The British US Pig War 1859 - A Near-Miss Conflict About A Dead Pig

The Pig War in 1859 is one of the most obscure and unusual events in Britain’s long and colourful history.

In this forgotten moment, the United Kingdom and the United States almost went to war…and all because of a dead pig!

In a tense stand off 400 US soldiers faced 5 Royal Navy warships on a tiny island between Vancouver and Seattle.
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The roots of the war lay in a tiny detail from a treaty between Great Britain and the USA written over 10 years beforehand.
The Oregon Treaty of 1846 the two nations agreed to set a border at the 49th parallel of north latitude all the way from the mountains to the sea.

However, there was one tiny little loose end in the treaty.
As Vancouver island actually went south of the 49th parallel line that had been used on the mainland, exactly where was the maritime boundary between the British and the Americans?

The two sides couldn't agree and the flashpoint became the island of San Juan, just off the coast of Vancouver Island.

Both the US and the United Kingdom laid claim to this tiny island but didn't do much about it.

But that all changed on the 15th June 1859, when an American settler shot a pig belonging to a British settler that had been eating his potatoes.

In a bizarre set of circumstances and decisions, both sides raised the stakes until an armed confrontation looked inevitable.

The so-called "pig War" of 1859 had started.
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The British -US War of 1812
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Sir Garnet Wolseley & the Red River Expedition in Canada
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Chapters
0:00 Intro
0:29 Oregon Treaty 1846
1:43 San Juan Boundary Dispute
3:43 The Pig War Starts
6:16 Conspiracy theories
7:08 Royal Navy Responds
9:03 Admiral Baynes
10:53 President Buchanan
12:06 War Averted
13:30 Ownership Resolved
14:32 The History Chap

#pigwar1859 #britishUSwar #militaryhistory
Sources used to make this video include:
National Park Service
Canadian Encyclopedia
Past Tense Orgegan
Historic UK
Wikipedia

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My name is Chris Green and I love to share stories from British history. Not just because they are interesting but because, good or bad, they have shaped the world we live in today.

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