When George III. ascended the throne of England, civilisation and knowledge had made so great a progress as to give the interests of science some weight even in the calculations of politicians. The young monarch himself had conceived a strong partiality for geographical studies, and his desire to distinguish his reign by the glory of important discoveries was encouraged by his ministers from motives of a less disinterested nature.

During the wars which had lately agitated Europe, the privateers of the hostile nations cruising in the south seas had woeful experience of the hazardous character of that distant navigation. The French, having suffered much from the maritime superiority of the English, and having been totally expelled from their settlements in Canada, began to look about them for some mode of counterbalancing these losses, and of securing their mercantile interests in case of a future war. The establishment of a colony, at the Falkland Islands, which might serve as a resting place for ships destined to the Pacific Ocean, was some time in contemplation. The cruisers from St. Malo having named those islands Malouines, from their native town, seemed to have thereby established a vague kind of right to the possession of them.