This article is written in Canadian English, which has its own spelling conventions (colour, centre, travelled, realize, analyze) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus. |
This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
So, the British sided with the Americans, and the current border reflects the American claim? What were the differences between this and the Canadian claim? - Unsigned User:Geo Swan
Canada didn't have a say in it, other than consulting London; British North American (Canadian) foreign affairs were still in London's bailiwick at that time (until 1931 or 1927 or something).
As it is under the treaty, the site of Forts Stikine and Taku should be within British Columbia; and in fact the mouths of the Stikine and Taku should be, but they've silted in a few miles downstream since the treaty was signed; the border hasn't been revised to reflect that (obviously not, even though it's in the language; same thing with the mis-survey of the 49th Parallel that's not going to get corrected, either).
There are two sticking points remaining in the Alaska Boundary Settlement. One is that the treaty stipulates that the western shoreline of the Portland Canal is the boundary; US maps continue to show mid-channel. Similarly with the A-B Line, which is between Point A and Point B on the north side of the Dixon Entrance; US maps show the boundary as being mid-Dixon Entrance, and the US/Alaska have even issued oil/drilling-exploration permits on "their" side of that line.
Same kind of fudge-up with the Oregon Treaty; during the Salmon War of the mid-1990s Canadian commercial vessels (whale watching boats) were busted by US Coast Guard in the area of the San Juans; but the treaty is very clear that ALL commercial vessels south of the 49th Parallel are to be unhindered; that would even include in Rosario Strait, far from the current border in the Haro Strait; during the same kafuffle Sen. Slade Gorton (State-Sen) in Washington invoked the treaty to demand free passage through the Johnstone Strait for American fishing vessels (nothing of the kind is guaranteed in the Oregon Treaty, or for that matter in the Alaska treaty either) and called on the US Navy to enforce the "international waterway" (which is all of a mile wide in spots). Thing is it was the US who passed legislation that attacked non-American ships using this route, i.e. the act that makes it so that preference is given to vessels sailing from American port to American port over those from a "foreign port" to an American port; this act was passed specifically to route the Yukon shipping trade through Seattle over Vancouver, even though it was Canadian/British waters that the route traversed.Skookum1 23:15, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
Just considering the opening statements; the treaty was actually between the British Empire, with the Dominion of Canada as a signatory party, IIRC; BC was not involved in the actual signing.
And just as aside the phrasing of the second condition of the treaty cited:
...is completely bizarre for anybody who's ever actually looked at a map of the coastline. The negotiators were in London and Washington and Ottawa, far away with only the dimmest idea of where they were talking about. Much the same as the Oregon Treaty, only worse; there "the deepest channel" seemed at least a bit logical, even though they didn't note the issues on the map with Point Roberts and the Gulf Islands/San Juans which make that border a bit of an absurdity; which so is the 49th Parallel from the Rockies west....that aside, the Alaska treaty issue cited is utterly bizarre; the Alaskan coast is a ragged array of inlets and bays, pierced by several large rivers. There is no "crest of the mountains", for one thing - other than crowsflight-drawn lines from high peak to high peak, which is what was done - because of those rivers, and because of the way the ranges and the terrain in the region are charted. "No more than ten leagues from the sea would yield a twisted, contorted, snaking boundary; Forts Taku and Stikine were to be British, that is, the estuary of those rivers was to be British; but they have silted in downstream in the century since and the old saltwater access intended in the treaty is no longer, and the boundary (of course) has not heen updated.
The British had imagined, in their arrangement with the Russians, that they had the mainland of what has since become the Panhandle, and the Russians had the archipelago - which, after all, is where all their bases other than Juneau were. Dyea and Skagway existed solely as access points to British/Canadian territory, and like Taku and Stikine it was assumed they were naturally British/Canadian in character; though whether part of Yukon or part of British Columbia nobody had bothered to sort out. BC's boundary had been stipulated at the 60th parallel since 1866 or so but nothing was carven in stone in Western Canada in this era, as the evolving boundaries of the Northwest Territories and Prairie Provinces serve to remind. The Americans turned out to be more aggressive in their claims, invoking Russian maps which showed everything to the Mackenzie Mountains and Rockies to be Russian. The Territory of Stickeen (sic) had been invoked in the course of the Alaska Purchase era in the 1860s to prevent American claims to the inland region of the about-to-be-no-longer-Russian sector of the Coast. It was quickly absorbed into British Columbia at the same time that the boundary was extended north to the 60th Parallel and east to the Peace River District. Even in the 1870s there were British Columbian politicians who imagined that the British Columbia boundary was somewhere east of Calgary, and several maps were published to that effect. They should have stipulated that in the Terms of Union, and given the stonewalling faced over the railway it's not as if something else wasn't owed in exchange for the obligations of the Terms not being fulfilled, while others were being interpreted too strongly.
