National rivalries and claims

The early discoveries led to a few controversies not only concerning

territorial claims but also concerning geographic nomenclature. The
struggle for national influence was especially acute in the slender
peninsular landmass south of the Scotia Sea that became known
as O’Higgins Land (Tierra O’Higgins) to Chileans and San Martin
Land (Tierra San Martín) to Argentines, named for national heroes
who helped in gaining independence from Spain. To the English it was
known as Graham Land, after a former first lord of the admiralty, and
to Americans as Palmer Peninsula, after the sealer and
explorer Nathaniel Palmer. By international agreement, the region is
now known simply as the Antarctic Peninsula.

The first half of the 20th century is the colonial period in the history of
Antarctica. Between 1908 and 1942 seven nations
decreed sovereignty over pie wedge-shaped sectors of the continent.
Many nations—including the United States, the Soviet
Union, Japan, Sweden, Belgium, and Germany—carried out Antarctic
exploration without lodging formal territorial claims, even though
claims may have been announced by some of their exploratory parties.
The U.S. government, for example, has never taken up the claims
made in 1929 by Richard Byrd’s expedition in the Ford Ranges
of Marie Byrd Land (an area presently unclaimed) nor those made
by Lincoln Ellsworth on aerial landings on November 23, 1935,
in Ellsworth Land (an area now claimed by Chile) and on January 11,
1939, in the American Highland near the Amery Ice Shelf of East
Antarctica (an area now claimed by Australia). The German Antarctic
Expedition of 1939 aerially photographed an extensive segment of
Princess Astrid and Princess Martha coasts of western Queen Maud
Land and, dropping metal swastikas over the region, claimed it
for Nazi Germany (the area is now claimed by Norway). Other claims
were transferred, such as that made in 1841 by James Clark Ross, who,
after discovering and naming the coastal Ross Sea region after Queen
Victoria, claimed it for the British crown; the area was later
transferred to, and is now claimed by, New Zealand.