Bougainville was soon given an assignment. In 1765 he sailed with a group of colonists to the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic, which the French called the Malouines after the French port of Saint-Malo. At the same time, Spain had established colonies on the nearby mainland of South America where Argentina is today. The French had been living on the islands for only a year when King Charles III of Spain claimed the Malouines. Since Spain was France’s most important ally, the French king, Louis XV, turned Bougainville’s colony over to Spain. The Spanish changed the islands’ name slightly, calling them the Malvinas.
Disputes over the ownership of the islands continued. At the same time that Bougainville was establishing the French colony, the British captain John Byron was in the westernmost islands, which he claimed for England. The British claim would be disputed by Argentina, an antagonism that almost two hundred years later led to the Falklands War of 1982. Since the French colonists now needed to be removed, Bougainville returned to the Falklands in 1766. Reaching a settlement in April 1767, he transported the colonists to the seaport of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; from there they took other ships back to France.
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