The Shape of Guyana - Part II

Part II – The Road to Arbitration

In Part I, a brief overview was given of the occupation of Essequibo by the Dutch who claimed and controlled at least up the Barima, although the precise course of the boundary was never established.

The 1850 Agreement

The 1850 Agreement which was briefly alluded to last time [Part I], was not an agreement in the conventional sense of that term; it was more in the order of two unilateral declarations, whose intents coincided.

It comprised first of all a British diplomatic response arising out of the proposal from the Venezuelan Congress to fortify the Barima. Britain declared that she would not occupy the disputed territory, but she would not "view with indifference aggressions on the territory by Venezuela."

Venezuela then declared in reply that she would not occupy the disputed territory either, and would so instruct the relevant officials.

Both sides treated this exchange as constituting an agreement, although neither side in the end was to adhere to it with any rigour.

The first breach was made by Venezuela and arose out of the discovery of gold in that country. Mining had started there in the 1850s, and in due course gold was also found in the Cuyuni river.

The knowledge that parts of the disputed territory were auriferous was to complicate the boundary question considerably.

It was an attempt to exercise some control over the miners that caused Venezuela to commit her first violation when she established a township on the right bank of the Yuruari river.

This was followed up by the grant of a concession to a New York based company, called the Manoa Company, to cut wood in the Barima, an act which was to have consequences which will be referred to below.

It was Britain, however, who was in breach in 1875 when she sent members of the British Guiana police force to apprehend a murderer in the disputed zone, and when she proposed building a railway into the Cuyuni goldfields, something which she had objected to strongly when Venezuela had declared her intention of doing something similar.

A plethora of lines

Secretary of State Richard Olney, who sent a ten thousand word "note" to Lord Salisbury.

Following the 1850 Agreement there was a hiatus in negotiations on the boundary for many years because Venezuela was in a state of political turmoil.

It was only some twenty-six years later that diplomatic exchanges on the subject resumed, only this time Venezuela also forwarded a memorandum to the United States inviting that country to "take an interest in having justice done in Venezuela". This was the first occasion on which the Venezuelans appealed officially to the United States for assistance.

For the next two decades boundary lines were proposed by Rojas, Granville and Roseberry, among others, but there was no convergence of views between the two sides and no common line could be arrived at.

The United States gets involved

The first tentative reference to arbitration by the Venezuelans in 1880, was studiously ignored by the British, although the former had made no official proposal along these lines as yet. Disillusioned with the state of negotiations, Venezuela then turned her attention to the United States, with a view to emphasizing to Washington that British actions, particularly in Barima where officials had been sent to erect a telegraph line, were a breach of the Monroe Doctrine. It was an argument which was eventually to bear fruit.

"Do not view with indifference," ran a Venezuelan diplomatic note to Washington at the time, "this trespassing on Venezuelan territory." The Americans indicated themselves not indifferent, and expressed their concern about anything which tended to the encroachment on American territory by an outside power.

Lord Salisbury, who was eventually forced to agree to arbitration.

They too now suggested arbitration of the dispute, and with this support behind them, the Venezuelans put the proposal officially to the British. It was not a suggestion which was well received by the latter power, which indicated that some mutual accommodation would be preferable instead.

In 1885, however, the situation appeared to change when Venezuela successfully concluded a commercial treaty with Britain which contained an arbitration clause. This clause was intended, it would seem, to apply to situations not simply arising out of the treaty per se, and which therefore theoretically, at least, could be applied to the border issue.

Caracas' initial euphoria about the treaty, however, was soon to evaporate. Lord Granville, the Foreign Secretary who had negotiated it, was succeeded by Lord Salisbury, who quickly repudiated the more generous construction of the arbitration clause which the treaty contained. The incident was to place a great strain on Britain-Venezuela relations.

Suspension of diplomatic relations

By 1886, tensions were rising between the two states. As stated above, the Manoa Company had been given a concession by the Venezuelans in the Barima, which the British had declared a violation of the 1850 Agreement. In order to prevent the Company from erecting a sawmill, the British sent policemen into the area, who took it upon themselves to arrest one of its members and bring him to Georgetown for hanging Amerindians by their ankles.

Some acrimonious exchanges followed this act, the details of which will not be set forth here; however, it culminated in a threat from the Venezuelan President to break off diplomatic relations with Britain if the latter did not evacuate the Barima and agree to submit the boundary dispute to arbitration by February 20, 1887.

February 20 came and went, and Venezuela issued first a list of complaints againt Britain, and then a statement announcing that she was suspending relations.

