That land border follows the 141st meridian west, as agreed in the 1825 Treaty of St. The dispute is about a wedge-shaped area north of where the border between Alaska and the Yukon territory reaches the sea. The Beaufort Sea: two bald men fighting over a toupee It is unclear whether this area is expressly “ungoverned” or not. That means it constitutes an area of negative sovereignty, similar to the Bir Tawil triangle between Egypt and Sudan (see also Strange Maps # 396). The triangle-shaped one in the middle is interesting because it is not part of the Canadian claim or the American one. But the core issue has not been resolved.Īs the map shows, the gray area is divided into three contiguous zones on either side of the Canadian claim line. There’s even a telephone hotline where crews can report violations of standing agreements. In 1997, things came to a head when Canadian fishermen blockaded an Alaskan ferry, effectively holding its passengers hostage for three days. As recently as the 1990s, competition between Canadian and American fishermen in the grey zone boiled over into so-called “salmon wars,” both sides occasionally arresting each others’ crews. To catch them, fishermen from each side follow the laws of their own country. Each year, several species squeeze through the narrow Dixon Entrance to return to the rivers of the mainland to spawn. One of the reasons the matter is so hard to resolve is the area’s Pacific salmon. Those are the claims that both governments are still sticking to today. This cuts the Dixon Entrance in two, the north going to the U.S., the south to Canada. As far as they were concerned, the A-B Line was relevant for the land border the sea border ran well south of the line, as per maritime law. This left most of the Dixon Entrance on the Canadian side of the line.īut that was not how the Americans saw it. The so-called A-B Line ran from Cape Muzon - the southernmost point on Dall Island, Alaska’s southernmost island - east toward the mainland. The arbitration also specified Alaska’s maritime border with Canada. They blamed the British, who had negotiated the deal on their behalf, but favored better relations with the U.S. If the border had been a bit more in their favor, they would have had direct sea access to the Yukon goldfields. The Canadians, however, were still unhappy. The panhandle’s current land border is 35 miles (56 km) east of where the ocean touches the coast, somewhere in the middle between both extreme claims. The ABD was settled by international arbitration in 1903. When the Americans purchased Alaska from the Russians in 1867, they inherited that simmering conflict - which became serious enough to acquire capital letters: the Alaska Boundary Dispute. The Brits imagined a very thin panhandle, the Russians a very fat one. But because much of the panhandle’s rugged terrain was still unsurveyed, the actual course of the border remained vague. Polk’s campaign slogan, “Fifty-four forty or fight!” but that’s another story). (The treaty later gave rise to former President James K. It set 54° 40’ north as the southern limit of Russian America’s panhandle. Signed halfway across the world, that agreement between Russia and Britain drew a line between their interests in the northwest of North America. Squint, and you can spot today’s border between Alaska and Canada in the map annexes to the 1825 Treaty of St Petersburg. The present conflict has its roots with yet another set of rivals: Russia and Britain. The neighbors are still in disagreement, but their names now are the U.S. In pre-contact times, local tribes feuded over access to these marine resources. The waters in between are rich with fish, attracting orcas, albatrosses, and humans. The archipelago’s northernmost island is still referred to as Graham Island, perhaps because its Haida name is a bit of a mouthful: X_aaydag_a Gwaay.yaay linag_waay in X_aayda Kil. To the south of the Dixon Entrance lies Canada’s Haida Gwaii archipelago, known as the Queen Charlotte Islands until 2010.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |