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Well amazingly, two answers already given… are wrong.Lets take the romantic.“Because the people there are British, and we take care of our own”.If only this was real reason. The British Nationality Act 1981 specifically noted the Falkland Islanders would be treated as British Dependent Territory Citizens. This being significantly different to a British Citizen. Unless Falkland Islanders had a direct (i.e. Grandparent or better) link to the United Kingdom. The 1981 Act, and the related acts which came before it, meant that many, if not most Falklanders didn’t even have the right of abode in Britian.This only changed in 1983, where a specific Falklands Islands Act gave full British Citizenship to the Falkland Islanders, granted their rights effectively greater than any other BDTC (i.e. Gibraltar or Hong Kong).“Now the one thing you don't do is challenge British to a fight. We revel in it. And didExit Argentina stage left pursued by a lion and a bulldog”Which is all very chest thumping. And puts fire in your belly.Except when you think about Hong Kong. Hong Kong, was ceded to the UK in perpetuity in 1842 with the Treaty of Nanking. And then Kowloon was ceded to the UK in 1860 with the Convention of Peking. Not leased - ceded. Now admittedly this was done at the very peak of Gunboat Diplomacy - but it meant that almost 2.5 million Hongkongers were BDTC, just like the Falkland Islanders.And they were surrendered - effectively, to the country of 1 billion people, by the UK, with conditions of course. Because otherwise the Peoples Republic of China would have unilaterally resolved the issue.So not only were Hongkongers of (originally) the same status as the Falkland Islanders, and not only was the requirement for the UK to cede Sovereignty of Hong Kong and Kowloon back to china, a direct challenge to the “lion and the bulldog”, we did not “look after our own” in so much as “we” ensured that “we saved face”.So indeed, rather than “Look after our own”, and “We revel in a fight” - the approaches to the Falkland Islands and Hong Kong were those of pragmatism and damage limitation.So… why were the Falkland Islands and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands worth fighting over?Well curiously, the Argentinean Junta didn’t think they were worth fighting over. With the 1981 British Nationality Act, the proposed decommissoning of Endurance, decommissioning Ark Royal and Eagle without a like for like replacement, the proposed sale of Invincible to the Australians…. they didn’t think the UK would put up a fight for it, other than the initial resistance from the garrison.The UK however, did think the Falkland Islands et al, were worth fighting for. For a variety of reasons.They were publicly taken with an act of aggression. Had the Junta just waited (if their domestic situation allowed it), the FCO would have probably offloaded the Falkland Islands to Argentina. But with an attack, it left a massive amount of egg on the UK’s face. Ignoring all the warnings & signals, and effectively taken by surprise - the only act that the UK could take in order to save face - was to try and retake the Islands if at all possible.And it was possible. If when asked was retaking the Islands were possible Admiral of the Fleet, Sir Henry Leach responded negatively to the question of “Can we retake these Islands” - then the UK wouldn’t have. In addition to Lord Carrington resigning - it may have likely resulting in a change of government then, or at the next General Election in 1983.It was possible. The Falkland Islands were 8,000 miles away from the UK, but also they were 1,200 miles away from Buenos Aires, limiting how much power could have been brought to bear from the Mainland. Had Mount Pleasant Airfield existed - we wouldn’t be having this conversation.Despite the very lengthy logistics chain - the Royal Navy enjoyed superiority of capability. Therefore it was a much more even match that would have otherwise appeared.If situation was slightly changed, or if the Falklands had been invaded by a teleporting USSR - we would not have been able to retake the Falkland Islands. We would not have spent the blood and treasure on such a hopeless cause.But, because it wasn’t hopeless is why the Falkland Islands were worth fighting for.Had the mixed (at best) signals regarding the Falkland Islands not been given. Had the warnings been heeded and the Islands been reinforced in good time - there might never had needed to have been a war at all. But we didn’t, so over 900 men died and over 2,000 were wounded for political stunt, and political damage limitation. As a result of the successful retaking of the Falklands Island - we spend a sizeable portion of the Defence budget, maintaining the Falklands Garrison.

