Борьба Канады за суверенитет в Арктике: история и современность - Дмитрий Анатольевич Володин

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Overview

The present book is an attempt to deal in detail with Canada’s many and varied claims to certain territories and spaces in the Arctic. This in turn necessitated the establishment of the most possible chronological framework of the work: from the early 1870s (practically from the establishment of the Dominion of Canada) to the early 2020s. Moreover, the narrative actually begins even earlier, as the role of Great Britain in the discovery and exploration of Arctic territories in North America in the first half of the nineteenth century, and then in the transfer of these territories to Canada, is also considered.

Part I. Struggle for peace, as seen from the title is about Canada’s claim to land in the Arctic. This part includes five chapters and covers mainly the period 1860s–1940s.

Chapter 1. “British heritage. It’s noted that Britain played a leading role in the discovery of Canada and the study of its northern regions. Canada’s sovereignty over its Arctic territories arose from Britain’s right to them. The transformation of Canada into an Arctic Power was the result of the desire of Great Britain to unite all of its possessions in North America into a single whole in order to prevent the United States from seizing them. Since these British possessions in 1850s had a different legal status and the vast majority of the territory of present-day Canada belonged not to Britain itself but to its private company (Hudson’s Bay Company), a different mechanism was used to include these territories in the dominion. In 1870 The Hudson’s Bay Company sold Rupert’s Land and the North-Western Territory to Canada and then in 1880 Britain transferred its Arctic islands to the dominion. Britain refused to indicate accurately the boundaries of the territory transferred. The ease with which Britain ceded all of its Arctic possessions to Canada was partly because these little-explored lands were not considered too valuable asset.

Сhapter 2. Canadian Arctic expeditions in the early 20th century. The increased presence of American whalers on the islands of the Arctic Archipelago at the end of the 19th century forced Canada to take active steps to protect its sovereignty on this territory. The Canadian government perceived the problem of sovereignty in the Arctic as the existence of two separate problem zones in the east and in the west of the country and took this into account in its activities in this region. At the end of 1902 under the direction of Minister of the Interior C. Sifton the first strategy was developed to protect Canada’s sovereignty in the Arctic. In 1903 this strategy was supported by Prime Minister W. Laurier, and in 1904 Parliament voted to allocate 200 thousand dollars for its implementation. For 20 years (1897–1918), Canada sent 7 expeditions to the Arctic, created the first police posts and strengthened customs control in its Far North, introduced fee for whaling in Canadian Arctic waters. All these actions were a demonstration of its effective occupation of these islands. But in Canada there were supporters of an alternative approach to assertion of sovereignty in the Far North. Captain J. Bernier and Senator P. Poirier proposed to divide the entire Arctic into sectors between the countries of the region. As a result Canada would automatically be entitled to all the land in its sector. During this period Canada oficf ially did not refer to the sector theory in order to prove its rights to the islands north of Canada.

Chapter 3. Canada’s territorial disputes in the Arctic in 1920s. In the 1920s Canada was involved in a series of territorial disputes in the Arctic. In the course of these conflicts – with Denmark over the island of Ellesmere; with Russia and the USA for Wrangel Island; with the United States for the islands of Ellesmere and Axel Heiberg; with Norway over the Sverdrup Islands – Canada settled territorial differences with all other Arctic countries and achieved recognition by these countries of Canada’s Arctic borders. As a result the land borders of Canada’s Arctic possessions were finally determined. Two of these four territorial disputes (over Elsmere Island and Wrangel Island) were provoked by the Canadian Arctic explorer V. Stefansson, who thus tried to force the Canadian authorities to allocate money for his new expedition to the Arctic. In 1925 Canada formally established the boundaries of its Arctic sector. Nevertheless, in the 1920s Canada justified its rights to certain territories in the Arctic not by sector theory, but by the effective occupation of these territories, control over these territories and their inhabitants, contiguity and prescription.

Chapter 4. Canada and the concept of Arctic sectors in 1920s–1930s. Territorial disputes