Guano islands Act - wikipedia Guano islands Act The Guano Islands Act ( 11 Stat. 119, enacted August 18, 1856, codified at 48 U.S.C. ch. 8 § § 1411 - 1419 ) is a United States federal law passed by the U.S. Congress that enables citizens of the United States to take possession of unclaimed islands containing guano deposits. The islands can be located anywhere, so long as they are not occupied and not within the jurisdiction of another government. It also empowers the President of the United States to use the military to protect such interests and establishes the criminal jurisdiction of the United States in these territories. Whenever any citizen of the United States discovers a deposit of guano on any island, rock, or key, not within the lawful jurisdiction of any other Government, and not occupied by the citizens of any other Government, and takes peaceable possession thereof, and occupies the same, such island, rock, or key may, at the discretion of the President, be considered as appertaining to the United States. -- Section 1 of the Guano Islands Act The Act continues to be part of the law of the United States. The most recent Guano Islands Act claim was made to Navassa Island. However, the claim was discarded because an American court ruled the island was already under American jurisdiction ( a claim Haiti disputes ). Contents 1 Background 2 Criminal jurisdiction 3 Claims 4 Disputed claims 5 See also 6 References 7 External links Background This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. ( March 2010 ) In the 1840s, guano came to be prized as a source of saltpeter for gunpowder as well as an agricultural fertilizer. The United States began importing it in 1843 through New York. By the early 1850s, the U.K. imported over 200,000 tons a year, and U.S. imports totaled about 760,000 tons. The `` guano mania '' of the 1850s led to high prices in an oligopolistic market, attempts of price control, fear of resource exhaustion, and eventually the enactment of the Guano Islands Act 1856 in August 1856. The Act enables U.S. citizens to take possession of unclaimed islands containing guano for the U.S., and empowering the President to send in armed military to intervene. This encouraged American entrepreneurs to search and exploit new deposits on tiny islands and reefs in the Caribbean and in the Pacific. This is the beginning of the concept of insular areas in U.S. territories. Up to this time, any territory acquired by the U.S. was considered to have become an integral part of the country unless changed by treaty and eventually to have the opportunity to become a state of the Union. With insular areas, land could be held by the federal government without the prospect of its ever becoming a state in the Union. Criminal jurisdiction Section 6 provides that criminal acts on or adjacent to these territories `` shall be deemed committed on the high seas, on board a merchant ship or vessel belonging to the United States ; and shall be punished according to the laws of the United States relating to such ships or vessels and offenses on the high seas... '' The provision was considered and ruled constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in Jones v. United States, 137 U.S. 202 ( 1890 ). Claims More than 100 islands have been claimed for the United States under the Guano Islands Act, but most claims have been withdrawn. The Act specifically allows the islands to be considered possessions of the U.S., but it also provides that the U.S. is not obliged to retain possession after guano is exhausted. On the other hand, it also does not say that the U.S. can not retain possession though the guano is exhausted. The Act does not specify what the status of the territory is after it is abandoned by private U.S. interests. The islands still claimed by the United States under the Act are : Baker Island Howland Island Jarvis Island Johnston Atoll Kingman Reef / Danger Rock Midway Atoll Navassa Island ( claimed by Haiti ) Bajo Nuevo Bank ( disputed with Colombia ) Serranilla Bank ( disputed with Colombia ) Swains Island ( part of American Samoa ; no evidence that guano was mined ) Disputed claims The claim by the United States under the Guano Act of 1856 to a number of islands are subject to territorial disputes. In most cases, the dispute stems from attempts by a state to expand its exclusive economic zone over the surrounding seas. To cement the U.S. claim to Navassa Island against Haiti, President James Buchanan issued Executive Orders establishing United States territorial jurisdiction beyond just the Guano Act of 1856. The United States Supreme Court in 1890 ruled the Guano Act constitutional ; and, citing the actions of the Executive Branch, amongst other points in law, determined Navassa Island as pertaining to the United States. Control of Navassa Island was transferred by the Department of the Interior to the Director of the Office of Insular Affairs under Order No. 3205 on January 16, 1997. Both the Department