Bismarck showed zero to less interest in building up a colonial empire for Germany for the majority of his tenure for the two simple reasons that he saw little value in expending Imperial resources on a venture that a) the majority of Germans had no interest in and b) could only serve to create conflict with Great Britain and France.However, between 1880 and 1890, he developed a new policy which could be defined in his famous aphorism 'the merchant precedes the soldier'.He was completely against sending out German troops to conquer foreign territories, which, in truth, the German Navy was not in any position to be able to defend. But rather he offered protectorate status and franchises (á la British East India Company, et al), to independent privately financed consortia which would endeavour to invest in overseas territories.This political strategy effectively placed the German colonial consortia under imperial tutelage while leaving them with administrative and especially financial autonomy, subject to the right of the Emperor to change their status.The Chancellor clearly stated that‘(his) intention, consistent with that of His Majesty, is to leave the activity and the spirit of enterprise of our fellow citizens, navigators and tradesmen, the whole responsibility of the foundation and the development material of the colony. I will not use the form of the annexation of maritime provinces to the German Empire, but I will issue letters of franchise similar to the English Royal Charters.’From 15 November 1884 - 26 February 1885, Bismarck hosted the Berlin Conference bringing together thirteen European countries: Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Russia, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, as well as the United States (the latter being present at the initiative of Henry Morton Stanley, the American agent of the King of Belgium Leopold II, who hoped to have a weighty ally at his side).The purpose of this Conference was the establishment of 'spheres of influence and interests' and a set of rules governing land tenure for effective management of the African continent.As Germany did not have the military and naval means at its disposal for the purpose of territorial conquest by force, Chancellor Bismarck was on this occasion the champion of free trade and free enterprise in the Central African zone, a policy that was to pay off later.In the aftermath of the congress, new lobbyist companies were created, with a view in particular to promoting colonialist propaganda within the German public opinion, which remained far more indifferent to the subject than those of France and the United Kingdom.

TL;DR: Because unity was always about money, and secession is EXPENSIVE!Probably for the same reason that Brexit was incredibly unlikely to happen without some sort of referendum. I might be making a terrible generalization of the UK’s domestic politics, but the vast majority of the political and economic elites had decided that the advantages of the European Union outweighed the disadvantages to them personally and nationally.It’s overly simplistic, but imagine the United States after the Revolutionary War as basically being a variant of the European Union. On the one hand, the U.S. doesn’t bring the historical baggage of two world wars and hyper-nationalism to the table, but on the other hand it brings much more economic malaise. The profound irony of the War for Independence is that in many respects it removed the only thing that the Thirteen Colonies had in common: Great Britain. The United States was already an incredibly diverse mixture of Virginia tobacco planters, Scots-Irish frontiersmen, Pennsylvania Quakers, New English-Puritan traders, and German redeemers (to say nothing of those Americans who weren’t recognized as such, like African American slaves and Native Americans). British suzerainty, heritage, and the English language were the only common threads in the microscopically small tapestry otherwise known as American identity. While the Articles of Confederation is maligned for its incompetence at pretty much everything, it’s actually impressive that such a government actually survived after the War for Independence when you consider how little the colonies had in common with one another.If the economy of the United States had boomed during or after the American Revolution in the way that it during the Second World War, then I think you can make the case that the Articles of Confederation would have gradually become meaningless (except as possibly a military alliance to confront the British or the French on the frontier). But it didn’t:The American Revolution was a traumatic war that claimed the lives of over 1% of all Americans. (United States military casualties of war - Wikipedia) Only the American Civil War was deadlier in terms of percentage of the overall population. Amongst the hardest hit were the soldiers who actually served. So, imagine you’ve gone through this:Then, presuming you haven’t killed, wounded, or captured, perhaps you might dream of returning to the family farm after being paid in full by the American government for your service. To your relief, the government does pay you, but it’s in the form a bill of credit—essentially a government bond that could be exchanged for hard currency (gold or silver coins). The problem is that the Confederation issued so many of these that they effectively became worthless—mostly because of the fact that the Confederation had no ability to guarantee the bills of credit because they were completely at the mercy of state governments for cash. Thus, by 1790 the Continentals were worth approximately 1% of their face value (Early American currency - Wikipedia). Imagine, if you fought from 1775–1783 (basically a time span roughly equivalent to America’s experience in World War II twice over) only to be told that you were effectively getting only 1% of your paycheck. Naturally, that mortgage payment that’s passed due is not getting paid anytime soon. So not only have you lost your paycheck, you also might lose your house and/or farm due to foreclosure. This was what ultimately led to Daniel Shays’ Rebellion in 1786–7, and the Confederation was so weak that the Massachusetts government and leading state merchants basically had to hire an army of mercenaries to crush said rebellion.To make matters worse, the larger and more affluent states tried to use their economic clout to charge out-of-state businesses for the right to trade across state boundaries through taxing toll roads and waterways. For a nation that went to war in part over British trade policies, the commercial environment of the post-war era was debatably worse than that of 1775.This is the immediate historical context of the Constitutional Convention. It wasn’t to create eternal or recognize individual liberties, to create “holy writs,” or