Diego Garcia is a tropical, footprint-shaped coral atoll located south of the equator in the central Indian Ocean.

Diego Garcia lies in the Chagos Archipelago at the southernmost tip of the Chagos-Laccadive Ridge –&# 32 ; 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.

The US 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.

Today, the exiled Chagossians are still fighting to return to their homeland, claiming that the forced expulsion and dispossession was illegal ( see Depopulation of Diego Garcia ).

Portuguese explorers may have been the first Europeans to discover the island of Diego Garcia.

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.

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.

Diego Garcia and the rest of the Chagos islands were uninhabited until the late 18th century.

In 1778 the French Governor of Mauritius granted Monsieur Dupuit de la Faye the island of Diego Garcia, and there is evidence of temporary French visits to collect coconuts and fish.

Several Frenchmen living in " a dozen huts " abandoned Diego Garcia when the British East India Company attempted to establish a settlement there in April 1786.

Following the departure of the British, the French colony of Mauritius began marooning lepers on Diego Garcia, and in 1793 the French established a coconut plantation using slave labour, which also exported cordage made from coconut fiber, and sea cucumbers, known as a delicacy in the orient.

Diego Garcia became a colony of the United Kingdom after the Napoleonic wars as part of the Treaty of Paris ( 1814 ), and from 1814 – 1965 it was administered from Mauritius.

On Diego Garcia, the main plantations were located at East Point, the main settlement on the eastern rim of the atoll ; Minni Minni, north of East Point ; and Pointe Marianne, on the western rim, all located on the lagoon side of the atoll rim.

From 1881 through 1888 Diego Garcia was the location of two coaling stations for steam ships crossing the Indian Ocean.

Barachois Maurice, Diego Garcia

In the early 1960s, the UK was withdrawing its military presence from the Indian Ocean area, not including the base at RAF Gan to the north of Diego Garcia in the Maldives ( which remained open until 1976 ), and agreed to permit the US to establish a Naval Communication Station on one of its island territories there.

The US requested an unpopulated island belonging to the UK to avoid political difficulties with newly-independent countries, and ultimately the UK and US agreed that Diego Garcia was a suitable location.

A paved road in Diego Garcia in the eastern restricted zone, home to the former plantations

To accomplish the UK / US mutual defense strategy, in November 1965, the UK purchased the Chagos Archipelago, which includes Diego Garcia, from the then self-governing colony of Mauritius for £ 3 million to create the British Indian Ocean Territory ( BIOT ), with the intent of ultimately closing the plantations to provide the uninhabited British territory from which the US would conduct its military activities in the region.

In March 1971, US Naval construction battalions ( Seabees ) arrived on Diego Garcia to begin the construction of the Communications Station and an airfield.

To satisfy the terms of an agreement between the UK and the US for an uninhabited island, the plantation on Diego Garcia was closed in October of that year.

In the early 1970s, setbacks to US military capabilities in the region including the fall of Saigon, victory of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the closure of the Peshawar Air Station listening post in Pakistan and Kagnew Station in Ethiopia, the Mayaguez incident, and the build-up of Soviet Naval presence in Aden and a Soviet Air Base at Berbera, Somalia, caused the US to request, and the UK to approve, permission to build a fleet anchorage and enlarged airfield on Diego Garcia, and the Seabees doubled the number of workers constructing these facilities.

In 1882 the French-financed, Mauritian-based Societe Huilere de Diego et Peros ( the " Oil Can Company of Diego and Peros "), consolidated all the plantations in the Chagos under its control.

In 1962 the Chagos Agalega Company of the British colony of Seychelles purchased the Societe Huiliere de Diego et Peros and moved company headquarters to Seychelles.

Throughout their recorded history, the plantations of the Chagos Archipelago had a population of approximately 1, 000 individuals, about two-thirds of whom lived on Diego Garcia.

All the inhabitants of Diego Garcia were involuntarily relocated to other islands in the Chagos Archipelago or to Mauritius or Seychelles by 1971 to satisfy the requirements of a UK / US Exchange of Notes signed in 1966 to depopulate the island when the US constructed a base upon it.

