The Pig War: The United States, Britain, and the Balance of Power in the Pacific Northwest, 1846-72 (review)
- The Pig War: The United States, Britain, and the Balance of Power in the Pacific Northwest, 1846–72
On the margins of British and United States interests as of the year 1846 no diplomats in London or Washington, D.C., cared for the fortunes of an archipelago known as the San Juan Islands lying between the continental shore and Vancouver Island. The Treaty of Washington of that year specified the middle of the channel to be the international boundary but what that channel was remained in dispute. In fact, in the crisis of 1859 that is explained in this book the contending parties had very different concepts about the matter. It was finally decided by arbitration by none other than the Kaiser of Germany. But in the interim a considerable storm arose about the demarcation and about San Juan Island in particular.
On the island in question an American farmer named Cutler had an errant pig, one that trespassed on the lands of the ancient Hudson's Bay Company, which otherwise ran the island as a fiefdom. An HBC servant shot the pig, and created a storm between the parties. The U.S. Army was deployed from Fort Vancouver and Puget Sound. The British governor in Victoria, Douglas, threatened to land troops (though he had none to spare), and the Royal Navy based on Esquimalt, near Victoria, sent steamers and gunboats to show the flag and keep British interests inviolate. "Tut, tut, no, no, the damned fools!" is what Admiral Baynes, R.N., is supposed to have said when he heard about Douglas's foolish plan. In the end, all tempers were calmed, and the metropolitan administrations and diplomats agreed to submit the issue to arbitration. In the end, it was hydrographical information rather than customary use of the main channel (Rosario) that counted. Haro Strait, adjacent to Vancouver Island, was the main channel for water flow, and so at the end of the day the middle of the channel was defined by physical geography and marine matters, not history.
This review of the subject extends the research base into some little known archives but in the end does not advance any more significant or new [End Page 1258] interpretation than previously explained by such writers as Keith Murray (1968) or the preferred James McCabe (1964).
