The
Alaska 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
Alaska on the U.S. side and
British Columbia and the
Yukon on the Canadian side. It was resolved by arbitration in 1903. The dispute was inherited by the United States as a consequence of the
Alaska purchase and had been ongoing between the Russian and British Empires since 1821.
[1]In 1825 Russia and Britain signed a treaty to define the borders of their respective colonial possessions. Part of the wording of the treaty was that
The rather vague phrase "the mountains parallel to the coast" was further qualified thus
This part of the treaty language was really an agreement on general principles for establishing a boundary in the area in the future, rather than any exact demarcated line.
