Description
NETHERLANDS Medal of Wilhelm I with Canada - United States Interest
Dutch King was the Arbitrator in the Maine / New Brunswick Border Dispute
1829 42mm Silver Medal 28.35 grams by Loos, Berlin - Leroux 830 - Rare in Silver
The king's arbitration was rejected by America because it deprived Maine of 5,000 squares miles of territory she claimed as her own. The Treaty of Paris (1783) fixed the north-east boundary of the United States along the middle of the St Croix River “from its mouth in the Bay of Fundy to its source” and “due north from the source of the St Croix river to the highlands; along the said highlands which divide those rivers that empty themselves into the river St. Lawrence from those which fall into the Atlantic Ocean, to the north-western most head of the Connecticut river; thence down along the middle of the river to the forty-fifth degree of north latitude.” The various attempts to resolve the dispute include Jay’s Treaty (1794), the Commission of 1798, the Treaty of Ghent (1814), commissions under Ghent (1816 and 1822), the Convention of 1827, setting up the King of the Netherlands as arbitrator (approved in 1829, the king’s decision (1831) rejected leading into the Aroostook War (1838-39), and the Webster-Ashburton Treaty (1842) which settled the land boundary issues. The water boundary problems persisted, however, leading to the conventions of 1892 and 1908, the Treaty of Washington (1910) and the second Treaty of Washington (1925) that finally settled the boundary.
For more information on the Aroostook War please click below
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/aroostook-warlease
