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Disputed Territory in the Pacific Northwest: Indigenous, American, and British Claims

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  • First Online:
Global Encyclopedia of Territorial Rights

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Definition

European and American assertions of territorial sovereignty over the Pacific Northwest date mainly from the latter half of the eighteenth century. Conflicts between Britain and the United States over the location of the boundary between their respective territorial claims in the region were eventually settled by the 1846 Washington Treaty, which drew the international boundary along the 49th parallel from the Rocky Mountains to the coast. However, examination of applicable nineteenth-century international law reveals the weakness of American and British (now Canadian) claims to de jure sovereignty over the region. Moreover, although the United States and Great Britain thought they could rely on the doctrines of terra nullius and discovery to negate Indigenous sovereignty and law and claim territorial title for themselves, those discredited doctrines are not acceptable bases for American and Canadian sovereignty today. Treaties with the Indigenous peoples are therefore...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Kent McNeil

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  1. Kent McNeil
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Correspondence to Kent McNeil .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political Studies, Queens University, Kingston, ON, Canada

    Michael Kocsis

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  1. University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

    Kevin W. Gray

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McNeil, K. (2020). Disputed Territory in the Pacific Northwest: Indigenous, American, and British Claims. In: Kocsis, M. (eds) Global Encyclopedia of Territorial Rights. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68846-6_561-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68846-6_561-1

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