In January this year, a diplomatic curio was unearthed: a British request, issued in 1917, that Copenhagen give London first refusal on any sale of Greenland. The last Danish minister for the island, Tom Høyer, said that Denmark had agreed to the request.

The U.S. is currently at the front of the line; could Britain push past? Probably not. Martin Rosenbaum, a journalist who searched the British National Archives in February, found no evidence of such an agreement. Besides, one suspects that an arrangement of this kind would today mean little. Britain’s long-standing programme of economic self-immiseration makes it a country unlikely to beat Trump’s America in a property auction. If anyone buys Greenland, it will be the U.S. More profoundly, Britain has long since ceded its role as an acquisitively-minded global protagonist. Some modern Britons profess gladness that their country has given up its geopolitical say; others bemoan their country’s continuing enfeeblement.

As if the enfeeblement had not gone far enough, the current British government is conducting an expensive giveaway of the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean. The islands are the seat of a crucial military base, Diego Garcia, used by the U.S. as a landing strip for nuclear bombers. The islands’ giveaway, in which the distant nation of Mauritius will be paid $138m per year to allow the UK to lease back what was its own base, is being undertaken on the suggestion of the International Court of Justice’s bench of anti-Western wallet inspectors.

This unworldly modern Britain is hardly the “perfidious Albion” depicted in the propaganda of its 19th century geopolitical rivals. Not wholly unflatteringly, contemporary Russian state media still portrays the country as the shadowy orchestrator of coups and death squads. A truer depiction, though, is that of the “cash-poor, asset-rich elderly woman who has somehow inherited a portfolio of scattered, high-value properties she doesn’t know what to do with.”

The most valuable of those properties is neither the Chagos Islands, for all their strategic importance, nor even the well-known Falkland Islands, the territory that the UK successfully defended from an Argentinian invasion in 1982. It is a property seldom discussed in Britain, though it is understood to be valuable by other powers in the region and elsewhere. Hundreds of miles south of the Falklands, through frigid ocean, jagged icebergs, and an aggressive circumpolar current, lies the British Antarctic Territory.

Antarctic Competition Will Soon Unfreeze

At 660,000 square miles, the territory is about eight times the size of Great Britain. It is a vast slice of the planet’s most hostile continent, a true terra nullius before its discovery by explorers—with no permanent human habitation, even today. Over the coming decades, Antarctica could become more hotly-contested than Greenland ever was. This competition will be a return to historical normalcy and was the context in which the United Kingdom acquired its Antarctic claim.

In 1768, the 40-year-old James Cook was chosen to lead a maritime expedition to the Pacific, where his crewmate Charles Green, an astronomer, could gather data that would help him to estimate the distance between the planets. The job done, Captain Cook proceeded to Tahiti, where he opened an envelope containing his next instructions. These instructions were from King George III himself, who had given Cook a secret second mission. For centuries, cartographers had imagined an undiscovered continent, “Terra Australis,” to lie at the end of the Earth. Perhaps it might be warm and fertile. Cook’s new mission was to find that continent and claim it for the Crown.

Despite his efforts, it was not for almost fifty years that Antarctica was finally sighted. First to spot it was Fabian Bellingshausen, commander of the first Russian Antarctic Expedition. In January 1820, Bellingshausen marked his map with a patch of blue—a patch that the Russians deemed to betoken the discovery of Antarctica. Two days later, an Irish-born Royal Navy officer, Edward Bransfield, sighted what we now know to be Trinity Peninsula, Antarctica’s northernmost outcrop.

The first to set foot on it was probably an American whaler several decades later. Whalers were more interested in clubbing seals than in finding continents, though, and were unwilling to give away the locations of their best hunting grounds. The details, then, will remain uncertain; historians take more interest in the so-called Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration.

By now, Britain had claimed the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, which curls for hundreds of miles towards the bottom of South America. This was the first formal territorial claim to the Antarctic, though Argentina had by then acquired a base on the South Orkney Islands, which lie a few hundred miles north of the peninsula. Meanwhile, the world’s most intrepid explorers were beginning to set out into the continent’s harsh interior.