Propaganda

In 1890 Venezuela made overtures for the renewal of diplomatic relations. Britain's conditions for resolving any dispute between them, however, were not conciliatory. The first of these was that Britain would only offer for arbitration land which she claimed west of the Schomburgk line, but not territory within it. Not surprisingly, this offer was refused.

Having reached an impasse, Venezuela turned again to the United States, but this time she decided to work indirectly as well as directly, by attempting to influence American public opinion, which she hoped would then in turn influence US Government policy. It was to prove her most successful tactic.

She hired a US lawyer, William Scruggs, to operate primarily as a propagandist, but also as a legal counsel.

Scruggs produced a propaganda pamphlet entitled: British Aggressions in Venezuela, or the Monroe Doctrine on Trial, which was distributed in the United States, and inflamed public opinion. The booklet represented to the American people that Venezuelan territory was being gradually absorbed by the British in defiance of the Monroe Doctrine, an allegation which was then picked up by the press with some animation. An alliance comprising Republicans, some Democrats, the American-Irish and the press combined forces in a crusade on behalf of the Doctrine, accusing the Government of "supineness, dilatorianess and lack of national and patriotic spirit."

An 1896 cartoon from an American newspaper,following Britain's agreement to go to arbitration.

The Monroe Doctrine itself, of course, was a product of a different era and different historical circumstances. Enunciated by US President Monroe in 1823, it stated: "... the American continents... are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.".

The propagandists, therefore, treated British activities in areas like the Barima as colonizing new territory, rather than entertaining the proposition that these had in any case been British prior to 1823.

Scruggs managed to persuade a Congressman from his home state of Georgia to introduce a resolution in Congress exhorting Britain and Venezuela to go to arbitration. The resolution was passed on February 22, 1895, and the US Government could no longer ignore either public pressure or Congress.

President Cleveland's message

On July 20, 1895, following further Venezuelan appeals to the US Government, Secretary of State Richard Olney dispatched a note to Britain, which, on account of its lengthy disquisition on the application of the Monroe Doctrine (among other things) has become known as the Olney Corollary. He asked Britain to submit the dispute to arbitration, and warned that if she intended to disappoint him, President Clevelend would wish to be informed early so he could lay the matter before Congress.

Lord Salisbury did disappoint him, and the US President in a special message to Congress on December 17, 1895, made one of the more famous appeals to that body. Invoking the Monroe Doctrine he asked first for the power to appoint a Commission to investigate what the true divisional line between the two countries was, and warned that after the report had been submitted it would be the duty of the United States to resist "the appropriation by Great Britain of any lands or the exercise of governmental jurisdiction over any territory which after investigation we have determined of right belongs to Venezuela."

It was something of a bombshell, because of its implication of a threat of war. It caused great ferment in the United States, and four days later, Congress, in an unusual display of celerity, passed a law setting up a Commission to investigate the "true divisional line" between Venezuela and British Guiana.

The US Commission

Five men were appointed to the Commission and they undertook some important research on the geography, history and cartography relating to the question. Subsequently, their research – although no conclusions about where the boundary was – was published.

Two of the men who sat on the Commission – Justice David Josiah Brewer, and its Secretary, Severo Mallet-Prevost, were to reappear later at the Paris Tribunal, one as an arbitrator and the other as a junior counsel for Venezuela.

Treaty of Washington, 1897

Members of the Boundary Commission set up by the US. In the back row at left is young Sevro Mallet-Prevost, while Justice Brewer sits in front row, center.

The US Commission never published any findings about the true divisional line for the simple reason that it never completed its work. Before it was able to do so, Britain, burdened with problems elsewhere in the world, and reluctant to face down the United States, acceded to arbitration.

She agreed to sign a treaty with Venezuela which would contain the terms of reference for an arbitral body, and its rules of procedure.

In brief, the treaty provided for a tribunal of five, two to be selected by the British, one by the United States, one by Venezuela and the fifth by all four, or by the King of Norway and Sweden if they could not agree.

Map showing boundaries as claimed by Britain (1) and Venezuela (2) and the final Paris Award (3).

Two dates were taken as relevant to the issue: the boundary at the time when the British acquired the Dutch colonies in 1803, confirmed in 1814, and the date 1847.

This latter date was arrived at as a consequence of the prescription rule, which in effect stated that the settlement of territory or exclusive political control over it for the fifty years prior to the signing of the treaty was sufficient to make good title.

The arbitrators were also required to apply the principles of international law, and their decision was to be determined by a majority. Under the terms of Article XIII the parties to the treaties were committed to regard the award as a "full, perfect and final settlement... "