One thing that's not often understood about the Russian claim, though it's not directly related to the circumstances of the treaty, is that the Russians had trading and ownership rights south of 54'40, all the way to their compromise with New Spain/Mexico, which had come out at the Oregon boundary despite settlements still down in the Russian River and Sebastopol area nearer the Bay; similarly the HBC had trading rights in the Alaska Panhandle, and the two fur companies pooled resources (even during the Crimean War, despite military preparations on both sides in the area) and the HBC was the Russian America Fur Company's main supply of dairy and other products. This did not include territorial political rights, only shared trading zones; and again, the British thought they had the whole mainland. Juneau, for instance, is on a virtual island because of the way it's hemmed in by the Juneau Icefield against the sea; it is totally marine in character and has no overland access to the outside world, nor any other town in the Panhandle; none of which have roads to the other - other than Skagway and Haines, but to get to the one from the other you have to go through Canada; and Hyder, which is accessed only through British Columbia and is hundreds of road miles from the nearest port to an Alaskan ferry.
The "BC Panhandle" - the lower Tatshenshini-Iskut basin, between Mount Fairweather and the Yukon border west of the Yukon passes and their ports - resulted as a part of the British/Canadian insistence on riparian access, that is, the right to access the sea via any of the major coastal rivers draining British territory.
Anyway, this long digression a spin off that "ten leagues from the sea" thing; the country in question was built by giants; the treaty was phrased by men who had no idea of the nature of the region, or its scale, and said something that was totally absurd as if it could become legal fact....the boundary as finally conceived in 1903 could not have been dreamt of in 1803 - between the necessary mountaineering/outdoors and surveyor skills, all that could have been attempted in such times is cardinal points on accessible ground.
As with my comments on the talk page at Oregon boundary dispute, this article has NPOV issues relating to US-biased perceptions/mythologies of the history. Example:
"The general area" in this case - from Ketchikan and the Portland Canal to Dyea/Haines/Skagway and the toe of the Malaspina Glacier to Whitehorse and Dawson - is larger than California. Much larger. 30,000 reached Dawson City in the first wave; how many were turned back at the White Pass or Chilkoot Pass for lack of supplies or carrying weapons, I'm not sure; how many there were in Skagway and Haines at any one time is a matter for estimates based on shipping records. What's certain is that the Americans in Skagway were dominated by a bunch of hoodlums under Soapy Smith. Smith and others of his ilk would have stormed the Yukon territory if not held back at the summit of the passes by the RNWMP's gatling guns; annexation a la California or a la Hawaii would have proceeded apace; don't forget Hawaii has only recently been illegally seized and annexed by the US, and the US was busy in a nasty imperialist war against Spain (under the guise of anti-imperialism, of course); Britain had every reason to get jumpy; Canada (meaning the central Canadian polity in TO, Ottawa and Mtl) every reason to want a compromise, as they would be the main battlefield of a US-Britain war at this time (other than the high seas). But that's what Roosevelt was threatening; found that out at the AMNH, actually, as a spin-off find of the fresco concerning TER's brokering of the Russo-Japanese Peace a few years later; not sure of the source but once I find it I'll post it of course.
Anyway, the quoted line needs reworking; 'mostly Americans' in the context here gives the impression of backing up the extreme US claims - which would have shut the British/Canadians off the summits of the passes and wound up with de facto annexation of the Yukon and northwestern BC/Atlin-Stikine areas. One glaring omission is that the original Russo-UK treaties specified British control of the Yukon ports and Stikine and Taku estuaries; and the US claims abrogated that. NPOV issues are really common in articles dealing with common US-Canada history; the San Juan Dispute comes to mind also, as well as the Oregon; and the Aroostook War comes off the same way in its current form. This is a failing of Canadian input as much as it is the usual blindness of American writers to other national perspectives; makes me think I should have a look over the Mexican-American War article to see how fairly (or not) the Mexican view is presented. Similarly, the annexation of California and Hawaii involve rather nasty political issues of the adventurist, filibustering kind; but I wonder if those state articles include anything about that.