of the Interior and Insular Affairs would later grant administration responsibilities to the United States Fish and Wildlife Service under Order No. 3210 on December 3, 1999. Order No 3210 also established a 12 - nautical - mile ( 22 km ; 14 mi ) territorial sea boundary for the United States around Navassa Island. Multiple countries have claimed ownership of Serranilla Bank and the Bajo Nuevo Bank. Bajo Nuevo Bank is the subject of conflicting claims made by a number of sovereign states. In 1899, a claim was made on Fox Island, Quebec, an island located south of Harrington Harbour, Quebec in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. In 1964, Leicester Hemingway, brother of author Ernest Hemingway, attempted to establish a country ( or more appropriately, a micronation ) dubbed the Republic of New Atlantis, on an 8 x 30 foot bamboo raft anchored with an engine block outside the territorial waters of Jamaica, using the Guano Islands Act as part of a claim to sovereignty. His apparent intention was to use the new country as the headquarters for his own International Marine Research Society, with which he planned to further marine research, as well as to protect Jamaican fishing. Neither the US nor Jamaica recognized his claim before the raft was destroyed in a storm in 1966. See also Islands portal Law portal List of Guano Island claims United States Miscellaneous Pacific Islands United States Minor Outlying Islands References Jump up ^ Underhill, Kevin ( July 8, 2014 ). `` ( By Kevin Underhill : ) The Guano Islands Act '' -- via www.washingtonpost.com. Jump up ^ Smil, Vaclav. ( 2004 ). Enriching the Earth : Fritz Haber, Carl Bosch, and the Transformation of World Food Production. Massachusetts : The MIT Press, pp. 42. Jump up ^ Skaggs & Wines, R.A. ( 1985 ). Fertilizer in America. Philadelphia : Temple University Press, pp. 54 - 70. Jump up ^ Guano Islands Act ( 11 Stat. 119 ^ Jump up to : `` Acquisition Process of Insular Areas ''. United States Government, Department of the Interior. Retrieved May 9, 2010. Jump up ^ Stahr, Walter ( 2012 ). Seward : Lincoln 's Indispensable Man. New York : Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978 - 1 - 4391 - 2794 - 0. several islands first claimed under the guano island law ; Kindle location 2856 of 15675. Jump up ^ Skaggs, Jimmy M. ( 1994 ). The Great Guano Rush : Entrepreneurs and American Overseas Expansion. p. 213. ISBN 978 - 0 - 312 - 10316 - 3. Jump up ^ Jones v. United States, 137 U.S. 202 ( 1890 ). Jump up ^ `` Guano is Back... ''. McGill University, March 20, 2017. Jump up ^ Hale, Russell. `` Contents of a Country : Leicester Hemingway 's Republic of New Atlantis ''. University of Texas Humanities Research Center. Archived from the original on November 11, 2013. Retrieved December 7, 2016. Jump up ^ Surveying the American Tropics : A Literary Geography from New York to Rio. Liverpool University Press. 2013. External links Text of U.S. Code, Title 48, Chapter 8 34th Congress Statutes at Large 43rd Congress Statutes at Large Territorial expansion of the United States Thirteen Colonies ( 1776 ) Treaty of Paris ( 1783 ) Louisiana Purchase ( 1803 ) Red River Cession ( 1818 ) Adams -- Onís Treaty ( 1819 ) Texas Annexation ( 1845 ) Oregon Treaty ( 1846 ) Mexican Cession ( 1848 ) Gadsden Purchase ( 1853 ) Guano Islands Act ( 1856 ) Alaska Purchase ( 1867 ) Annexation of Hawaii ( 1898 ) Treaty of Paris ( 1898 ) Tripartite Convention ( 1899 ) Treaty of Cession of Tutuila ( 1900 ) Treaty of Cession of Manuʻa ( 1904 ) Treaty of the Danish West Indies ( 1917 ) Concept : Manifest destiny Political divisions of the United States States Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming Federal district Washington, D.C. Insular areas American Samoa Guam Northern Mariana Islands Puerto Rico U.S. Virgin Islands Outlying islands Baker Island Howland Island Jarvis Island Johnston Atoll Kingman Reef Midway Atoll Navassa Island Palmyra Atoll Wake Island Indian reservations List of Indian reservations Retrieved from `` https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Guano_Islands_Act&oldid=834282619 '' Categories : 34th United States Congress Guano Islands Act United States federal public land legislation Legal history of the United States History of United States expansionism Law of insular areas of the United States Presidency of James Buchanan 1856 in American politics 1856 in American law Hidden categories : Use mdy dates from December 2016 Articles needing additional references from March 2010 All articles needing additional references Talk Contents About Wikipedia Čeština Dansk Deutsch Español Français Galego 한국어 Hrvatski Italiano עברית Къарачай - малкъар Latviešu 日本 語 Plattdüütsch Polski Português Русский Українська Tiếng Việt 10 more Edit links This page was last edited on 4 April 2018, at 21 : 35. 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Question: what law allowed the us to claim uninhabited islands
Answer: The Guano Islands Act