even to create a new government. It was assembled to solve the economic crises of the era, which were so systemic that the conclusion of Madison, Hamilton et. al. was that they could only be solved by creating a new government entirely. To see the priorities of the new nation, you only need to look at Hamilton’s desire to create a national bank during the early days of the Washington Administration.The federal government really existed principally to support the economic development of the country. Public services and administration of anything other than the Post Office or the minuscule Army or Navy was relegated to the state governments. Henry Clay’s famous American system is a useful indicator of what political elites thought the role of the federal government was, namely: 1) protective tariffs to support the manufacturing sector, 2) supporting infrastructure projects (roads, canals, and soon rail networks), and 3) a strong national bank to grow and regulate the national economy.You asked why the United States didn’t break up before the Civil War. The answer is that the federal government simply did not demand very much of the states. The fed was supreme on a few, very lonely, peaks—defense, trade between the states, etc.—but these concessions were agreeable so long as the federal government continued to enact policies that were in the economic best interest of the nation.Here’s the rub. The existence of slavery in the South was in the economic best interest of the planter class, but certainly not in the best interest of the rest of the nation. Additionally, slavery was championed mostly by the Democratic-Republicans who elected Thomas Jefferson in 1800. Jefferson, despite his small government credentials, authorized the Louisiana Purchase which was seen by many northern legislators as an opportunity to expand slavery West. Also, conflicts between Britain and France led Jefferson and the Dem.-Republicans to pass the Embargo Act of 1807 which basically canceled international trade—a policy that disproportionately hurt the more mercantile New England states. However, secession was never seen as a viable solution by most Northerners. Membership in the Union gave Northern manufacturers and traders unfettered access to a free-trade zone and legal system led by John Marshall that consistently interpreted laws to stimulate businesses and the economy. The same holds true for Southerners. You might occasionally get secession crises—like the Nullification Crisis in 1832, or the crises that resulted almost any time new states were admitted into the Union. However, for all the “tough talk,” the South had more to lose than gain from independence. Membership in the Union gave the same access to a common market. Southern cotton was grown and harvested on Southern plantations, but was often manufactured in Northern textile factories and sold internationally via Northern ships (The Role Cotton Played in the 1800s Economy | African American History Blog | The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross). Perhaps South Carolina was truly ready to secede in 1832, but it would have found itself alone and isolated (and perhaps invaded if Andrew Jackson’s threats are to be believed). I think that most state politicians realized that it made little sense to challenge economically damaging laws by committing the equivalent of economic suicide.I think we should also remember that secession was always a Plan B, and a Plan B is unnecessary so long as Plan A has a chance of success. Plan A was to simply advance state interests (like slavery) by dominating the federal government from the inside. From the 1800–1860, the demographic and political makeup of the Union was in a constant state of flux. During the period of Democratic Party ascendance (c. 1800–1848) it’s the Democrats who are in favor of a stronger, more expansive federal government to protect slavery. It was John C. Calhoun himself who would argue that slavery is a right protected by the Federal Constitution by virtue of the Fifth Amendment which prohibits the government from confiscating the property of citizens without just compensation. As Southerners increasingly moved West to found new states, each adding new—presumably pro-slavery representatives—it looked as if slavery would transition from a peculiar to a permanent institution. Finally, with the ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford, the Supreme Court reclassifies slavery from a legal institution created or destroyed by legislatures to a personal property right (Dred Scott v. Sandford). What rational reason would any slave-holding state want to secede?What alters the equation is the fact that the equal and opposite reaction caused by Dred Scott and “Bleeding Kansas” is Abraham Lincoln. The South was convinced that Lincoln and the Republican Party wanted to abolish slavery. The fact, of course, was that Lincoln was actually a moderate on the issue of slavery and only opposed its expansion (much to the frustration of more progressive members of his cabinet like Seward, Chase, etc.). However, Southerners thought that a Republican victory would result in the destruction of slavery—this is in a region where slavery is economically essential to grow cotton, and cotton from the South accounted for over 60% of all American exports (King Cotton - Wikipedia). Economic anxieties over the future of slavery, coupled with the shock of Lincoln’s electoral triumph in 1860 is what finally pushed South Carolina to secede.It’s interesting that you would ask whether early 19th century politicians believed that the founders’ words should be interpreted as “holy writ.” Certainly not in the ante-bellum era. Individuals like John C. Calhoun had living memories of Jefferson and Madison. It’s hard to deify gods you know are flesh and blood. William Lloyd Garrison, for example, was notably contemptuous of the Constitution—believing it to be a racist document. Most people in the early 19th century were also probably aware of the fact that the founders themselves were famously divided on how the Constitution should be interpreted—most notably looking at the reaction to the Alien and Sedition Acts and the role of Federal Judiciary.I think you can make a cogent argument that deification of the founders and founding documents is actually a result of—not an obstacle to—secession. Thus, it seems fitting to complete this answer with the following teaser:“Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate-we can not consecrate-we can not hallow-this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us-that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion-that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain-that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom-and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.” —Abraham Lincoln, “The Gettysburg Address”