Diego Garcia

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Diego Garcia () is a coral atoll in the central Indian Ocean, the largest and southernmost of the atolls of the Chagos Archipelago. Its nearly continuous, V-shaped rim of land, about 64 kilometres (40 mi) long, almost encloses a lagoon of 124 square kilometres (48 sq mi) and holds more than half of the archipelago's land. Administered by the United Kingdom as part of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT), and claimed by Mauritius, it is the site of a joint British–American military base, Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia; it has no permanent inhabitants, and around 2,000 military personnel, officials and contractors are ordinarily present. Known to Portuguese navigators from the early 16th century and claimed by France from 1769, the atoll was settled from the 1780s by planters from Île de France (Mauritius) with enslaved workers brought mainly from Madagascar and Mozambique. It passed to Britain with Mauritius in 1810–1814, and for 150 years its plantations at East Point, Pointe...

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