ABSTRACT
Th e Jay Treaty of 1794 established peaceful trade between the U.S. and Great Britain. It was innovative in that it agreed that disputes over wartime debts and the American-Canadian boundary were to be sent to arbitration-one of the fi rst major uses of arbitration in diplomatic history. Later the Rush-Bagot Pact and Convention of 1818 focused specifi cally on the Great Lakes and was an agreement between the U.S. and Great Britain to eliminate their naval fl eets in the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain following the war of 1812 (Donahue 1987). Subsequent decades in the 19th century saw the signing of a series of treaties and agreements that addressed mutual navigation rights and related issues.
