C I O N M
V E
M S U T N &
I T Y d e L v I e V l I O N P G
Or had they?
Shoot for the moon
In the same way that Cecil, Leopold and a range of Victorian-era
‘adventurers’ exploited cunning loopholes to seize, hold and
‘develop’ vast tracts of land, the cunning Dennis Hope spotted
a sneaky loophole in the Outer Space Treaty, which states:
‘Outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claim
of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other
means.’
Note the word ‘national’. He did!
R I I
The wormhole loophole
are open to interpretation, and cunning developers can find
loopholes in anything, so – Berlin Conference or no – Cecil John
Rhodes, with the blessing of good Queen Vicky, took one look at
the land north of the Limpopo and exclaimed ‘mine, mine, mine!’,
and it promptly (okay, not that promptly) became Rhodesia (North
and South). Keeping it in the family, as it were, Queen Vicky’s
uncle, Leopold II of Belgium, exercised an impressive sleight of
hand and, with the – uhm – tacit acceptance (rather than blessing)
of the Berlin Conference delegates, took a million square miles of
Africa, and named it the Congo Free State. This was not a colony;
it was his private property, and the only one of the three words in
the name that was close to true is ‘Congo’. But, by the turn of the
20th century, all those opportunities had been used up, chewed
up and spat out.
That’s what made Dennis Hope so great – and so rich. He saw
an opportunity, and grabbed it with both hands. In 1965, the
United Nations invited signatories to the Treaty on Principles
Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of
Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies
(more manageably known as the Outer Space Treaty). This
distinguished gathering of Earth leaders got together specifically
to thrash out how best to ‘manage’ the moon, all other celestial
bodies and – generally – ‘outer space’. Of course, no inhabitants
of outer space were invited – which may, in the future, be
acknowledged to have been an oversight. But, much like the
European leaders at the Berlin Conference considered Africans
of no importance in the affairs of Africa, the UN pretty much laid
out how the nations of Earth could and should – and perhaps
would – ‘manage’ the rest of the universe.