Brooks: Diplomacy and the Borderlands


the great explorer Vitus Bering. Two voyages, ending in 1741,
brought him to Alaska. In that same year his subordinate, Chiri-
koff, ran the coast north from latitude 550 21'." That accomplish-
ment appears to have been used subsequently for the definition of
the monopoly given to the Russian American Fur Company, or-
ganized to manage the lucrative trade between the North Pacific
with its skins and China with its silks and other luxuries."
 Estevan Jos6 Martinez and Gonzalo L6pez de Haro, able Span-
ish explorers, were sent to forestall further Russian advance by
occupying Nootka Sound, on the west side of what was later called
Vancouver Island. On arriving there, the explorers found, not
Russians, but English and "Anglo-Americans."
 The English early entered the Pacific, with Drake's round-the-
world voyage of the late sixteenth century, but they did not come
to trade in any great numbers until after the journey of Captain
James Cook. In 1778 Cook ran the coast from near Cape Blanco
(Lat. 420 50' N.) to Nootka. He then went up into the Bering Sea,
and down to the Sandwich Islands, where he was killed.
 Numerous English ships soon entered the rich North Pacific-to-
 China trade. Three of them happened to be at Nootka in 1789, and
 Martinez seized them on the ground that they were encroaching on
 Spanish domain. A diplomatic controversy ensued, resulting in
 the Convention of October 28, 1790, by which both nations were to
 be admitted freely to navigation, fishing, Indian trade, and settle-
 ment in the unoccupied districts." No claims or delimitations were
 set forth, but the convention was important in that it constituted a
 departure of Spain from her traditional position of exclusive sov-
 ereignty.
 Captain George Vancouver, for England, and Juan Francisco
 de la Bodega y Cuadra, an experienced Spanish navigator, then
 explored the North Coast as commissioners under the convention.
 Some questions arose, which led to the signing of another conven-
 tion, in 1794. This bound each country not to claim sovereignty to
 the exclusion of the other. Nootka was abandoned."
 The Nootka Sound Convention of 1790 has been considered the
 first diplomatic controversy over the North Pacific, and the first
 breach of Spain's exclusive claim. It was not the former, certainly,
 because conversations, at least, had been carried on previously be-
 tween Spain and Russia. Whether or not it was the latter is a mat-