British Arctic Territories

The British Arctic Territories were a British claim over the Arctic islands of North America, formally defined in 1880 as the territories and possessions adjacent to Canada that belonged neither to the Dominion nor to the Colony of Newfoundland. Britain's title rested on the voyages of Martin Frobisher in the 1570s and on later exploration rather than on settlement: the archipelago was inhabited by Inuit peoples and had no colonial capital or administration of its own. The islands lay outside Rupert's Land and outside the North-Western Territory, both of which drained into Hudson Bay and were managed by the Hudson's Bay Company, so they remained under direct British sovereignty when Canada acquired those regions in 1870. Growing American interest in the Arctic, sharpened by the Monroe Doctrine, prompted the British government to act. By an imperial order in council known as the Adjacent Territories Order, issued under the royal prerogative, the islands were annexed to Canada on 31 July 1880. They now form the Arctic Archipelago, divided since 1999 between Nunavut and the Northwest Territories. Beechey Island, the anchorage of the Franklin expedition, is used here as a representative point.