The Chinese Record That Reopens Chagos: Pre-Colonial Recognition of the Maldives and the Legal Blind Spot of 1946

Author
Research & Documentation Division
Maldivians for Chagos – Pen for Rights, Republic of Maldives

Editor’s Note

Articles published under the “Research & Documentation” category present historically grounded analysis based on verifiable primary and secondary sources. They are written to preserve evidentiary integrity and are intended to inform public understanding, policy discussion, and future legal or diplomatic processes. Interpretive responsibility rests with the authors.

Introduction

The contemporary dispute over the Chagos Archipelago is routinely framed as a late-colonial problem arising from British administrative decisions and Mauritius’s post-independence claims. This framing rests on an implicit assumption: that Sovereignty in the Indian Ocean is a product of European documentation and that earlier political realities are either irrelevant or inaccessible. Such an assumption is historically unsound and legally incomplete. Long before European colonial intervention, the Maldives existed as a recognised maritime polity whose Sovereignty was acknowledged by external powers over many centuries.

Among the most consequential yet under-examined bodies of evidence are Chinese dynastic records spanning from the Tang Dynasty through the Ming period. These records, synthesised in modern scholarship, provide sustained external recognition of Maldivian political identity, maritime capacity, and continuity of statehood long predating the colonial arrangements upon which present-day claims to Chagos rely. When these sources are brought into the analysis, they materially alter the historical baseline of the Chagos question and illuminate a critical institutional omission in 1946, when the Maldives was excluded from the United Nations system of supervised decolonisation.

Chinese Dynastic Recognition of the Maldives

Chinese historical engagement with the Maldives can be traced at least to the seventh century. Tang Dynasty annals record tribute missions from an island polity rendered phonetically as Mo-lai or Mo-li, which modern historians widely identify with the Maldives based on geographic description, trade patterns, and corroboration with Arabic and South Asian sources. These records describe structured diplomatic exchanges rather than incidental encounters, indicating that the Maldives was already understood as an organised political entity capable of foreign relations.

Across subsequent dynasties, nomenclature evolved while recognition remained consistent. During the Yuan and Ming periods, Chinese maritime knowledge of the Indian Ocean expanded significantly. In the early fifteenth century, accounts associated with the voyages of Admiral Zheng He referred to the Maldives as Liu Shan Guo, commonly translated as the “Kingdom of the Flowing Mountains.” Contemporary descriptions by Ma Huan and Fei Xin offer detailed observations on governance, customs, trade, and maritime life, portraying the Maldives as a coherent island polity integrated into long-distance commercial and navigational networks extending toward East Africa.

The significance of these records lies not in the poetry of their names but in their continuity and consistency. For nearly a millennium, Chinese sources treated the Maldives as a distinct political entity. This sustained external recognition predates European colonial treaties by several centuries. It challenges the premise that Sovereignty in the region can be determined solely by nineteenth-and twentieth-century administrative acts.

Implications for Competing Sovereignty Claims

Mauritius’ claim to the Chagos Archipelago rests primarily on an inheritance theory derived from colonial administration. That theory presupposes that Sovereignty flows from the French and British grouping of islands during the colonial period. However, Mauritius lacks any pre-colonial political identity, indigenous Sovereignty, or historical maritime nexus linking it to Chagos. Its political existence begins with European settlement, not autonomous state formation.

By contrast, the Chinese dynastic record confirms that the Maldives functioned as an established maritime polity centuries before Mauritius entered recorded history. International legal reasoning has long recognised the relevance of historical continuity and external recognition in assessing Sovereignty, particularly where colonial acts disrupted pre-existing political arrangements. When viewed through this broader historical lens, Mauritius’ claim appears administrative rather than historical, grounded in colonial convenience rather than pre-colonial title.

Colonial Detachment and the Limits of Administrative Authority

The United Kingdom has justified the detachment of Chagos in 1965 on the basis that the archipelago constituted a dependency lacking meaningful sovereign attachment. This reasoning depends on confining Maldivian Sovereignty to a narrowly defined geographic core. Chinese historical sources undermine that premise. They demonstrate that external observers understood the Maldives as a multi-island polity capable of exercising authority across dispersed maritime spaces.

In the Indian Ocean world, Sovereignty was not constrained by the distances later imposed by European cartography. Island polities routinely governed territories separated by open sea, connected through navigation, trade, and customary use. Once this historical understanding is acknowledged, colonial detachment can no longer be treated as a neutral administrative act. Instead, it appears as a unilateral rupture imposed without reference to the historical configuration of Sovereignty in the region.

The Institutional Omission of 1946

The exclusion of the Maldives from the United Nations list of Non-Self-Governing Territories in 1946 occupies a pivotal place in the Chagos narrative. That omission removed the Maldives from the system of supervised decolonisation established under Article 73(e) of the UN Charter. As a result, the detachment of Chagos occurred without the scrutiny usually required for territorial rearrangements involving colonial dependencies.

Chinese dynastic records documenting Maldivian Sovereignty were already part of the scholarly record by the mid-twentieth century. While no inference is made regarding the intent of any particular state, the absence of objection to the Maldives’ omission had lasting legal consequences. It enabled colonial practices that continue to shape the present dispute and contributed to the fragmentation of Maldivian maritime territory without international oversight.

Reframing the Chagos Question

When the Chinese historical record is integrated into the analysis, the Chagos question can no longer be understood as a dispute arising solely from late-colonial administrative arrangements. It becomes a question of interrupted Sovereignty, in which a historically recognised maritime polity was excluded from the decolonisation process that later determined the fate of its territory.

International law cannot coherently assess decolonisation while ignoring evidence of pre-colonial statehood and long-term external recognition. The Chinese dynastic sources provide precisely such evidence. They confirm the Maldives as the only continuous sovereign presence in the central Indian Ocean prior to European colonial intervention, thereby resetting the factual baseline for evaluating competing claims.

Conclusion

Chinese historical records establish that the Maldives existed as a recognised sovereign island polity for centuries before European colonial expansion into the Indian Ocean. This recognition, sustained across multiple dynasties, undermines claims that rely exclusively on colonial administrative arrangements to determine Sovereignty over Chagos. At the same time, it highlights an institutional omission in 1946 that permitted colonial detachment to proceed without United Nations supervision.

Reintroducing this historical record does not reopen settled questions; it corrects an incomplete narrative. Any lawful resolution of the Chagos issue must account for the whole span of historical evidence, including the pre-colonial recognition preserved in Chinese archives. Only by doing so can decolonisation be assessed in a manner consistent with historical truth and international legal principle.

Sources Consulted

• Bin Yang, Discovered but Forgotten: The Maldives in Chinese History, c. 1100–1620 (Routledge, 2016)
• Xin Tang Shu (New Book of Tang), Tang Dynasty annals
• Ma Huan, Yingyai Shenglan (15th century)
• Fei Xin, Xingcha Shenglan (15th century)
• United Nations Charter, Article 73(e)