political problems at that time.

Following the arrival of the British Task Force, the conflict was mercifully short. The military struggle was unequal: poorly equipped, inadequately trained Argentine teenagers on military service, many from subtropical provinces like Corrientes and Misiones, were expected to combat hardened professional paratroopers more than capable of withstanding a harsh Pacific winter. The airforce was the only branch of the Argentine armed forces that was deemed to have acquitted itself well, sinking several British ships. However, the most significant ship to be sunk was an Argentinian one. In what proved the worst atrocity of the war, the General Belgrano was torpedoed outside the British-imposed naval exclusion zone, leading to the death of nearly four hundred Argentinian sailors. Whatever their position on the sovereignty issue and the validity of the war, this one event is still viewed with bitterness amongst Argentinians.

More than a thousand people perished in the 74-day war, and negotiations on the sovereignty issue were set back decades. At the time of the invasion, the islands were essentially a forgotten, far-off British colony that had long suffered economic stagnation and a dearth of infrastructure development. Indeed, what infrastructure projects there had been in the 1970s had been built by the Argentinians, including the airport. This process of gradual integration into the Argentinian economic sphere, encouraged by the British, stopped abruptly with the war.

The British Foreign Office's Shackleton Report of the late 1970s demonstrated that the islands were what they seemed: a monoculture colonial outpost that provided Britain with twice the value in wool exports of anything that it got in return. The report revealed a lamentable state of dependent tenant farming, with virtually non-existent opportunities for smallholders. The Falkland Islands Company owned half the land and half the sheep, employed a third of the workforce and was in control of all crucial sectors of the economy, including banking, shipping, wholesale and retail trade. Democratic institutions were highly paternalistic: the governor was appointed from Britain, the islanders had little say in the running of their own affairs, and only a third of the population were entitled to a full British passport. Foreign office documents from the 1930s show that Britain had secretly recognized that its legal claims to the islands were shaky, and there were attempts in the late 1960s to transfer sovereignty to Argentina. These had to be abandoned after plans were leaked prematurely, but even as late as 1981, Thatcher's own government was seriously looking at the issue, analysing solutions such as a lease-back agreement similar to the one that existed with Hong Kong.

The monumental miscalculation that was the 1982 invasion ensured that much of the middle ground was lost. Whether Britain would like to engage in talks on sovereignty or not, the issue has been a non-starter since then, due to the oft-stated primacy of the islanders' desires to remain allied to Britain. However, the sovereignty issue will not simply disappear. Options have been put forward that attempt to bridge the gap between the islanders' right to determine their own future and Argentina's historical case for recognition of sovereignty. And, in many respects, the relationship between the islanders and the Argentines is getting closer. Economic treaties (which are definitely in the long-term interests of both the islands and the islanders) have been signed that pave the way for co-operation with regards to prospecting for suspected offshore oil deposits, and in the exploitation of fishing grounds (rich in krill, hake, cod and squid). The detention of Pinochet in Britain in 1998 was a twist that gave further impetus to bilateral talks, since crucial flight links between Chile and the islands were temporarily severed in protest at the arrest. In July 1999, Britain and Argentina signed an accord renewing flight links between Argentina and the islands and permitting Argentinian civilians to visit war graves without needing special permission. This provoked protest by certain radical groups on both sides. In August 1999, the first flight to come from Chile via Argentina caused much interest and controversy. The visitors were given a frosty reception by a group of islanders, but there were also many signs of a reconciliation, and the trip saw the return to the islands of the first Argentinian war veteran, who came this time in the capacity of a journalist. There are plans to dedicate some kind of war memorial to the Argentinian casualties of the conflict.

As yet, there is no change on the respective position of both countries as regards the issue of sovereignty, but both countries are determined that dialogue and co-operation, and not the politics of confrontation, should be the way forward. For too long, the islands have been used as a political football: a cause célèbre in Argentinian domestic politics that has frequently been abused for the sake of posturing, and an issue whose complexities have been clouded by ignorance on both sides.