What I Read -- The Pig War

I've gotten a bit away from writing about my travels on this blog.  Perhaps I will get back to it.  It was a good way to chronicle my adventures, and fun to look back at later.

Meanwhile, I have continued - at least mostly - my habit of reading a book about a place when I am traveling there.  And sometimes even writing about those books. 

Recently, S and I took a boat trip in and around the San Juan Islands, a small group of islands off the coast of Washington state at the Canadian border.  In his preparation for the trip, S had learned about an event called the Pig War.  A bit of light googling revealed a book of the same name: The Pig War: The Most Perfect War in History, by E.C. Coleman.

It's not so much a war over a pig, but that the shooting by an American of a British pig (or at least a pig owned by a British person) brought attention to the dispute over the boundary between the US and then-British-owned Canada.

Some years prior, an agreement had been reached placing the land boundary at the 49th parallel.  When the land ran out, the boundary ran, "to the middle of the channel which separates the continent from Vancouver's Island; and thence southerly, through the middle of said channel, and of Fuca's Straits to the Pacific Ocean...."  The trouble was that the agreement didn't say which channel it meant.  The Americans took the position that it meant the Straits of Haro, which would place San Juan Island itself on the American side of the line.  The Brits took the position that it meant the Rosario Strait, which would place San Juan Island on the British side of the line.  So when the San Juan pig wouldn't quit rooting around in the American's garden and was shot, a decades-long detente ensued.

It was 1854.  Both sides were busy with either internal or other external concerns.  In a bilateral show of restraint, diplomacy, and common sense which seems rarely demonstrated in global politics of late, both sides sent small military detachments to San Juan Island under instructions to protect their own country's interest without provoking the other until a final determination of ownership was made.

Despite a road bump here and there, it worked remarkably well.  [SPOILER ALERT!]  The "war" came to an end in 1872, when the Emperor of Germany found in favor of the Americans' claim.  The British force, upon receiving the news, peaceably withdrew, turning over the keys to their fort with kind words: "I now beg to express to you personally my warmest thanks for your ready co-operation with me at all times, and permit me to subscribe myself with feelings of the highest order."

The author does a nice job of placing this litter territorial squabble in the context of bigger national and global events.  Without that, this story might have been an interesting long article, but a book might have been a bit much.  He also has a decent sense of humor.  It's not often that a book of history makes me laugh out loud or read passages to my companions, but this one did.  The author has a clear belief, which becomes more evident as the book goes on, that the final decision was an incorrect one; frankly, the final chapter - which speeds through everything from the Boer War to the War on Terror - should be skipped entirely.

But until that point, it was a thoroughly enjoyable read.