In 1911, Roald Amundsen, a Norwegian, narrowly beat Robert Falcon Scott, a Royal Navy officer, to the terrestrial South Pole, leaving him a letter and some gear. Scott, who had discovered the vast plateau on which the pole lies, died with his expedition crew on their way back to civilization. Found with their frozen corpses were fossils from the long-extinct Glossopteris tree. Antarctica had indeed been forested, but it was many millions of years prior to George III’s hopeful letter.

Other British explorers earned similar bittersweet glory. Chief among them was Ernest Shackleton, whose team climbed Mount Erebus, the southernmost active volcano on Earth. Antarctica became ever more deeply inscribed into the British legendarium. Shackleton died in 1922 while on another expedition to the Antarctic. Thus ended the Heroic Age.

Global interest in the Antarctic temporarily waned, before reviving somewhat in the “Mechanical Age” of the late 1920s onwards. By now, explorers were able to fly planes over parts of Antarctica. The United States, over the course of three decades, constructed five bases on the Ross Ice Shelf, named for the British polar explorer James Clark Ross.

The shelf takes the form of a colossal ice platform whose size is roughly that of France and whose appearance is much like that of the Ice Wall in Game of Thrones. Icebergs are continuously calving from the shelf, and the American bases eventually bobbed away. A more audacious move was made by the Nazis, who brought metal swastikas to scatter from a plane. These swastikas, they believed, would strengthen their own claim, though the Second World War soon subsumed this project. During the conflict, British and Argentine seamen would periodically capture each other’s flag on Deception Island, a volcano-cum-harbour close to the Antarctic Peninsula. Spooked by the prospect of Argentine control of Drake’s Passage, which connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific, the British decided to maintain a continued presence in Antarctica. The British, the Chileans, and the Argentines began peppering the peninsula with bases, each eventually laying overlapping claims to a slice of the Antarctic that begins with the sea to the north of the peninsula and terminates at the South Pole.

Other countries, such as France, Australia, and the U.S., built bases of their own, and further slices of the continent were claimed by Australia, France, Norway, and New Zealand. At this stage, the land was viewed as too desolate to fight over, instead hosting an international scientific collaboration. The collaboration was followed, in 1961, by the enactment of the Antarctic Treaty, under which the twelve countries active in Antarctica agreed to freeze, as it were, their claims. The continent, it was decided, would be reserved for peaceful purposes and scientific research. No mining, no fighting, and definitely no nuclear bomb testing.

Sixty-four years have now elapsed since the enactment of that treaty. In keeping with the treaty, Britain’s work on the continent is purely scientific and is conducted by the British Antarctic Survey. The three British research stations have many cousins, several of which have been built by newer arrivals to the continent. China, for instance, has built several bases in the slice claimed by Australia. India has three research facilities. Turkey has one. Iran plans one. Most of these countries have signed up to the treaty. And, in 2048, any party to the treaty can request a review of the terms.

What happens in 2048 is anyone’s guess. Trump’s interest in Greenland, and the broader contest for influence over the Arctic, suggest that the U.S., Russia, and China are becoming less interested in preserving immaculate poles than in gaining and maintaining control of new strategic frontiers. The melting of the North Pole opens up important sea lanes, whereas the South Pole is at the heart of a vast and immovable landmass. But that landmass and the seabed around it are likely to hold natural resources in staggering quantities. And the most enticing portion of that continent is Britain’s contested share.

Mineral Riches From the Frozen Continent

You will recall that the British Antarctic Territory is a frozen slice of mainland conjoined to the long appendage of the Antarctic Peninsula. Whereas the Antarctic mainland is buried, in most places, beneath more than a mile of ice, the peninsula is more exposed. This is because it reaches a little further away from the extreme south and is somewhat warmer, because it is mountainous, which creates windbreaks and hinders the settling of ice, and because it is battered on one side by a circumpolar current which brings some modest additional warmth. What all this adds up to is more easily accessible rock. If you are going to start extracting resources from anywhere in the Antarctic, it should be the peninsula. And although very little prospecting has been undertaken on the frozen continent, we can make some inferences from its geology.