Not that I want to dump on the Alaska Project, and I'm interested in learning more about specifics of Alaskan history (I'm in BC); but I do want to remind all writers for Wikipedia that the US view of history isn't the only view; and when writing articles concerning other Powers and their proxies the other points of view should be presented; this is not a US school textbook, but an open-input information resource not meant to have national biases or political ties. NonPOV right? Make it so.Skookum1 18:09, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
I'm the one who came forward with this, although I see someone else adjusted the language of my original item. Where I first came across it myself was - for some reason - during a visit to the AMNH in New York City, where the murals in the main lobby celebrate Roosevelt's involvement in ending the Russo-Japanese War; it may have been in bumpf from the museum, or in an article I was reading around that time (in what I admit to not remembering) and I remarked on it because I had never seen it mentioned before, which surprised me as I know my NW border histories fairly well; since then I've come across it again in a couple of local histories, albeit in different language than I remember it (which was an out-and-out ultimatum). So OK, I'll have to dig it up, short of finding an exhaustive history of the Alaska Boundary Dispute itself (several months ago I saw a really interesting book on Russo-British war concerns in the North Pacific, even after 1867, but didn't have the cash to buy it...).
The particular threat as it was "given" to me in whichever article, was that Roosevelt had threatened to invade and annex British Columbia if the US didn't get its way on the Yukon Ports and other aspects of the Boundary; the British were busy elsewhere in the world (esp. South Africa during the particular time period in question) and, while not liking to give ground to the US, contented themselves with control of the pass summits and the main goldfields. Such extremist threats are commonplace in PacNW history; such as Slade Gorton's demands (as if he'd had the authority to order it) for the US Navy to "force the Inside Passage" during the Salmon War of the 1990s. I don't think the British were all that worried about war; more they were dismayed by Roosevelt's lack of diplomatic couth in making such a threat; he was strutting tall after taking down the Spanish Empire by a few notches. I think what the connection to the AMNH might have been was to do with the idea that Roosevelt's pro-Japanese diplomacy in wound up plunking the Russians and British into an unlikely alliance, and it was the legacy of the Alaska Boundary Settlement that made the British view the Roosevelt's Russo-Japanese settlement somewhat warily; it may have been in whatever discussed that that the reference to invade and annex British Columbia was mentioned.
As for the other change to the article that there were "claims" that Canadian citizens were harrassed by US authorities and individuals, this is a truism and axiomatic to the history of the whole affair. Quick reference here is in Pierre Berton's Klondike, which discusses the various nastinesses of Soapy Smith and others, and also discusses the harrassment and regulation of British/Canadian-registered shipping accessing the Yukon ports (Skagway, Haines, Dyea); whatever that US shipping act that requires ships from one US port to another US port to not stop anywhere else, that was EXPLICITLY legislated to hurt shipping and freight companies in Victoria and Vancouver, favouring Seattle-Skagway (e.g.) over Vancouver-Skagway; even though nearly all traffic along the route was bound for British/Canadian territory (the Yukon), and Skagway and Haines et al were actually on disputed soil to start with (never mind that they were being run by a bunch of hooligans). So for THAT "claim" - that Canadians were harrassed by Americans during the dispute - I'll gladly cite Berton, and he's not alone......Skookum1 06:44, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
-- Beland 19:40, 30 April 2006 (UTC) Have to read it later.Skookum1 00:07, 15 May 2006 (UTC)
Is it OK to directly copy text from the http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0000107 site? AnonMoos 19:50, 14 May 2006 (UTC)
Please see RE BC & Pacific Northwest History Forum re: Talk:List of United States military history events#Border Commission troops in the Pacific Northwest. If you think maybe I should also move some or copy some of my other stuff from NW history and BC history pages let me know; I never mean to blog, but I'm voluble and to me everything's interconnected; never meaning to dominate a page so have made this area to post my historical rambles on. Thoughts?Skookum1
For the interest of anyone contributing to this page, I have copied into a sandbox page a passage in the British Columbia Chronicle Adventures by Sea and Land by Helen B. and G.P.V. Akrigg a few pages concerning the HBC-RAC agreement of 1839 in regard to the RAC leasing the mainland of the Panhandle to the HBC in return for a supply of foodstuffs and other considerations. Please see the relevant section on my BC & Pacific Northwest resources sandbox.Skookum1 23:33, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
