BERING SEA DISPUTE
The Bering Sea Dispute involved a late nineteenth-
century controversy between the United
States on one side and Great Britain and Canada
on the other side over the international status of
the Bering Sea. The dispute was generated over
the U.S. assertion that it controlled the Bering
Sea and all seal hunting off the coast of Alaska.
The dispute, which led to the seizure of a number
of Canadian ships by the United States, was
finally resolved by an international ARBITRATION
in 1893.
The Bering Sea is the northernmost part of
the Pacific Ocean. After the United States purchased
Alaska from Russia in 1867, it assumed
the right of control over the Bering Sea that had
been held by Russia. The dispute arose after the
Alaska Commercial Company, a U.S. business
that had a MONOPOLY on killing seals for their
furs, found that Canadian hunters were killing
seals as they swam through the ocean each
spring toward their summer homes in the Pribilof
Islands. The Pribilof Islands were part of
the U.S. Alaskan territories. Fearing that the
herds would be killed off by pelagic (open-sea)
sealing, the U.S. government seized several
Canadian sealing vessels in 1886 and instituted
condemnation proceedings in an Alaskan court.
The proceeds were given to the Alaskan Commercial
Company as compensation.
These actions outraged the Canadian and
British governments, who disputed the U.S.
claim that it controlled not just the three-miles
of sea bordering the Pribilof Islands but the
entire Bering Sea. After several years of tensions
and additional vessel seizures, the three countries
agreed to arbitration by an international tribunal
in Paris. The tribunal issued its decision in
1893. It rejected the U.S. claim of total control of
the Bering Sea and awarded the Canadian owners of the seized ships $473,000 in damages. The
tribunal also imposed restrictions on pelagic
sealing, but it failed to control the problem. In
1911 the United States,Great Britain, Russia, and
Japan signed a treaty that prohibited pelagic sealing
for a period of time and then placed limits on
how many seals could be hunted. The agreement
was an important step in seeking international
consensus on environmental matters.
FURTHER READINGS
Gay, John Thomas. 1987 The American Fur Seal Controversy.
New York: Peter Lang.
Mead, Walter Russell. 2002. Special Providence: American
Foreign Policy and How It Changed the World. New York:
Routledge.
CROSS-REFERENCES
Boundaries; International Law.
