Territory claims between Canada and the United States

The North American states of Canada and the United States of America have been raising controversial territorial claims to territories and waters along the common border since the 18th century .

history

The area dispute is a legacy of the American War of Independence and the Seven Years' War that separated British North America into the British colonies and the United States of America. In the Peace of Paris (1783) , which followed the Seven Years War, the limit was set. At that time, however, the western part of what is now the United States was not yet developed, so that the demarcation of some areas left room for different interpretations.

Other disputes arise from interpretable formulations in the Treaty of St. Petersburg (1825) , in which Russia and Great Britain determined the demarcation between their North American territories. When the United States acquired Alaska from Russia in 1867, they also inherited the 1825 demarcation line with all disputes.

Both countries lay claim to the following areas or bodies of water (exclusively in continental America):

Machias Seal Island / North Rock

The islands Machias Seal Iceland and North Rock lying off the east coast between the Province of New Brunswick (Canada) and the State of Maine (United States) in the Gulf of Maine . The dispute arises from two contradicting border agreements:

In the Peace of Paris (1783) the United States was granted all islands in the Gulf of Maine no further than 20 soul eyes (60 nautical miles ) from the territory of the United States, provided that they did not belong to the territory of Nova Scotia . Machias Seal Island is in this zone.

In the land charter, with which Sir William Alexander was granted the territory of Nova Scotia as a settlement area for his first Scottish colony in 1621 , the border with the then Massachusetts Bay Colony was defined as the line between the northwestern tip of today's Nova Scotia Peninsula through the Bay of Fundy to the mouth of the St. Croix River and all "islands and waters that are close to or no more than six soul eyes" (18 nautical miles) from this limit.

The wording of the document from 1621 is so vague and imprecise, also with regard to the starting point of the said line, that, depending on the interpretation, the island falls to either one or the other territory. North Rock, 2.5 nautical miles north of Machias Seal Island, is part of the same dispute.

When the two states went to the International Court of Justice in The Hague in 1979 to settle the border issue in the Gulf of Maine in the Georges Bank area , the Machias Seal Island issue was explicitly excluded by referring to a starting point southwest of the island agreed for the delimitation to be decided by the court. In this way, since the end of the proceedings in 1984, there has been a de facto gap several dozen kilometers long in the maritime border between the two countries. In the middle of this "gray area" are Machias Seal Island and North Rock.

Dixon Entrance

The coast of Northwest America - Dixon Entrance is roughly in the middle

Course of the AB line (left) and the US perception of the maritime border (right)

The Dixon Entrance is a 50 × 80 km wide body of water between the Alexander Archipelago in Alaska (United States) in the north and the Haida Gwaii archipelago in the south, which is part of the Canadian province of British Columbia .

The cause of today's dispute is the demarcation between Russian America (now Alaska) and Great Britain in the Treaty of St. Petersburg (1825). This agreement was imprecise, but neither party considered a more precise definition necessary, as the areas affected were very sparsely populated and economically insignificant.

It was only with the gold rush on the Klondike River in the 1890s that the region gained in importance and required precise delimitation of the territories in order to be able to divide up raw material deposits. As a result, in 1903 a commission of inquiry consisting of three negotiators each from the USA and Canada was formed to clarify the open questions about the border in the Alaska Panhandle . The commission also used the original notes of the explorer George Vancouver , who first explored the island and fjord landscape in detail in 1793. It was agreed to lay the border in a straight line from Cape Muzon on Dall Island (named point A in the final report) to the end of the Tongass Canal, which runs between Wales Island and Sitklan Island (point B). This so-called AB line became the subject of today's dispute.

The AB line is the northernmost boundary line of the Dixon Entrance, so that after the arbitration of 1903 the entire waterway would fall to Canada. This is also the view of the Canadian government, according to which the border issue has been clearly resolved since then. In the eyes of the US government, however, the AB line only represents the division of land areas and is not to be seen as a fixed sea border. According to the equidistance principle that is quite common in modern international law, this would have to be roughly in the middle of the waterway. In fact, modern official US maps depict a unilaterally defined “Exclusive Economic Zone Boundary” that reflects the United States' view of the boundary.

The increase in the use of the rich fishing grounds in this area as well as the development of the suspected raw material deposits has recently repeatedly led to direct confrontations, in which fishing boats were temporarily locked up. The course of the border in the Dixon Entrance also has a decisive influence on the course of the border of the 200 nautical miles economic zone, which has gained in importance in recent years due to the planned exploitation of raw materials on the continental slopes. The conflict is currently exacerbated by American submarines using the Dixon Entrance as access to a newly built US base on Back Island.

Beaufortsee

The Beaufort Sea ( Beaufort Sea ) is a maritime waters between the Northwest Territories ( Yukon , Canada) and Alaska (United States).

Juan de Fuca street

The Strait of Juan de Fuca ( Strait of Juan de Fuca ) is a waterway between British Columbia (Canada) and Washington (United States) in the region Pacific Northwest .

Others

The border is 8,891 km, the longest non-military oversaw international territorial border in the world.

literature

“THE PORTLAND CHANNEL; Lord Alverstone's Judgment as to What Constitutes It. His Reasons for Deciding That It Runs North of Pearse and Wales Islands and South of Sitklan Island. "In The New York Times , October 29, 1903, p. 8.

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