One of those inferences has to do with the peninsula’s origins. Antarctica, geologically speaking, is a long-lost relative of South America, Africa, and Australia, all of which were once conjoined in the supercontinent of Gondwana. The peninsula was torn from what is now South America, meaning that its geological composition is very similar. Its rocks are visibly stained with copper, but copper is too easily obtained elsewhere to justify mining it in the harsh conditions of the Antarctic. More valuable materials, however, might meet that economic threshold. The Andes are rich in gold and silver, which means that we can expect something similar of the peninsula.

We can make further inferences from the presence in the territory of active and dormant volcanoes. Volcanoes are the sites at which molten metals are brought to Earth’s surface, and are good signs, therefore, of mineral wealth. Sometimes Antarctic volcanoes blast through sheet ice from below. More helpful than these subglacial volcanoes are those whose cones sit closer to the surface. Deception Island, scene of the wartime rounds of capture-the-flag between the British and the Argentines, is one such volcano in the territory, and there are several more volcanoes dotted around it.

Elsewhere in Antarctica, incidentally, in the part claimed by New Zealand, is Mount Erebus, the volcano climbed by Shackleton and his men. This is the volcano now known for spewing gold dust. As ever, our understanding of Antarctica’s mineral wealth is constrained by the paucity of prospecting, but the Australian region in particular is likely to hold reserves of diamonds and uranium. Each of these resources is sufficiently valuable for it to be possible that it will one day be worth extracting them from Antarctica. Quaking environmentalists should note that desolate Antarctica has next to no terrestrial wildlife to disrupt. The continent should therefore be considered the ecologist’s choice for the development of heavy industry.

It is no wonder that China is building a year-round airport, capable of accommodating large intercontinental aircraft, in the region claimed by Australia. Britain’s airfield, by contrast, serves smaller De Havilland aircraft that arrive from the Falklands. Russia, like China, appears to be curious about Antarctica’s natural resources. In May 2024, it was reported that Rosgeo, the Russian agency responsible for finding mineral reserves, had found colossal oil and gas reserves beneath the Weddell Sea. This region of the British Antarctic Territory was once the scene of Shackleton’s desperate rescue mission. Long before that, it was the home to the kind of polar forests of which Scott’s fossils were a remnant. The forests’ principal remnant, though, is not fossils, but that enormous hoard of oil and gas. In total, the reserves are said to be ten times the amount extracted from the North Sea over the past fifty years. Russia’s exploration of these resources has been interpreted by experts as a precursor to extraction.

Where does all this leave Britain? The empire that sent forth Scott and Shackleton is now a country of rather lower ambition. Success for modern Britain consists in keeping A&E waiting times below four hours while ensuring that sectarian division is papered over. The country’s armed forces are much-reduced, its industrial capacity is near-zero, and its GDP per capita shrank in both 2023 and 2024. And things are on course to get worse. Unprecedentedly large waves of unskilled immigration have strained infrastructure, disincentivized automation, and created the prospect of millions of unaffordable new benefit recipients at a time of the highest taxes since the Second World War. Britain is short of millions of homes and dozens of power stations, but its restrictive planning laws prevent it from building meaningful amounts of either. The Conservative Party, which ruled from 2010 to 2024, is the vassal of NIMBYs; the Labour Party, which came to power in 2024, is the vassal of the supermajority of Britons who are either net welfare recipients or on the state payroll. Neither party seems appropriately equipped for the gargantuan task of revitalising their country.

The default outcome for Antarctica, an Anglophile might fear, will be similar to the debacle of the Chagos Islands. Britain will abide by rules that its wilier adversaries are gaming, and it will thus lose a pearl whose value is beyond measure. A more ambitious, wilful Britain would recognise that its Antarctic territory is an inheritance against which to prove one’s worth. It would recognise the need to rebuild the Royal Navy as a serious polar fleet rather than an afterthought. An unserious public will no longer be given the chance to vote for the name of its polar flagship.

