# Chagos Archipelago **Domain:** Indian Ocean / Decolonization / Strategic Basing **Doc Type:** Place and Case Node **Maturity:** Developed **Concept Hub:** [[wiki/War With Empire|War With Empire]] ## Definition **The Chagos Archipelago is an Indian Ocean island group whose sovereignty and decolonization are entangled with the strategic military base on [[wiki/Diego Garcia|Diego Garcia]].** Britain detached the islands from Mauritius before Mauritian independence and administered them as the British Indian Ocean Territory. ## Transfer and Base Access Britain signed a 2025 treaty to transfer sovereignty to Mauritius while preserving the Diego Garcia base through a long lease. Implementation interacted with the separate British-American agreement governing defense use of the territory. [[articles/war with empire/Imperial Financial Influence Operations — Cutting the Head off the Snake|Imperial Financial Influence Operations]] reads the resulting American leverage as [[wiki/Imperial Receivership|imperial receivership]]: the practical user of the base held a required role in changing the operating arrangement even while Britain remained the formal sovereign negotiating transfer. ## Boundary Mauritian sovereignty, Chagossian displacement and return, British treaty obligations, and American base requirements are related but distinct issues. The receivership concept describes practical veto structure, not a moral resolution of the decolonization claim. ## See Also [[wiki/British Overseas Territory|British Overseas Territory]] · [[wiki/Functional Decolonization|Functional Decolonization]] · [[wiki/Strategic Dependency|Strategic Dependency]] · [[wiki/Plumbing versus Valve|Plumbing versus Valve]]