Created a cleaned-up version of the map. Thought I'd post it here for comment before I actually changed anything. shaggy 14:35, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
Just re-looking at this map because of the query in teh following section (q.v.) and startled to realize the British claim is shown as running west from the head of hte Portland Canal, i.e. in such a way as to concede the mainland between the Canal and Revillagigedo; is that a latitude that the line shown uses? Or is it an error? Were the British ever prepared to give up the Portland Canal? Or am I just not readin the map right?Skookum1 (talk) 03:53, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
The text states "Canada was, however, entitled to a consolation prize in obtaining a triangle of land called the Panhandle (the Tatshenshini-Alsek region of British Columbia)" When I look at the map I do not see any area that increases the Canadian claim. The T-A area itself appears to be smaller than the Canadian claim. Is it a consolation prize to not be as big a loser as we could have been? Could someone explain the given statement. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.157.5.156 (talk) 01:30, 19 May 2008 (UTC)
Missing in that paragraph is something about how in that time period the port and passes at the head of the Lynn Canal had already become the main way in and out of the Yukon, few though were the hardy souls who went there, including the Klondike's discovers; but at that time, as pending BC ever since 1871 and before assuming that, as per deals with the Russians, the accesses into the Interior, either by the Stikine and Taku or via these passes, were to be under British control and open for their use. I know there wasn't British/BC settlement at Skagway or Haines or Dyea, but what was going on there in the years in question? It should be understood from the British Columbian perspective - already having lost "Southern Columbia" and the San Juans, was pretty sensitive about losing even more land to the US because of a distant capital's indifference and diplomatic power-brokering (Ottawa was involved in this case, but so also was London who had also been a player in the Oregon and San Juan fiascos); it's a blip in Canadian history; I was struck by the US not wanting a survey originally because of costs; then pushing an extreme survey line when the time came. Needless to say, Canadian control of the Yukon Ports, which need definition in the article as a term and context, would have been beneficial to the Yukon economy, and perhap might have wound up in a Province of Yukon, or Yukon as a result of BC control of its ports might have become, as so often proposed, absorbed into BC (which Yukoners don't want, never have, never will from waht I understand). It also implies that coastal shipping and shipbuilding would have been concentrated in Victoria and Vancouver rather than around Puget Sound, as the US port-to-port laws established in order to deal with control of Klondike traffic (since in US eyes the ports were already American, de facto by population even if not de jure in terms of int'l law), and a different story to BC's marine economy is a good bet; that we've never exercised our treaty rights over Forts Stikine and Taku is a pity, not that shipping on the Stikine is a going concern these days or anything ;-). Anyway, original query/request is for a bit more on who was using/living at Haines/Skagway/Dyea during those years; something to fill in 1871 to 1898.... Skookum1 01:50, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
Or some other nifty title, as there's more issues in question in this than just the conflict on Porcupine Creek. And I'd like to dig up the London Times or whatever Vancouver paper - the News-Advertiser? -no, in '99 I think it was The World (Vancouver newspaper) or certainly The Province, or the Victoria Colonist or Columbian (newspaper), to get the British/Canadian reportage of the same events. That there was actual conflict on the round and, as in the opening paragraph, a clash between the powers, fits with the Rooseveltian threat and also Britain's own erstwhile hard line; they should have known from their San Juans experience that arbitration would be a bummer. My only other personal source/reading on the conflict over customs stations in the passes is fro Pierre Berton and he gives a copletley different portrait. But again, I'd like to read the reportrage/propaganda for the other position here; I can see for example that for practicality customs stations in ountain areas are located at relatively habitable spots, which the cols of passes in general really aren't; especially in teh Coast Ranges. It was yes because of the boundary dispute the official presence was oved to what was already perceivedd - by the British - as their frontier; they had just set up at a civilized distance from it; ideally they viewed Skagway andHaines as their rightful ports but had never had agents of any kind there; their bad...gonna burn my porridge maybe back, enjoy the article. ....Skookum1 (talk) 05:05, 22 March 2008 (UTC)
