Schomburgk Line

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Map showing:
* The extreme border claimed by Britain
*The current boundary (roughly) and
* The extreme border claimed by Venezuela
Guyana–Venezuela
territorial dispute
History

The Schomburgk Line is the name given to a survey line that figured in a 19th-century territorial dispute between Venezuela and British Guiana. The line was named after German-born English explorer and naturalist Robert Hermann Schomburgk (1804–1865). The dispute arose because when the United Kingdom acquired British Guiana (known as the colonies of Essequibo, Demerara, and Berbice until 1831) from the Netherlands in 1814, the western border with Venezuela was not defined.

Line

In 1835, under the aegis of the

British Government to carry out a survey of Guiana's boundaries. This survey resulted in what came to be known as the Schomburgk Line. Schomburgk's initial sketch, which had been published in 1840, was the only version of the "Schomburgk Line" published until 1886, which led to later accusations by Grover Cleveland that the line had been extended "in some mysterious way".[1]

The Line went well beyond the area of British occupation, and gave British Guiana control of the mouth of the Orinoco River.[2] Venezuela disputed Schomburgk's survey, claiming that the United Kingdom had illegally acquired an extra 30,000 square miles (80,000 km2) of territory. Venezuela claimed its borders extended as far east as the Essequibo River, citing Pope Alexander VI and his Treaty of Tordesillas which led to the Captaincy General of Venezuela in 1777.

In October 1886 Britain declared the Line to be the provisional frontier of British Guiana, and in February 1887 Venezuela severed diplomatic relations.

Cuyuni River, giving Venezuela a substantial territory east of the line – territory which Britain had originally refused to include in the arbitration. However, Britain received most of the disputed territory, and all of the gold mines.[3]

On a related issue the southern boundary between British Guiana and Brazil was settled after arbitration by the King of Italy in 1904, where Schomburgk's survey also played a role.

Notes

  1. ^
    R. A. Humphreys (1967), "Anglo-American Rivalries and the Venezuela Crisis of 1895", Presidential Address to the Royal Historical Society
    10 December 1966, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 17: pp131-164
  2. ^ Willard L. King (2007), Melville Weston Fuller - Chief Justice of the United States 1888–1910, Macmillan. p249
  3. ^ King (2007:260)

References

  • Walter LaFeber. "The Background of Cleveland's Venezuelan Policy: A Reinterpretation". The American Historical Review 66 (July 1961), pp. 947–967.
  • Lars Schoult. A History of U.S. Policy Toward Latin America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998).
  • U.S. Department of State, "Venezuela Boundary Dispute, 1895–1899"
  • Peter Rivière (ed.), The Guiana Travels of Robert Schomburgk 1835–1844, 2 vols (Aldershot: Ashgate for the Hakluyt Society, 2006).
  • Otto A. Schomburgk (ed.), Robert Hermann Schomburgk's Travels in Guiana and on the Orinoco During the Years 1835–1839 (Georgetown: The Argosy Company, 1931).
  • Robert Schomburgk, A Description of British Guiana, Geographical and Statistical (London, 1840).
  • Walter E. Roth (ed. and trans.), Richard Schomburgk's Travels in British Guiana 1840–1844, 2 vols (Georgetown: Daily Chronicle Office, 1922, 1923).
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