1 Crown Port Louis

Port Louis was founded in 1764 by French navigator Louis Antoine de Bougainville, who named it after Louis XV and established it as the first permanent settlement on the islands — a fact the British later found inconvenient when asserting prior claim. France sold its rights to Spain in 1767, and the settlement was subsequently abandoned, leaving the Falklands in a contested limbo that persisted, in various forms, for another two centuries.