The removal of the Tarr Inlet and (ofr now) Portland Canala sections by User:van helsing I can deal with, but not the censorship of the Dixon Entrance matter. This is citable simply by looking at a comparison of NTS and USGS maps, with the latter showing US drilling leases in waters that aren't the property of the US. The Dixon Entrance page is a wikicite for this also, and lately I seem to recall various webrefs about it; it's a well-known diplomatic "dispute" between the US and Canada (meaning hta Ottawa keeps it on the backburner as leverage on other issues but it never gets resolved for fear of upsetting Frank Murkowski....). There might be some rationale-wording that needs changing in the removed text:
...but I doubt most people familiar with the boundary and its history would claim that this dispute does not exist. The US violated the treaty, period. That it might not be possible to find a Canadian diplomat or interntaional jurist to ffer a legal/diplomatic opninion is irrelevant. The sentences following the quoted section about the Portland Canal are why the particulars of the treaty in that area were among the thorniest of the dispute; the US wanted to block off Canadian access to known mineral resources and also one of the few routes from the Coast to teh Interior north of the Nass. Whatever; I don't have time to look this material up and it's unlikely to be in libraries in Halifax, where I am now.....I would have appreciated Van Helsing's vampire-hunting a bit more if he'd done some legwork BEFORE "enforcing" the unrefernced tag; i.e. had gone looking for refs/reasons why those cmoments were there. The A-B Line dispute is not going to go away simply because an uninformed Wikipedia editor didnt' like the look of its story.Skookum1 (talk) 12:53, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
I didn't think to look up Alexander Begg online before, though I'd seen his tome in the old bookstore/library shelves for years alongside Howay and Reid and Bancroft and Ormsby et al.....so I was delighted to find a selection of his writing, mostly concerning the North-West Territory and the Metis Rebellions, plus his one big opus on a general history of BC to date; but among thetm I found this:
Which turns out to be chockful of useful detail, even in its preface/introduction. The appendices or "annexusres" as he styles them include newspaper editorials, diplomatic papers (from both sides), treaty materials, discussion of Russo-Briitsh relations and intent, and lots more; in the intro there's tidbits of clues as to where else to look - the Canadian Hansard July 4, 1895 - he quotes from a speech by a BC Member of Parliament who he tactfully does not name (the Member made an ass of himself with bad history/geography of his home province, something we usual slag Easterners for) but who can be found out from Hansard of course, but it seems that US relations were debated on that day, and there may be other debates and speeches quotable here, to match the US-content bulk of the article....if only the Oregon Treaty had been treated in such a thorough fashion by him or another, alas no....there are also comemnts in his intro about the equanimity of Canadian and British press towards the debate, vs the outright hostility towards the British of American editorials. Begg was commissioned to write this for the Candian Ministry of Finance at the time, apparently also responsible for the dispute (maybe no Foreign Minister at the time...that would have been a job still for Westminster before Canadians took over diplomatic matters with the Statutes of WEstminter much later). Even the intro's an eye-opener, but the resources look fascinating....the intro has too much for me to try to condenses into a section; hopefully y'all will have a read and find places to add bits into the article; I'm very curious about what the article says about Clarence Strait and Portland Channel vs. Portland Canal now....have a read!Skookum1 (talk) 03:28, 13 July 2008 (UTC)
Just browsing these at present, but on this page of his Statement of Facts a very different British claim-line is shown from the one on the map currently on this article. Begg's main points of difference are that the original treaty (1825) specified Cape Chacon, not Cape Muzon, as the start of the boundary line, and that the terms Portland Channel and Portland Canal were deliberately confused by the US Secretary of State Bayard, with the meaning of Portland Channel in 1825 referring to Clarence Strait, not the Portland Canal which was unknown at the time; Etolin Island he notes as having originally been Duke of York Island, also. Begg wrote three treatises on this, most with all the same points, though successively in 1896, 1900 and 1902, all official reports with two (1896 and 1902) written to federal and provincial cabeint ministers, respectively. Another item in Begg that's passed over here and in other histories is the Ukase of 1821 which claimed to 51 degrees N and also involved the Bering Sea Arbitration. The Ukase looks to need its own article, as it also invovles the rights of the Russian Orthodox Church in the region. Anyway, the map clearly needs to be changed; the linked map gives a good idea by how much.Skookum1 (talk) 19:02, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