At the same time, Britain should build an Antarctic airport capable of accommodating direct flights from London. As the researcher Duncan McClements noted to me, a glacial ice runway of the kind Australia operates, which can accommodate an Airbus A319, would cost tens of millions of dollars; those that are suitable for long-haul routes, and made of crushed rock instead of ice, could cost hundreds of millions. These are non-trivial sums, but they compare favourably to the cost of the Chagos deal, and have a good chance of generating a substantial return on investment. The more material Britain can fly in, the cheaper every other activity will become.

This new air route will convey to the Antarctic hundreds of scientists, engineers, and adventurers each year. They will prospect the peninsula and beyond, using cutting-edge tomography methods to build the world’s most detailed understanding of Antarctica’s subsurface resources. The scientists will explore regions beyond Britain’s, developing a useful bargaining chip for the event that there is a great-power carve-up of the continent. Support us in our existing claim, Britain could tell a self-interested U.S., and from 2048 we will help you tap the riches of the western region that is currently unclaimed. This alliance could encompass New Zealand and Australia, ensuring Western control of Antarctica.

We must also consider energy. Having neglected to replenish its ageing stock of nuclear power stations, Britain should address its aneurysm-inducing domestic energy costs by turning temporarily to gas extracted from the North Sea, Britain itself, or the sea surrounding the Falklands; each of these hoards is more accessible than that of the Weddell Sea. But perhaps the Weddell Sea oilfield will come in handy one day. It must be protected, even if it is not initially needed. To ensure that its Antarctic activity can meet its own increasing energy needs, and to underpin its security, Britain must develop its ability to harvest geothermal power in challenging circumstances. The goal should be to provide self-sustaining power to a network of biomes that can sustain comfortable human life year-round.

These biomes could take the form of geodesic domes. If Cornwall’s Eden Project can sustain itself via geothermal heat, so can the Antarctic dome project. The domes will accommodate a treaty-compatible scientific program, the aim of which is to improve humanity’s ability to survive and thrive in environments even harsher than the Antarctic. Can we grow food in the biomes? Can we make steel in adjacent factories? Can we turn the ice into fuel? Cancel the Chagos Islands deal, and the government could pay for the airport and the program several times over. Come 2048, the investment would start to generate significant returns for the British taxpayer and for the West.

These apparently radical measures will look less radical by the year, but would nevertheless represent a dramatic break from the Westminster status quo. Declining nations can resort to many sensible technocratic reforms that are easy to explain, but they find it hard to come up with compelling political or bureaucratic motives for those reforms. That can only be done with national visions—visions that are not only suited to the capabilities a country could realistically develop, but also a congruent continuation of its history, or at least the best of its history. We can see that these two conditions have been fulfilled with nearly every successful national founding or refounding. Britain’s overlooked Antarctic legacy, and the vast frozen territory it still retains, then, offer us the opportunity for such a vision.

If such a project is pursued with enough vigor, it will make Britain’s claim to Antarctica inarguable. It is easy to draw peremptory lines on an empty map, but it is much harder and more admirable to people that map and to rescue its land from barrenness. For a stagnant or declining nation, it is easy to find this or that technocratic intervention that can solve this or that economic, social, or political issue. What is more difficult is finding a vision that gives the nation reason to carry out such reforms. These visions must be inspiring, but they must also be within reach. Most importantly, they must match the legacy and history of the country.

The forgotten inheritance of the British Arctic offers Britain precisely that. Humanoid robots will clank past the Scott Colossus on their way to shifts at the Duchy of Antarctica Mining Territory; Anglo-Antarctican babies will be born in the geothermal warmth of the domes; holidaymakers will affectionately nickname the complex Snow-on-the-Wold.

As you will have guessed by now, this is a dress rehearsal for the settling of the Moon and Mars. In the earlier years of the Antarctica project, Britain’s development of the relevant technologies will be another bargaining chip to offer the Americans. In time, a rejuvenated Britain should aim to build its own bases on the Moon, on Mars and beyond. This, more than anything that can be done on Antarctica, will be the worthiest tribute to adventurers past.