Book contents
- The Cambridge History of the Polar Regions
- The Cambridge History of the Polar Regions
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Additional material
- 1 Introduction: The Problems of Polar History
- 2 ‘I Watch to See How the Land Is Changing’: An Inuit Perspective on Changing Environments and Cultural Resilience in the Western Canadian Arctic
- 3 Evolution of the Antarctic Continent and Its Ice Sheet
- 4 The Initial Peopling of the Circumpolar North
- 5 Archaeology, Politics, and Sámi Heritage
- 6 The Norse Settlement of Greenland
- 7 Russia, the First Arctic Empire, 1000–1917
- 8 The Discovery of Antarctica from Ptolemy to Shackleton
- 9 Sir John Franklin and the Northwest Passage in Myth and Memory
- 10 The Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, 1890 to the Present
- 11 Representing the Polar Regions through Historical Fiction
- 12 Geography, Anthropology, and Arctic Knowledge-Making
- 13 Britain’s Polar Empire, 1769–1982
- 14 Canada and the High Arctic Islands, 1880–1950
- 15 The Genesis of the Spitsbergen/Svalbard Treaty, 1871–1920
- 16 Industrial Whaling in the Arctic and Antarctic
- 17 A Historical Archaeology of the First Antarctic Labourers (Nineteenth Century)
- 18 Mining and Colonialism in the Circumpolar North
- 19 Creating the Soviet Arctic, 1917–1991
- 20 Greenland: From Colony to Self-government, 1721–2021
- 21 Cold War Environmental Knowledge in the Polar Regions
- 22 The International Geophysical Year and the Antarctic Treaty System
- 23 The First Century of US Militarization in Alaska, 1867–1967
- 24 Petroleum Development and the State in Arctic North America, 1919–1977
- 25 The Rise of Circumpolar Political Movements
- 26 The History of Polar Environmental Governance
- 27 The Antarctic Extension of Latin America
- 28 Moving Muskoxen as an Arctic Resource in the Twentieth Century
- 29 Boundaries of Place and Time at the Edge of the Polar Oceans
- 30 Re-storying from Within: Renewing Relationships Beyond the Shadows of Polar History
- 31 Conclusion: Time, and the Future of Polar History
- Index
- References
29 - Boundaries of Place and Time at the Edge of the Polar Oceans
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 March 2023
Book contents
- The Cambridge History of the Polar Regions
- The Cambridge History of the Polar Regions
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Additional material
- 1 Introduction: The Problems of Polar History
- 2 ‘I Watch to See How the Land Is Changing’: An Inuit Perspective on Changing Environments and Cultural Resilience in the Western Canadian Arctic
- 3 Evolution of the Antarctic Continent and Its Ice Sheet
- 4 The Initial Peopling of the Circumpolar North
- 5 Archaeology, Politics, and Sámi Heritage
- 6 The Norse Settlement of Greenland
- 7 Russia, the First Arctic Empire, 1000–1917
- 8 The Discovery of Antarctica from Ptolemy to Shackleton
- 9 Sir John Franklin and the Northwest Passage in Myth and Memory
- 10 The Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, 1890 to the Present
- 11 Representing the Polar Regions through Historical Fiction
- 12 Geography, Anthropology, and Arctic Knowledge-Making
- 13 Britain’s Polar Empire, 1769–1982
- 14 Canada and the High Arctic Islands, 1880–1950
- 15 The Genesis of the Spitsbergen/Svalbard Treaty, 1871–1920
- 16 Industrial Whaling in the Arctic and Antarctic
- 17 A Historical Archaeology of the First Antarctic Labourers (Nineteenth Century)
- 18 Mining and Colonialism in the Circumpolar North
- 19 Creating the Soviet Arctic, 1917–1991
- 20 Greenland: From Colony to Self-government, 1721–2021
- 21 Cold War Environmental Knowledge in the Polar Regions
- 22 The International Geophysical Year and the Antarctic Treaty System
- 23 The First Century of US Militarization in Alaska, 1867–1967
- 24 Petroleum Development and the State in Arctic North America, 1919–1977
- 25 The Rise of Circumpolar Political Movements
- 26 The History of Polar Environmental Governance
- 27 The Antarctic Extension of Latin America
- 28 Moving Muskoxen as an Arctic Resource in the Twentieth Century
- 29 Boundaries of Place and Time at the Edge of the Polar Oceans
- 30 Re-storying from Within: Renewing Relationships Beyond the Shadows of Polar History
- 31 Conclusion: Time, and the Future of Polar History
- Index
- References
Summary
There is a problem fermenting in the frigid waters of the Beaufort Sea, a portion of the Arctic Ocean north of Canada and the United States. The trouble has its roots in an 1825 treaty signed between Great Britain and Russia, which divided their North American territories into what are now Alaska and Yukon. In that treaty, the two empires drew a north–south boundary along the ‘Meridian Line of the 141st degree’ that ‘in its prolongation as far as the Frozen Ocean, shall form the limit between the Russian and British Possessions’.1 Nearly 200 years later the inheritors of this agreement, the United States and Canada, are interpreting the phrase ‘as far as the Frozen Ocean’ in contrasting ways. Canada understands this sentence to mean that the boundary between the two nations extends past the shoreline and into the Beaufort Sea, while the United States argues that the border ends at the coastline where the ‘Frozen Ocean’ begins.
Keywords
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge History of the Polar Regions , pp. 726 - 748Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023
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