CLAYTON-BULWER TREATY, a treaty existing from 1850 to 1901 between the United States and Great Britain. It was an agreement designed to prevent either country from secur ing exclusive rights over any interoceanic canal across Nicaragua. (See PANAMA CANAL).
Its origin represented a supposed mutual withdrawal from positions rapidly generat ing war. Its lifetime has two opposite phases: (1) That in which the United States, wishing no such exclusive rights, held it and appealed to it as a bulwark against British en croachments, opposing only an injurious inter pretation • of it; (2) that in which the same power did wish such privileges, endeavored first to gain British assent to its abrogation, and after long and fruitless struggles and repeated threats of abrogating it without such assent, was only withheld from the abrogation by a compromise treaty which replaced the old. The three periods were as follows: 1. The English colony at Belize (now British Honduras), for a century or more had strength ened their position against the Spaniards by a vague protectorate over the Mosquito Indians, occupying the northeast coast of Nicaragua. They termed their chiefs "Icings,° and upheld their dominion over "Mosquitia,° usually called the Mosquito Coast. In 1815 they crowned one of them at Belize and, when the Spaniards lost control of Central America in 1822, had him set up a claim to boundaries reaching down into Costa Rica, and so including the banks of the San Juan River, where the canal would run if built. In 1841 this sovereignty was enforced by raiding San Juan del Norte at the mouth of the river, and carrying off the commandant ; in 1847 the "king)) announced to Nicaragua that on the first of January next he should "reassume his lawful control° over the San Juan, and early in the year the English seized the town and re named it Greytown. A new English treaty was then made with Nicaragua, recognizing this oc cupation. This roused great excitement in the United States, as equally a blow at the Monroe Doctrine and against American control of the canal; and an over-zealous Nicaragua chargé of the fire-eating Polk administration drafted a treaty for United States fortification of the canal, and a guarantee of Nicaragua's sover eignty over all the territory she claimed. This,
if we made its provisions active, meant war with England. The pacific Taylor administration then in power framed a milder treaty for a right of way merely, allowing Nicaragua to make similar ones with other nations. This still left Greytown as an apple of discord, and conflicted with the English treaty. Both England and America were on edge with suspicion : the for mer (whom events justified) that American ex pansion would end in a claim to entire control of the canal, which would prejudice British co lonial interests; the United States, that the Eng lish recognition of a fictitious and swollen sov ereignty by a tribe of savages over the Atlantic end of the canal foreshadowed the total exclu sion of the United States. Each party in fact wanted only to bar the other's monopoly. John M. Clayton (q.v.), Secretary of State, opened negotiations with the English Minister, Sir Henry Bulwer, in January 1850, for a joint control. Meantime Great Britain, to secure the Pacific end, sent an expedition to occupy an island in the Gulf of Fonseca (then sup posed to be the natural western terminal) ; our then Nicaraguan representative, E. G. Squier (q.v.), obtained a temporary cession to us of Tigre Island, the nearest one to Nicaragua, to block this scheme, pending a formal treaty; shortly afterward the British expedition arrived, and seized Tigre "for debt.° Clayton, in great fear lest the popular indignation should force his hand, pushed the treaty through without sufficient insistence on clear definition of the points at issue. It was signed 19 April, and passed the Senate, 42 to 11. Its provisions were that (1) neither power was to have exclusive control over the proposed canal; (2) neither was to fortify the canal or its vicinity; (3) neither was to occupy, fortify, colonize or have dominion over any part of Central America, either directly or through any "alliance or pro tection, intimacy, connection, or influence" in or over it; (4) the two powers should mutually guard the safety and neutrality of the canal, and invite all other nations to do the same; (5) they should aid and protect any authorized and reasonably operated canal company; (6) the fifth article (to establish a general principle) should extend also to any other means of isth mian transit.