Atlas Accompanying the Case of the United States Before the Tribunal Convened at London Under the Provisions of the Treaty between the United States of America and Great Britain, Concluded January 24, 1903

Washington DC, 1903. First Edition. First printing. Elephant folio (46cm). Original black cloth, titled in gilt on front; plain endpapers; [6]pp; 25 plates, some in color. Straight and sound, cloth scuffed and rubbed with biopredation to cloth at edges of rear board, losses to cloth over spine, internally lightly browned but otherwise clean: Good or better.

Government reproductions of maps used in 1903 border disputes with Britain, showing the American claim to the land; effectively, a cartographic history of Alaska. When the U.S. purchased Alaska (truncated) from Russia in 1821, it inherited a dispute over the territory's border with British Columbia. The Klondike Gold Rush of 1897-98 exacerbated tensions until the 1903 Hay-Herbert Treaty, under which the nations entered arbitration to resolve the dispute. The arbitration's conclusion favored the U.S., sparking Canadian frustration that Britain had not better defended its interests.

This atlas presents official facsimiles of the maps presented by the U.S. in the arbitration process, a few with annotations by members of the arbitration tribunal. 21 are facsimiles of historical maps from Russian, French, German, British, Canadian, and American atlases, dating between 1798 and 1863; many are depicted with facsimiles of title pages from the source atlases. The remaining four maps were produced in 1903 by the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, including one depicting the locations of Native American villages along the border. (Inventory #: 57310)