[undent]I just had a closeup look and it looks as though that one line up the lower part of Clarence Strait splits west of Revillagigedo, with one version of it going up Behm Canal....and joining the redline on your map at its western end (the one the caption of the map says Line 4), the one going west from Stewart to the Behm Canal, is the claim as pressed by British Columbia (not London or Ottawa necessarily) in 1900 (190x anyway, kidna smudgy) so maybe BC had amended the claim by then....Line 4 is as shown on a map publ. in the Edinburgh Review in 1900. Line 1 is the line according to "based on the treaty" [by] "experts" (? - smudgy again); interesting that Line 2 goes further inland than the Line 4 from Edinburgh; the surrender of Revillagigedo and the continentnal mass containing the Adam Mountains weste of teh Portland Canal and south of the Unuk is implicit in the map; I'll have to re-read Begg's text to see if he even mentions this line, I didn't notice it previously. I do note that 4 gives a bit more of the Lynn Canal to the US than line 2 does; I think the intent there was to give the US one potential port (Dyea) while keeping Skagway and Haines ("the Yukon Ports").....if things had been settled that way, the catfight between Ottawa and Victoria over whether or not these ports were BC's or should be part of the Yukon Territory would have been fun to watch....Skookum1 (talk) 18:22, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
The holdings list looks interesting - here but only some is available online; thosse first listings look to be the official Canadian position (NB. distinct from London's and Victoria's). Posting this here in case any eager beaver or legal eagle out there has the resources to order copies.....Skookum1 (talk) 16:01, 16 July 2008 (UTC)
Huh, I'll have to look closer for the date on that map I guess; as Begg only mentions the redline in relation to the Edinburgh Review edition of 1900 (1899/8?) so maybe this is after that came into print. For purposes of discussion, but not the article as it's a coinage, I'm going to refer to the line claimed by BC and expounded in Begg's various publications as the Bagot-Canning Line - the greenline on your other map, claimed by BC to represent the local meaning/interpretation of the treaty's wording/intent; for whatever reason both Ottawa and London looked the other way on BC's protestations - too much at stake elsewhere in their mutual spheres of competition and with other empires/places to risk too hard of a line here, as also was the case with the Columbia/Oregon and San Juans disputes (in which a concessional British opening position was met with contempt by the Americans, and that's not a POV statement but rather an account of one, in Begg). I'm going to start a sandbox to work up a "Origins of the dispute" or "Background to the dispute" (starting with the Ukases of 1799 and 1871 on the Russian side and Cook's and Vancouver's voyages/claims on the British, plus also of course mention of the pre-Napoleonic Spanish interests in the area). The next section would be on the Hudson's Bay lease (1838 I think) and associated forts (Taku/Durham, Stikine/San Dionisio (and apparently also Tongas, which I've come across mention of...), then in the section from the Alaska Purchase to the Klondike Gold Rush (which precipitated the confrontation and settlement) addition of the details from Begg about Buchanan's coinage of the meaning of "Portland Channel" and BC's ongoing protestations/appeals to Ottawa and London for a settlement to be obtained, then Begg's description of hte BC point of view that "those parts of British Columbia lost in the settlement", i.e. east/northeast of the Bagot-Canning Line, had been subject to squatting by American settlers and entrepreneurs and military forces and should not have been so easily tolerated; it would be synthesis to say outright on the article, but I'll say it here, that the situation was similar to that which had prevailed in California and Hawaii and elsewhere; an American migration backed by a coup of legalities - the legality in this case being hte meaning of the boundary as on the one hand perceived by the BC government (if not ultimately by the imperial Crown) vs the one taken as the meaning by the Americans as the meaning of the Russian tenure they had bought....in this case, unlike Hawaii and California, the insurrection was backed up by the existence of the sale, and the American preoccupation with denying and denouncing American British claims as malevolent and aggressive (Begg says this, I'm only recounting it here but in retrospect....). Then in the section on the negotiations I'll put in mentions (only) of BC's submissions to the federal government and London, the Premier's address and I have to find out more about the role/position of hte Finance Minister whom Begg appealed to.....that's a rundown of some fairly complex issues I have to boil down into readable and NPOV form before adding them; once done the map showing hte Green Line/Bagot-Canning Line can be moved ot the main page; I may come up with an interim short-form mention of hte line so the map can be adjusted. Other maps showing British activity and the lease and so on come to mind also....Skookum1 (talk) 19:11, 26 August 2008 (UTC)
