Alaska Boundary Dispute - Arbitration

Arbitration

The posts set up on the passes by the Mounties were effective in the short term - the provisional boundary was accepted, if grudgingly. In September 1898, serious negotiations began between the United States and Canada to settle the issue, but those meetings failed.

Finally, in 1903, the Hay-Herbert Treaty between the U.S. and Britain entrusted the decision to an arbitration by a mixed tribunal of six members: three Americans, two Canadians, and one Briton. The American representatives were Elihu Root, Henry Cabot Lodge and George Turner; Sir Louis Jetté and Sir Allen Bristol Aylesworth represented Canada, and Lord Alverstone was the British representative.

The main legal points at issue were which definition of the coastal range should be chosen as the basis of the boundary and whether the "ten marine leagues", 30 nautical miles (35 mi; 56 km), should be measured from the heads of the fjords or from a baseline which would cut across the mouths of the fjords.

The British member Lord Alverstone sided with the United States position on these basic issues, although the final agreed demarcation line fell significantly short of the maximal U.S. claim (it was a compromise falling roughly between the maximal U.S. and maximal British/Canadian claim). The Panhandle (the Tatshenshini-Alsek region) was not quite exclaved from the rest of British Columbia.

This was one of several concessions that Britain offered to the U.S. (the others being on fisheries and the Panama Canal). It was part of a general policy of ending the chill in Anglo-U.S. relations, achieving rapprochement, winning American favour and resolving outstanding issues (The Great Rapprochement).