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Diego Garcia is a tropical, footprint-shaped coral atoll located south of the equator in the central Indian Ocean. It is part of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT).
The atoll is approximately 1,970 nautical miles (3,650 km) east of the coast of Africa (at Tanzania), 967 nautical miles (1,790 km) south-southwest of the southern tip of India (at Kanyakumari) and 2,550 nautical miles (4,720 km) west-northwest of the west coast of Australia (at Cape Range National Park, Western Australia).
Diego Garcia lies in the Chagos Archipelago at the southernmost tip of the Chagos-Laccadive Ridge — a vast submarine range in the Indian Ocean, topped by a long chain of coral reefs, atolls, and islands comprising Lakshadweep, Maldives, and the Chagos Archipelago. Local time is UTC+06:00 year-round (DST is not observed).
The United States Navy operates Naval Support Facility (NSF) Diego Garcia, a large naval ship and submarine support base, military air base, communications and space-tracking facility, and an anchorage for pre-positioned military supplies for regional operations aboard Military Sealift Command ships in the lagoon.
Mauritius sought to regain sovereignty, sold to the UK in 1965, over the Chagos Archipelago. Between 1968 and 1973, the Chagossians, then numbering about 2,000 people, were resettled by the British government to Mauritius and Seychelles to allow the United States to establish a military base on the island. Today, the exiled Chagossians are still trying to return, claiming that the forced expulsion was illegal (see Depopulation of Diego Garcia).
History
Pre-history
According to Southern Maldivian oral tradition, traders and fishermen were occasionally lost at sea and got stranded in one of the islands of the Chagos. Eventually they were rescued and brought back home. However, the different atolls of the Chagos have no individual names in the Maldivian oral tradition.
The island may have been visited during the Austronesian diaspora around 700 AD[citation needed], and some say the old Maldivian name for the islands originated from Malagasy. It is also suggested that the Arabs, who reached Lakshadweep and Maldives around 900 AD, may have visited the Chagos, and that Zheng He may have sailed close in 1413–1415, since it is documented on a Ming Dynasty map.
European discovery
The uninhabited islands were discovered by the Portuguese navigator, explorer and diplomat Pedro Mascarenhas in 1512, first named as Dom Garcia, in honor of his patron, Dom Garcia de Noronha[9][10] during his voyage of 1512–1513, but there is little corroborative evidence for this. Another Portuguese expedition with Spanish sailor Diego García de Moguer rediscovered the island in 1544 and named it after himself. The misnomer "Diego" could have been made unwillingly by the British ever since, as they copied the Portuguese maps. It is assumed that the island was named after one of its discoverers, or that two captains arrived on the island in quick succession - the one by the name of Garcia, the other with name Diego. Also, a cacography of the saying Deo Gracias ("Thank God") is eligible for the attribution of the atoll.
Tradition suggests that the island took its name from the Spanish navigator Diego García de Moguer, who discovered the island in the 1500s. Garcia was the explorer who sailed to the Río de la Plata in 1526, and possibly with Hernando de Soto's voyage.[citation needed] García headed a Portuguese expedition in the Indian ocean in 1554 and died before completing the return travel.[citation needed] Portuguese scholars believe that Garcia's supposed Christian name, "Diego", was a misnomer or a misreading from Deo Gracias, that came into use towards the end of the 16th century and turned the name into Diego Garcia.[11] Although the Cantino planisphere (1504) and the Ruysch map (1507) clearly delineate the Maldive Islands, giving them the same names, they do not show any islands to the south which can be identified as the Chagos archipelago.
The Sebastian Cabot map (Antwerp 1544) shows a number of islands to the south which may be the Mascarene Islands. The first map which identifies and names "Los Chagos" (in about the right position) is that of Pierre Desceliers (Dieppe 1550), although Diego Garcia is not named. An island called "Don Garcia" appears on the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum of Abraham Ortelius (Antwerp 1570), together with "Dos Compagnos", slightly to the north. It may be the case that "Don Garcia" was named after Garcia de Noronha, although there no evidence exists to support this supposition.[citation needed] The island is also shown as 'Don Garcia' on Mercator's Nova et Aucta Orbis Terrae Descriptio ad Usum Navigatium Emendate (Duisburg 1569). However, on the Vera Totius Expeditionis Nauticae Description of Jodocus Hondius (London 1589), "Don Garcia" mysteriously changes its name to "I. de Dio Gratia", while the "I. de Chagues" appears close by.
The first map to delineate the island under its present name, Diego Garcia, is the World Map of Edward Wright (London 1599), possibly as a result of misreading Dio (or simply "D.") as Diego, and Gratia as Garcia. The Nova Totius Terrarum Orbis Geographica of Henricus Hondius (Antwerp 1630) repeats Wright's misreading of the name, which is then proliferated on all subsequent Dutch maps of the period, and to the present day.
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