There are other passages in Begg's books, including news articles and editorials from various papers, which talk about such incidents; in teh paragraph cited (at the top of that page) he alludes to the establishment of customs houses to intercept Britons en route to the Stikine Territory (British) at Tongas and Mary Islands, and the references to "Skaguay" [sic] and Porcupine are in ref to the imposition of US authority over Britons in areas already claimed/presume to be part of BC (and British, i.e. HBC, since 1825...), although in the Porcupine's case he's talking about he Battle of the Porcupine above. Actual dispossession or intimidation fo British /Canadian settlers on the mainland/islands east of the proper Portland Channel (Clarence Strait) is also an issue elsewhere in Begg, and also in other tidbits I've seen here and there; likewise the establishment of canneries drawing on resources that should have been run by British interests is in teh same ffect of "disallowing property", or rather pre-empting it; the conversion of Fort Stikine into a US military base, given that that island (Duke of York Island, now Etolin Island) was also perceived (by BC) as being part of British territory. There's more in Begg overall that I just haven't had time to add to the article; a bit too complex to condense; and the Anglo-Russian Treaty of 1825 has many aspects that have to be written up, and the Ukase of 1821 (and the Ukase of 1799) to even begin putting forward the British Columbian position and BC's frustration with latter-era re-interpretations/distortions of the 1825 treaty; another reassignment of treaty geography was t he shift of the start-point from Cape Chacon to Cape Muzon, without which Begg says BC should have had Dall Island (among others). "There are claims that....etc" is rather a POV wording, given that American authority in the disputed area was imposed by a combination of occupation by armed forces and mass immigration by squatters", as the BC government styled them. the Victoria Colonist article cited by Begg in one of the books insinuates - without doing so - that the transference of the meaning of Portland Channel to Portland Canal, and the confusion of the two names, was done only upon the American purchase of the Russian claims; he also points out a key clause missing in the deed of sale that was present in the Treaty of 1825. And taht's just for starters........from a BC point of view, this was a land grab worse than that of the Oregon Territory and similar to the seizure of California and Hawaii...This article can not be put forward for Featured ARticle or Good Article status until all this is included, and more (similarly with the Oregon boundary article, and the San Juan...). It's important for all this to be here; howevermuch inconvenient to today's political realities/predilections. Ottawa still doesn't care, Victoria's long learned not to......Skookum1 (talk) 05:38, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
I just found a passage in Begg which talks about that line, as appearing without explanation in an extensive article in the Edinburgh Review; he seems surprised by its emergence; it seems to hvae been attempt to make sense of the terms of the treaty specifying a mainland land-fall of the boundary at the 56th Parallel while still mollifying the Ameircan claims to the Portland Canal.....complicated, you'd have to read Begg to get it all; but he, again, doesn't understand why the line was published as it wasn't the British position, eiether ass defined by Bagot and Canning in 1824-25 or in the later capitulations to American reinterpretations....it's only, it seems, that one map. His comments about CPR and Dominion maps are extensive, but you'll hve to read the whole thing to find all of them.....Skookum1 (talk) 05:47, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
Hi; anyone interested in background might want to read this and browse the document linked/ref'd there.Skookum1 (talk) 23:30, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
See Talk:Atlin District and follow the storyline indicated by the New York Times headlines assembled there; I'll be adding a section to this article on 'disputed areas" and/or "scenes of conflict" or some such; early on the NYT referred to Atlin and its region as part of BC; by 1900 it was saying "Atlin, Alaska"...this, the Bennett Lake area, Porcupine River/Lower Stikine and Salmon River/Bear River were all nexes of the dispute on-the-ground; somewhere also Pyramid Harbour, one of the "Yukon Ports" is specifically mentioned, also....Skookum1 (talk) 04:00, 28 February 2009 (UTC)
Just thought I would point out that there may be a problem with the article's title. This article primarly talks about the 1821-1903 boundary dispute between Canada and the United States. But there have been more recent boundary disputes since this one began. A notable and ongoing example is the Dixon Entrance boundary between the Alaska Panhandle and the Queen Charlotte Islands. This can also be considered an Alaska boundary dispute. Thus, the current title is conflicting between these two boundary disputes. I suggest this article should be renamed to flow with the 1821-1903 dispute. Also, the article currently states that the 1821-1903 boundary dispute was a territorial dispute between the United States and Canada (then a British Dominion with its foreign affairs controlled from London), and at a subnational level between District of Alaska on the U.S. side and British Columbia on the Canadian side. From looking at the map, the southwesternmost portion of Yukon was associated with the dispute as well but it does not mention anything about it. It would be nice if these issues could be solved. BT (talk) 22:10, 22 June 2010 (UTC)