Originally colonized by the French, Diego Garcia was ceded, along with the rest of the Chagos Archipelago, to the United Kingdom in the Treaty of Paris ( 1814 ) at the conclusion of a portion of the Napoleonic Wars.

* First, the island nation of Mauritius claims the Chagos Archipelago ( which is coterminous with the BIOT ), including Diego Garcia.

Diego Garcia is the largest land mass in the Chagos Archipelago ( which includes Peros Banhos, the Salomon Islands, the Three Brothers, the Egmont Islands and the Great Chagos Bank ), being an atoll occupying approximately, of which is dry land.

Scientific expeditions in 1996 and 2006 described the lagoon and surrounding waters of Diego Garcia, along with the rest of the Chagos Archipelago, as " exceptionally unpolluted " and " pristine ".

A biological survey conducted in early 2005 indicated erosional effects of the tsunami wave on Diego Garcia and other islands of the Chagos Archipelago.

The total bird list for the Chagos Archipelago, including Diego Garcia, consists of 91 species, with large breeding populations of 16 species.

* The right of U. S. forces to use Diego Garcia in the Chagos Islands as a military base will end, but there will be a provision for an automatic extension for them to remain for another 20 years.

He authorised expulsion of Chagossians from the Chagos Archipelago and allowed building of the United States military base at Diego Garcia.

Officially part of the British Indian Ocean Territory, the Chagos were home to the Chagossians for more than a century and a half until the United Kingdom evicted them in the early 1970s in order to allow the United States to build a military base on Diego Garcia, the largest of the Chagos Islands.

The largest individual islands are Diego Garcia ( 27. 20 km² ), Eagle ( Great Chagos Bank, 2. 45 km² ), Île Pierre ( Peros Banhos, 1. 50 km² ), Eastern Egmont ( Egmont Islands, 1. 50 km² ), Île du Coin ( Peros Banhos, 1. 28 km² ) and Île Boddam ( Salomon Islands, 1. 08 km² ).

The Constitution of Mauritius provides that Mauritius includes the islands of Mauritius, Rodrigues, Agalega, Tromelin, Cargados Carajos and the Chagos Archipelago, including Diego Garcia and any other island comprised in the State of Mauritius.

Mauritius sought to regain sovereignty, lost just before independence in 1968, over the Chagos Archipelago ( 1, 931 kilometers to the northeast ) which includes the Diego Garcia atoll, all of which comprise the British Indian Ocean Territory ( BIOT ).

But when Mauritius became independent in 1968 the United Kingdom excised the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius and leased Diego Garcia, the main island of the archipelago, to the United States under a 50-year lease ( which expires in 2016 and comes up for renewal in 2014 ).

The Chagossians resided in the islands of Diego Garcia, Peros Banhos, and the Salomon island chain, and had settled in other parts of the Chagos Archipelago, like Egmont Islands and Eagle Islands.

Recently, in R. v. Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, ex parte Bancoult EWHC 413, the High Court of England and Wales struck down an ordinance made in 1971 by the Commissioner of the British Indian Ocean Territory expelling the entire population of the Chagos Archipelago in order to make way for an American military base at Diego Garcia, purportedly under his power to legislate for the " peace, order and good government " of the territory.

With a land area of 2. 45 km², Île Aigle is the largest single island of the Great Chagos Bank, and after Diego Garcia the second largest of the Chagos Archipelago.

The Chagos Archipelago was uninhabited when first visited by European explorers, and remained that way until the French successfully established a small colony on the island of Diego Garcia, composed of 50-60 “ men ” and “ a complement of slaves ”.

Significant demographic shifts in the island population began in 1962 when the French financed, Mauritian Company, Societe Huiliere de Diego et Peros, which had consolidated ownership of all the plantations in the Chagos in 1883, sold the plantations to the Seychelles Company, Chagos-Agalega Company, which then owned the entire Chagos Archipelago, except for six acres at the mouth of the Diego Garcia lagoon.