Nootka Crisis
The Nootka Crisis, also known as the Spanish Armament,[1] was an international incident and political dispute between the Nuu-chah-nulth Nation, Spain, the Kingdom of Great Britain, and the fledgling United States of America[2] triggered by a series of events revolving around sovereignty claims and rights of navigation and trade.
It took place during the summer of 1789 at the Spanish outpost Santa Cruz de Nuca, in Nootka Sound on Vancouver Island in present-day British Columbia, Canada.
The commander of the outpost, Jose Esteban Martínez, seized some British commercial ships which had come for the maritime fur trade and to build a permanent post at Nootka Sound.
British subjects, as well as the Spanish, were then enabled to trade up to ten leagues (30 miles; 48 km) from parts of the coast already occupied by Spain in northwestern North America by April 1789 and could form trade-related settlements in unoccupied areas.
In 1493 Pope Alexander VI had issued the Inter caetera papal bull, dividing the western hemisphere into Spanish and Portuguese zones, based on the discovery of the Americas in 1492, in theory granting nearly the entire New World to Spain.
These voyages, intended to ascertain the Russian threat and to establish "prior discovery" claims, were supplemented by the "effective settlement" of Alta California.
By 1775 Spanish exploration had reached Bucareli Bay including the mouth of the Columbia River between present-day Oregon and Washington, and Sitka Sound.
[10] The land and building aside, there is no doubt that Meares's men, and a group of Chinese workers they brought, built the sloop North West America.
[9] During the winter of 1788–89 Meares was in Guangzhou (Canton), China, where he and others including John Henry Cox and Daniel Beale formed a partnership called the Associated Merchants Trading to the Northwest Coast of America.
[12] This, in addition to the increasing use of Nootka Sound by British fur traders, resulted in the Spanish decision to assert sovereignty on the northwest coast once and for all.
The force consisted of the warship Princesa Real, commanded by Martínez, and the supply ship San Carlos, under Gonzalo López de Haro.
[9] The expedition built British Columbia's first European settlement Santa Cruz de Nuca on Nootka Sound, including houses, a hospital, and Fort San Miguel.
[14] On June 24, in front of the British and Americans present at Nootka Sound, Martínez performed a formal act of sovereignty, taking possession of the entire northwest coast for Spain.
The Princess Royal was first, and Martínez ordered its captain, Thomas Hudson to abandon the area and return to China, based on Spain's territorial and navigation rights.
After Narváez returned in the Santa Gertrudis la Magna (the seized and renamed North West America), the materials from the Argonaut were used to improve the vessel.
[9] The American ships Columbia Rediviva and Lady Washington, also fur trading, were in the area all summer, sometimes anchored in Friendly Cove (Yuquot).
[10] On July 29, 1789[19]: 295 the Spanish supply ship Aranzazu arrived from San Blas with orders from Viceroy Flores to evacuate Nootka Sound by the end of the year.
The senior commander of the Spanish naval base at San Blas, Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra, replaced Martínez as the primary Spaniard in charge of Nootka Sound and the northwest coast.
Despite previous hostilities, the governments of Britain and France met in private to discuss terms of an alliance against Spain in the event of war over the Nootka Sound territorial claims.
[21] In April 1790 John Meares arrived in England, confirmed various rumors, claimed to have bought land and built a settlement at Nootka before Martínez, and generally fanned the flames of anti-Spanish feelings.
Until the details were worked out, which took several years, Spain retained control of Nootka Sound and continued to garrison the fort at Friendly Cove.
Proposals to establish a British colony on the North West Coast had been discussed in commercial and official circles in the 1780s, encouraged by the success of the project to colonize Botany Bay and Norfolk Island.
Spain desired to set the Spanish-British boundary at the Strait of Juan de Fuca, but Vancouver insisted on British rights to the Columbia River.
The issues of the Nootka Crisis had become less important, so the new British foreign minister Grenville dropped any territorial claim in order to avoid raising "useless jealousy" on the part of Spain.
[28] The quiet abandonment of Britain's plans for colonization, owing to the emerging crisis in Europe after the French Revolution, and Vancouver's embarrassment at Nootka subsequently led to some misinterpretation of his achievement and of British imperial thinking at the time.
The Northwest Passage had proved to be non-existent and the French Revolutionary Wars delayed any attempt to establish a substantial colony on the northwestern coast of the Pacific, as Vancouver had initially envisaged.
[23][36] From 1797, the NWC had launched expeditions overland into the wilderness territories of the Rocky Mountains and Interior Plateau pushing through to the Strait of Georgia on the Pacific Coast expanding British North America Westward.
The United States argued that it acquired exclusive sovereignty from Spain, which became a key part of the American position during the Oregon boundary dispute.
The only Spanish official expedition to Nootka Sound after the Third Convention and before the Mexican Independence took place in 1796, when the schooner Sutil from San Blas made a stopover at the inlet.
[35] In 1957, the Spanish government presented stained glass windows commemorating the conventions to the church of Friendly Cove as a gift to the Nuu-chah-nulth people.