I've already included Begg's histories of the background to the dispute, but he is admittedly a POV source, having been hired by the British Columbia government to advance that province's position, namely being that shared by Trutch that the "Portland Channel" of the treaty is not the Portland Canal, but the Chatham Strait et al. and that the land boundary only began at 56-13, i.e. such that the mouth of the Stikine and all mainland south of it, and adjoining islands, was in fact in British territory. Howay & Scholefield discuss this and detail the origins of that argument (Trutch seems to have been the first in the colonial era to mention it; Simpson had had to deal with it in 1834-1839 after the Russians similarly interfered in British access to the STikine). The book linked here has details of teh various proposals and some of the hostile US resolutions towards the British, and material from it, once there's time to add it to this article, will help balance the focus on USPOV and US content here; I was hoping they would have some details on the disputes and violence in the Atlin District, on the STikine, and around Skagway, but no - though they do give details of teh harrassment of marine traffic and US measures to fortify/defend the area between the Stikine and Dixon Entrance; well worth a read. It also details out the selection and composition of the tribunal and the US betrayal of the terms of reference of that tribunal to appoint non-partisan jurists (the US did exactly the opposite).Skookum1 (talk) 18:36, 27 December 2010 (UTC)
RE this, there's a short passage in the chapter from Scholefield & Howay I just added, towards its end, you could use to cite that; I don't have the patience to read it again this morning (as i did "through" this morning over coffee). Not sure that resentment context belongs in the lede though.....Skookum1 (talk) 21:21, 27 December 2010 (UTC)
According to chapter 5 of The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers by Paul Kennedy, this was one of several concessions that the U.K. offered to the U.S. (the others being on fisheries and the Panama Canal) as part of a general policy of reducing colonial frictions (including the Anglo-Japanese alliance of 1902), which cleared the decks for diplomatic action in Europe, ultimately leading to the U.K.-France "Entente Cordiale" of 1904... AnonMoos (talk) 16:44, 22 August 2011 (UTC)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified one external link on Alaska boundary dispute. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.
This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template ((source check))
(last update: 5 June 2024).
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 20:43, 29 June 2017 (UTC)
The line shown as the British position is incorrect; that was only a map come up with by the editor of the Edinburgh Review, based on his [confused] interpretation of the wording of the Anglo-Russian treaty that established Cape Muzon/54-40 as the latitudinal boundary, but "Clarence Channel" as being the northward marine boundary from there; the confusion arising from the mistaken use of the Portland Canal as the route of the boundary even though that's eastward from Cape Muzon. The notes made by Bagot and Canning detail out what the wording actually meant, as this concluding summary in Begg's Review of the Alaska Boundary Question lays out, mentioning Etolin Island and more - indicating Clarence Strait as it's called today; although maps were very detailed, thanks to Captain Vancouver (who made claim over the whole archipelago all the way to Cross Sound and Icy Strait five years before Tsar Paul declared Russian America), what's Duke of York Island in those notes is I think Wrangell Island, for example.
Where a line drawn northward along the 132nd line of longitude from Cape Muzon actually hits the mainland is shy of 56 degrees north and is located southeast of Etolin Island; this is the intersection of the 56th parallel and 132nd meridian. So, a strict interpretation of the treaty without deviation was not observed; and no map published of the treaty's result and intent.... Begg was hired by the Turner government to assert BC's case, but 1898-1903 were years of political turmoil in British Columbia, and its case ignored and misunderstood by London and Ottawa - and misrepresented by the editor of the Edinburgh Review. Britain's actual position more resembled today's boundary and went overland from Stewart up the divide of the Boundary Ranges to the Stikine, and originally included the Yukon Ports though they quickly yielded on that given American occupation of same. The Review of the Alaska Boundary Question linked above includes discussions of the seizure of Wales and Pearse Islands and also the Porcupine River battles near Klukwan.... and details the story of Atlin, which for a while no one was sure if it was 60 leagues from the sea or not (it's not). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.55.69.14 (talk) 03:01, 17 December 2017 (UTC)