Volta
Politics1 December 1959

The Antarctic Treaty

Twelve nations with stations in Antarctica signed the Antarctic Treaty in Washington, reserving the continent for peace and science, freezing territorial claims and banning military activity and nuclear explosions.

Signing the Antarctic Treaty in Washington (1 December 1959)
Signing the Antarctic Treaty in Washington (1 December 1959)

Herman Phleger · Public domain · Source

In the first half of the twentieth century Britain, Norway, France, Australia, New Zealand, Chile and Argentina carved Antarctica into claimed territories, some of them overlapping. When twelve nations, the United States and the Soviet Union among them, set up stations and observed together in the International Geophysical Year of 1957–58, talks began on keeping that cooperation going.

Signed in Washington on 1 December 1959, the Antarctic Treaty came into force in 1961. Antarctica was to be used only for peaceful purposes, scientific research would be free and its results shared, and territorial claims were frozen, neither enlarged nor given up. One of the first arms-control agreements of the Cold War, it now has more than fifty member states.

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States and rulers at the time
United States — President Dwight D. Eisenhower

Before and after

Earlier
1958 USS Nautilus Passes Under the North Pole
Later
1960 1960 Squaw Valley Winter Olympics

Themes that include this event

  • Antarctic Exploration1773 – 2014

    From Cook crossing the Antarctic Circle in 1773 to the first sightings of the continent, Ross’s wall of ice, the race to the pole between Amundsen and Scott, Shackleton’s Endurance, the Antarctic Treaty and the ozone hole — two centuries of reaching for the frozen continent