|
The Guano Islands Act (, enacted , codified at §§ 1411-1419) is federal legislation passed by the U.S. Congress that enables citizens of the U.S. to take possession of islands containing guano deposits. The islands can be located anywhere, so long as they are not occupied and not within the jurisdiction of other governments. 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. ==Background== 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 UK imported over 200,000 tons a year, and U.S. imports totaled about 760,000 tons.〔Smil, Vaclav. (2004). ''Enriching the Earth: Fritz Haber, Carl Bosch, and the Transformation of World Food Production.'' Massachusetts: The MIT Press, pp.42.〕 Congress passed the Guano Islands Act in August 1856 to take advantage of guano deposits, sending 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. The act specifically allows the islands to be considered possessions of the U.S., but it also provided that the U.S. was not obliged to retain possession after the guano was exhausted. However, it did not specify what the status of the territory was after it was abandoned by private U.S. interests. The implication is that it would return to its former status as ''terra nullius''. 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 creation of the 1856 Guano Islands Act.〔Skaggs & Wines, R. A. (1985). ''Fertilizer in America.'' Philadelphia: Temple University Press, pp. 54-70.〕 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. The provision of the Act establishing U.S. criminal jurisdiction over such islands was considered and ruled constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in ''Jones v. United States'', . 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Guano Islands Act」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|