Comment by gnfargbl

7 months ago

It was in the original 1974 standard [1]. No real idea on the politics of the time, but Britain had "paid" Mauritius £3 million for the islands less than ten years before [2], and of course the US base on Diego Garcia was already established.

I use the scare quotes because Mauritius was a British colony at the time, and so the offer was quite possibly one that the Mauritians couldn't refuse. That, and the fact that £50m (in today's money) seems ridiculously cheap.